[tor-talk] ExcludeEntryNodes

[hamahangi]

In a recent crypto.is post, Tom Ritter provides a clear explanation of
the traffic correlation attack that can be performed if the adversary
can see the first and last connections. (I know this is Tor 101, but he
has nice diagrams).

If I live in freedom-loving State (B) and want to view information on a
website in censorious State (A), I'm presumably safer from attack by
State (A) if I can ensure that the entry node I connect to isn't there,
but if Tor does its job then it's of no consequence that the middle or
exit nodes might be located there.

So why is there no ExcludeEntryNodes option? It seems to have been
present at some point as there's reference to it in old mirrors of the
documentation and on the blog[0], and the helpdesk advised me that it
was still there, but I've tried it with both the stable and the alpha
TBB bundles and they both keel over on startup with 'failed to parse'
errors. Where'd it go? There are two tickets open about this but neither
has received comment.

[0] https://blog.torproject.org/blog/tor-02225-alpha-out