specifying your own entrance and exit nodes
Assuming there are certain Tor notes being run by parties hostile to my own interests, what are the pros and cons of specifying one's own list of trusted entrance and exit nodes? I run a Tor relay at home 24/7 and use that as my entrance point. I do this to provide cover traffic for my own Tor use as well as help out the network. I also try to use Tor for all my daily web browsing when possible. This has given be a lot of headaches. Besides the demoralizing barrage of Cloudfare captchas, I've had a lot of problems with dropped connections, timeouts, SSL cert warnings, fatal errors connecting to HTTPS sites. I started to get a gut feeling, warranted or not, that some exits nodes might be meddling with my traffic. To combat this I changed the configuration on my local Tor relay to use only exit nodes run by organizations or people that I felt I could trust. I didn't bother with specifying entrance nodes because I could not see what the gain would be. This seems to have curbed some of the problems, with the tradeoff that responsiveness is much more inconsistent. I'm just curious if restricting exit nodes to a few dozen that you trust effectively defeats most of the purpose of using Tor. What would be the bare minimum of Tor exit nodes a person would need to use in order to make life difficult for the Panopticon surveillor scum? If this post is more appropriate for Tor-talk, please let me know
I run an exit node, https://atlas.torproject.org/#details/F14B7BF44F9B170DFF628F237E0C7E8D631F95..., and I'm also quite new on the list and learn new things about Tor everyday, so please bear with me. I do not have a full understanding of how the DirAuth works, but how about an out of band verification process, to ensure the trustworthiness, for exit nodes specifically. This would minimize the hazzle for people who wishes to use trusted exit nodes, and maximize the number of explicitly trusted exit nodes. Since relay maintainers are already publicly listed and traceable I would not have any problem signing off on my own, and a few other maintainers I know personally, exit nodes. As per https://compass.torproject.org/#?exit_filter=all_relays&links&sort=cw&sort_r... the exit probability of the Top 10 exit relays with the highest consensus weight is 12,2046%, and per https://compass.torproject.org/#?exit_filter=fast_exits_only&links&sort=cw&s... the exit probability of the Top 10 fast exit relays is 11,2452%, so you wouldn't need many maintainers joining a signing/verification scheme to account for a lot of the bandwidth on the network. On 10 December 2014 at 21:58, Seth <list@sysfu.com> wrote:
Assuming there are certain Tor notes being run by parties hostile to my own interests, what are the pros and cons of specifying one's own list of trusted entrance and exit nodes?
I run a Tor relay at home 24/7 and use that as my entrance point. I do this to provide cover traffic for my own Tor use as well as help out the network.
I also try to use Tor for all my daily web browsing when possible. This has given be a lot of headaches.
Besides the demoralizing barrage of Cloudfare captchas, I've had a lot of problems with dropped connections, timeouts, SSL cert warnings, fatal errors connecting to HTTPS sites. I started to get a gut feeling, warranted or not, that some exits nodes might be meddling with my traffic.
To combat this I changed the configuration on my local Tor relay to use only exit nodes run by organizations or people that I felt I could trust. I didn't bother with specifying entrance nodes because I could not see what the gain would be.
This seems to have curbed some of the problems, with the tradeoff that responsiveness is much more inconsistent.
I'm just curious if restricting exit nodes to a few dozen that you trust effectively defeats most of the purpose of using Tor. What would be the bare minimum of Tor exit nodes a person would need to use in order to make life difficult for the Panopticon surveillor scum?
If this post is more appropriate for Tor-talk, please let me know _______________________________________________ tor-relays mailing list tor-relays@lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-relays
On 12/10/2014 4:52 PM, usprey wrote:
I do not have a full understanding of how the DirAuth works, but how about an out of band verification process, to ensure the trustworthiness, for exit nodes specifically. This would minimize the hazzle for people who wishes to use trusted exit nodes, and maximize the number of explicitly trusted exit nodes.
How would the trust be quantified by such a verification process? For example, how would this prevent the operator of a good exit from changing their mind about tampering with traffic or the cooperation of one or more exit owners in monitoring or sharing traffic information for correlation? I'd also be curious how such a system would stand up in the event that control over a validated exit is compromised without the owner realizing it. It seems to me that most validation techniques offer a trade off between accountability and anonymity which may also pose a concern for some people.
Inline below. On 11 December 2014 at 01:46, tor-exit0 <tor-exit0@intersafeit.com> wrote:
On 12/10/2014 4:52 PM, usprey wrote:
I do not have a full understanding of how the DirAuth works, but how about an out of band verification process, to ensure the trustworthiness, for exit nodes specifically. This would minimize the hazzle for people who wishes to use trusted exit nodes, and maximize the number of explicitly trusted exit nodes.
How would the trust be quantified by such a verification process?
You could use existing web of trust systems to let maintainers sign the relays fingerprint. In addition to this users could also sign the fingerprint and the exit would first be flagged trusted when a critical mass of users have signed. I'm aware this breaks anonymity, but would be a way to flag an exit as trusted.
For example, how would this prevent the operator of a good exit from changing their mind about tampering with traffic or the cooperation of one or more exit owners in monitoring or sharing traffic information for correlation?
It won't, but the maintainer would be putting her name and reputation on the line, in the web of trust fingerprint scenario above. Code words for trust is openness and accountability. I'm not aware how one acquires a bad exit flag, but it should be possible to automate tests verifying non-interference with exit connections.
I'd also be curious how such a system would stand up in the event that control over a validated exit is compromised without the owner realizing it.
I suspect that most people contributing +100Mbps bandwidth, are in some way IT professionals and know what they are doing and have followed the general guidelines for physical, network and software security. A signing process for a maintainer could also include a statement of compliance with specific guidelines.
It seems to me that most validation techniques offer a trade off between accountability and anonymity which may also pose a concern for some people.
Definitely, why it shouldn't be mandatory, but a way to flag trusted and accountable exits.
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