Hacker strikes through student's router

[Nick Mathewson]

On Tue, Nov 08, 2005 at 10:49:56PM +0000, poncenby smythe wrote:
 [...]
> I believe(and hope) a great many people care about this.
> Does anyone know of other papers written on the subject of 'abuse' of  
> anonymous systems?

Again, you might want to read the "challenges" paper.
   http://tor.eff.org/cvs/doc/design-paper/challenges.pdf

It cites other work.

Also, nearly all of the debate from the old "Crypto Wars" is
applicable to the present situation IMO.  Also, look for the term
"revocable anonymity" for favorable (!) views concerning building back
doors into anonymity systems, and debates about those views.

> at the moment I personally feel that Tor is affording people with  
> questionable intentions an extremely robust and simple to use method  
> to conceal their identity.  I have not read the 'challenges' paper  
> but is it correct to think tor developers justify (if that is the  
> right word) their developments by believing that if miscreants did  
> not use Tor they would simply move onto another similar mechanism for  
> conducting their business.

I think you can answer the question of what the paper says yourself by
reading the paper.

And the abuse faq.

And the main faq.

> or would taking the tor network down cause any kind of disruption?

[sarcasm begins]

What do you think? As you probably know, before we started working on
Tor, there was almost no such thing as computer crime or abuse.
Everybody could be easily tracked down by their IP addresses, so
anybody who tried to get away with naughtiness had to deal with their
ISP and their local police almost immediately.

There was practically no fraud, no defacement, no flooding, no abuse,
no illicit access, no data theft, no harassment, no fraud, no nothing.

[sarcasm ends]

I don't think these are "impossible questions"; I think they're
answerable with a little thought, a little history, and a little
technical knowledge.

yrs,
-- 
Nick Mathewson
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