[tor-talk] anonymity at the outset

[Roger Dingledine]

On Mon, Apr 15, 2013 at 04:40:42AM -0400, eli wrote:
> Something's been bothering me since I began contributing bandwidth to
> the Tor network. Now that I've been running a bridge for awhile and feel
> more or less confident of what I'm doing, I guess I can ask what may be
> a dumb question.
> 
> The elementary illustration of how the tor network carries msgs shows
> Alice's machine connected to the first node of an OR path.
> 
> Isn't it more accurate to show Alice's machine's first connection to be
> to her ISP?
> 
> And if this is true, is not the initial hop past the ISP's gateway a
> place of no anonymity?
> 
> If someone at the gateway were inclined to snoop, wouldn't be in effect
> a MITM attack? - eliaz

First check out
https://www.eff.org/pages/tor-and-https
and click on various combinations of "Tor" and "HTTPS".

Then read
https://www.torproject.org/docs/faq#KeyManagement

--Roger