[tor-talk] Tor virus

Katya Titov kattitov at yandex.com
Wed Aug 15 07:35:49 UTC 2012


On Wed, 15 Aug 2012 01:43:27 +0200
Philipp Winter:
> ethio tor wrote:
>> What if there is a tor "virus" (pardon for the choice of word) that
>> can infect such pc and make a relay, bridge, or what ever on the
>> background undetected.
> 
> Sounds like a "human rights worm". Some people thought about that
> before [1].
> 
> Aside from the obvious ethical difficulties, I would consider such a
> worm as highly problematic because it works in the "interest" of an
> independent project and would eventually damage its reputation (just
> think about how the media would interpret it). And a damaged
> reputation might decrease Tor's user diversity which, on the other
> hand, would hurt anonymity.

Not to mention the fact that it is most likely illegal. An illegal act
to correct or respond to another illegal act is usually not justified,
or: the end usually does not justify the means.

What if a large music corporation *cough*Sony*cough* placed software on
your PC to stop you performing what you consider to be perfectly within
your rights but they consider to be illegal? And what if that software
introduced vulnerabilities which could be used by other parties to gain
access to your PC?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootkit_scandal

It looks like the Obfsproxy TBB may work

https://www.torproject.org/projects/obfsproxy.html.en#download

I wonder if VPN is blocked, and if not are there any free/inexpensive
endpoints which are simple to configure?
-- 
kat


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