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

[mirimir]

On 09/05/2013 03:05 PM, Robert G wrote:

> Is the fundamental problem that these clients are connecting to TOR without
> the user knowing?

It depends on how you define "user" ;(

If they're bots, computer owners don't know. But the botnet owner does.

> Could there be an initial, one time, human test for for access?  Unique
> tokens could be granted after a CAPTCHA, or something similar, and
> exchanged for initial handshakes between routers and clients.  Of course
> then you'd have the problem of who to trust to sign these "is-human" tokens
> without centralizing.  There could be something similar to a web of trust.
> This would be a huge headache for people that operate a large number of
> routers, but maybe that's also a good thing?

That might help. Doing a few 1e+6 CAPTCHAs would be a pain. But there's
software for that, so you'd need rather difficult CAPTCHAs.

> On Thu, Sep 5, 2013 at 8:22 AM, Anton Nikishaev <me at lelf.lu> wrote:
> 
>> Roger Dingledine <arma at mit.edu> writes:
>>
>>> Anybody know details? It's easy to speculate (Pirate Browser publicity
>>> gone overboard? People finally reading about the NSA thing? Botnet?),
>>> but some good solid facts would sure be useful.
>>
>> Check this out
>>
>>
>> http://blog.fox-it.com/2013/09/05/large-botnet-cause-of-recent-tor-network-overload/
>>
>>
>> --
>> lelf
>>
>>
>>
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