many new relays

[Phil]

> Subject: Re: many new relays
> To: or-talk at freehaven.net
> Date: Sunday, June 28, 2009, 10:05 AM
> I'd give it a 15 minute mile high
> eyeball if I
> had the 'before the jump' cache files or
> a 'getinfo desc/all-recent' from back then.
> I just don't have that dataset.
> 
> > It means everyone is busy working on other things.
> 
> Yep, it's just an on the radar thing.
> 
> > more stats about the effect of other major media
> > stories about Tor, Slashdot effect, etc.
> 
> I think the Tor project may indeed have some long term
> data such as a simple relay count in RRD. Just thought
> I saw some graphs once.
> 
> There's probably a roadmap somewhere that gives an
> idea of when Tor would be felt ready for more general
> mass consumption/advertisment.
> 
> > This whole Iran thing is a great way for a number of
> > adversaries to slip in undetected.
> 
> In bulk, in short order, yes, perhaps. Though if I
> were a serious adversary I would probably advise
> against something as we've just seen. I suggested
> doing the analysis because often the first rollout
> of anything is botched in some fashion. And there's
> limited time to catch it, then learning occurs and
> the future ones appear normal.
> 
> And of course, as a secondary check, the non-black Tor
> break canary has yet to be seen in the public courts.

Is it possible this alleged jump in the numbers of relays is partly driven by the tbreg/Taobao thing?  Perhaps this same technique is being used more widely than is realized with relay nodes on zombied machines having names other than 25tbreg.  Just a thought.