[tor-talk] Many more Tor users in the past week?

[adrelanos]

mirimir:
> On 09/03/2013 03:35 PM, adrelanos wrote:
> 
>> New hypothesis:
>> This is an attempt to shut down the Tor network once and forever.
>>
>> Might this be an attack on the Tor network with the goal to make it that
>> slow for everyone, that no one will use it anymore? (DDOS)
>>
>> Doing this using a botnet and only taking up a portion of their
>> individual botnet member's bandwidth?
>>
>> If the botnet owner would force their botnet members to use all of their
>> bandwith, the DDOS attack would be more effective in the short run, but
>> the owner of the infected computer might notice it much easier and clean
>> its computer. Using only a negligible part of their botnet member's
>> bandwidth ensures that unwanted connections go unnoticed for a very long
>> time, thus making this not a short successful DDOS attack, but an ever
>> lasting one.
> 
> What are these new presumptive botnet clients doing that degrades Tor
> performance?

Maybe fetching a few clearnet websites or causing other legitimate
looking clearnet traffic over Tor?

> Or?

Or sending some dummy traffic to each other's hidden service address to
cause a little traffic hard to track?