[tor-talk] How dangerous are DNS leak?

Paul Syverson syverson at itd.nrl.navy.mil
Tue Sep 18 15:01:01 UTC 2012


On Tue, Sep 18, 2012 at 10:35:11AM -0400, Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 18, 2012 at 9:13 AM, adrelanos <adrelanos at riseup.net> wrote:
> > Jerzy Łogiewa:
> >> How dangerous are the DNS leak for some user?
> >
> > Very dangerous!
> >
> > http://www.howdoihidemyip.com/dnsleak.htm
> > "The DNS leak provides your ISP name and location to the website that
> > you are visiting, thus undermining your ability to stay anonymous on the
> 
> It's very dangerous IFF it's real, and IFF you're expecting tor to
> hide what sites you're visiting and services you're using from someone
> who can watch your network connection.
> 
> But it's not always real, some services connect by IP and tor will
> produce spurious warnings about these.

Logic persnickitiness: 'IFF' is not a more emphatic version of 'if'.
'IFF' means if and only if. In other words, you are saying that
it's dangerous if it's real, and it's real if it's dangerous.
Also, it's dangerous if you're expecting tor to hide... and
you're expecting tor to hide... if it's dangerous.
Pretty sure that's not what you meant.

But you're main point is well taken, subject to the limitation
that most people won't know exactly what their threat model should
be for any given behavior and it's best to be cautious.

aloha,
Paul

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