tor-relays

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36 participants
4815 discussions

Running exit-node in Germany
by Matthias Redies 02 Aug '13

02 Aug '13

Hello, I want to run an exit-node through mit home connection. Has anyone experience with running a Tor-Relay in Germany( Bavaria)? Are there known cases of police raids? Is there a list of lawyers which work with the torproject which should be called in case of a raid? Has anyone had sucsess with talking to the police prior to setting up the exit-node? If so, to which departmed did you talk to? Yours Matthias

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Home broadband - worth running a relay?
by Nick 01 Aug '13

01 Aug '13

Hi there, I have a reasonable ADSL connection, and a little always-on server. The bandwidth is in the region of 2Mib/s down, something less up (maybe 256Kib/s). Is it useful for me to run a tor relay with this bandwidth? I'd like to run one which isn't an exit, at least for now. If not, am I correct in thinking that a bridge is an appropriate help? That's what I'm doing currently, but if a relay would be more useful I'd be very happy to do that. One other unrelated(ish) question: I'm in the UK, where the idea of censorship isn't resisted as strongly as it ought to be, and as a result my internet connection is subject to a smallish amount of censorship: whatever is on the secret IWF blacklist plus the pirate bay. Does this mean that running an exit node from a home connection here at some point in the future would not be helpful? Or only if all HTTP(S) was blocked (as the IWF blacklist is secret there's presumably no way to tell the tor network what is inaccessible from this node). Thanks in advance, Nick

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Diagnosing "relay unresponsive" messages
by Gordon Morehouse 01 Aug '13

01 Aug '13

So, I've got my relay back up on a Raspberry Pi and I'm working on figuring out the optimizations I made to it, and continuing to tune it. Out of the box these machines have some difficulty even offering a couple Mbps, but they can be greatly improved. I will post all details when done. I see a fair amount of this, much less than after some tweaks, but it still happens: 20:27:36 [ARM_NOTICE] Relay resumed [1 duplicate hidden] 20:27:30 [ARM_NOTICE] Relay unresponsive (last heartbeat: Wed Jul 31 20:27:19 2013) 19:50:57 [ARM_NOTICE] Relay unresponsive (last heartbeat: Wed Jul 31 19:50:4 This often happens at the same time as 'arm' (the monitoring program) may stutter, fail to render a few frames, then 'catch up' or redraw the screen. I'm trying to figure out what's going on so I can prevent it. It doesn't always correlate with traffic - it happens more often when there's more traffic but can happen even with very little. Tor is taking about 10% RAM, there's plenty free, and load is under 1.0. Best, -Gordon M.

1 0

What to do about port scans?
by Steve Snyder 31 Jul '13

31 Jul '13

I wouldn't have thought that the Tor network was fast enough for port scanning, but apparently it is. I have recently seen a rash of SSH port scanning (or so my ISP reports). What can/should I do about this? I know I can limit the rate of connections using iptables. What's the consensus on this? Is this considered advisable, or a breach of expected exit node behavior? Do I have any options other than iptables to restrict the rate of port 22 connection attempts? Thanks.

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Re: [tor-relays] Home broadband - worth running a relay?
by ROCKsolid69r＠gmail.com 31 Jul '13

31 Jul '13

1 0

Re: [tor-relays] Home broadband - worth running a relay?
by ROCKsolid69r＠gmail.com 31 Jul '13

31 Jul '13

1 0

VPN termination on relays
by grarpamp 31 Jul '13

31 Jul '13

> Mosh is great, but it still relies exclusively on UDP, right? > So no "over Tor"... Somewhat related to things that don't work via exits... So who wants to offer VPN termination as part of their exit service? User tunnels VPN to you, you give back a bound port, or a natted 10 address, somethings of that sort.

1 0

Fwd: Computer requirements for a modest (15-20Mbs) relay?
by Zack Weinberg 31 Jul '13

31 Jul '13

On Mon, Jul 29, 2013 at 12:35 PM, Andy Isaacson <adi(a)hexapodia.org> wrote: > Yes, there are cases of law enforcement seizing all computer gear from a > house with a exit node -- not just the exit node computer. Most > recently in Austria in a child porn investigation. [...] We did some operational planning for this risk, in conjunction with the university legal and IT departments, when we set up the CMU Tor exit. The machine is in a cube farm filled with other equipment that people need for their work; this is because we want to have immediate physical access to it in an emergency, and anywhere else we could put it would interfere with that. However, it has its own dedicated IP address, it runs absolutely no other services, it is clearly labeled both in DNS and on the physical box, and there's nothing else on the table it sits on. The hope is that this will be sufficient to persuade law enforcement to seize *only* that machine, if it comes to it. Of course, it helps as much or more to have the equipment under the aegis of an organization with lawyers already briefed and on tap, and that has trained all the staff to call legal *before doing anything else* when the police show up. Also, the greater operational threat is having the plug pulled by one's connectivity provider. I personally would not risk having an exit node in my house for that reason alone. zw

3 3

Sitevalley is no longer Tor-friendly
by Tom Ritter 30 Jul '13

30 Jul '13

Sending this out, as I suspect I am not the only person running a node on SiteValley, as they have pretty good bandwidth for pretty cheap. I had inquired in the beginning if they allowed Tor, and they said yes, but if we get too many abuse complaints we'll shut it down. So maybe 4 or 5 abuse complaints later they did indeed give me the ultimatum to shut it down or get shut down. So I made them give me a new IP address, and made it into a middle node. (The new IP was because I was thinking of making it a bridge.) Well this morning they told me TOR (their caps, not mine ;) is not allowed at all. I argued with them a little bit, and TLDR you might be able to get a partial refund. I'd much rather have had the bandwidth though. I'm not in a position to run high-maintence nodes, so this being a pretty fast, maintenance-once-every-three-months dedicated-to-Tor node - I was pretty happy with it. Our conversation: ----------------- Your VPS X.Y.Z.W has been suspended due to running tor anonymyzer which is forbidden according to our Acceptable Use Policy, paragraph 8 "Prohibited Activities" http://www.sitevalley.com/acceptable-use-policy/. In order to have your VPS unsuspended you need to agree to remove tor from it within 24 hours after the unsuspension. Failure to abide by this provision may result in termination of your account. We have to warn you that on receiving next abuse your VPS will be terminated without without prior notice. ----------------- If you refer to Contact Form ID #YXX-XXXXyou'll see that I confirmed with you before I purchased the VPS that allowing Tor was acceptable. I dealt with the 3 or 4 abuse complaints you sent me promptly, and in #FSA-XXXXI agreed to stop using the server as a Tor Exit Node, despite our previous conversation. The machine in question is running Tor in a non-Exit mode. Traffic from it does not appear to originate from the server, and it merely passes traffic within the Tor network. It cannot generate abuse complaints from third parties when running in this mode. Have you received an abuse complaint about this server? If so, can you forward it to me so I can investigate how it may have been created? ----------------- The node was found during system audit. May be you know that running tor (in any mode) is strictly forbidden by our Acceptable Use Policy because it can be used by third-parties for forwarding hidden illegal traffic. Unfortunately, we can start your VPS only in case you agree to remove tor. ----------------- I'll put aside the fact that your routers, DNS resolvers and every router of the internet also carries hidden illegal traffic, and that Tor is agnostic to that traffic as your routers are. I did NOT know that running Tor was not allowed because I ASKED you if I could, and you told me it was fine as long as it did not generate Abuse Complaints. Considering your AUP is so broad it can be made to cover anything you don't like, the only reasonable thing someone can do is ask if you'll allow something - which I did. I'd like a pro-rated refund of my remaining service, as you have misrepresented your services and your Acceptable Use Policy to me - if I had known you wouldn't allow me to use my bandwidth in a way that was not illegal in any jurisdiction, did not generate any abuse complaints or additional work for you, and that you would shut down my service after I confirmed what I was doing was okay with you - I would never have paid you in the first place. ----------------- Ticket YXX-XXXX dates from 26 Mar 2012. Our Terms of Service are subject to change and, according to our Terms of Service http://www.sitevalley.com/terms/ posting of such changed Terms and Conditions on the site constitutes notice of such changes to you (although we may choose additional types of notice). Our policy regarding TOR usage has been changed and as for now, running TOR applications on our servers is forbidden. We are very sorry that this provision prevents you from using our services in the manner you need to use it. All things considered, we can offer you two options: 1. We unsuspend your VPS, you remove TOR from it, let us know and we check it. or 2. We issue the partial refund and terminate your account with us. Please rest assured that we value you as our customer and would like to continue doing business with you. Also, please accept our apologies for any inconvenience this misunderstanding has been the reason of. ----------------- Thank you Dmitriy. Please issue the partial refund and terminate the account. ----------------- -tom

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Computer requirements for a modest (15-20Mbs) relay?
by Nick 29 Jul '13

29 Jul '13

Hi, I'm probably going to move to a new ISP soon, and may well be able to get a fibre 20Mbps up connection, which is a nice thought. The question I have is whether my little ~1GHz home server box (a weird little x86 thing, I can dig out more specs if they're relevant) would be able to relay that level of traffic without issue? The TorExitGuidelines page on the wiki mentions that one "modern" CPU core should be able to push 100Mbps, but my server is probably 6/7 years old. It's a VIA board, which IIRC might have some hardware crypto acceleration or something - is that something that would be likely to help things if I can get it working? Thanks folks, Nick P.S. Are there any known cases of law enforcement seizing equipment or otherwise terrorising people for running home exit nodes? I would like to imagine that Tor is well known enough in such circles that such action would be rather unlikely nowadays. I know at least some remailer operators host stuff from their homes, but maybe that's lower risk.

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