Comment by shii | Hacker News Reader

Comment by shii | Hacker News Reader

I was a big proponent of Tor circa 07-09ish. However, I don't think it's really the best solution out there for those who need/wish-to-have private, anonymous internet usage. There are a number of issues I could list including how slow and unreliable it can be, but the worst by far is the fact that vast majority of the exit nodes are sniffed on or are honeypots to catch dissidents.

There is no way to know who the hell you're tunneling your traffic through, and it's really unsafe. It's much, much more safe to setup your own VPN service on another outside box/server that you personally control and tunnel everything that way.

And yes, don't ever use bittorrent on Tor, not just for the security exploit mentioned here, but the fact that that eats up __alot__ of bandwith and slows things down for everyone, dramatically.

The UofWash project mentioned in the end is a better alternative to straight bittorrent btw, in that there is __trust__ and you know who you're connecting to. Or you could just get an astraweb account, but I digress...

Anonymity is not the same as privacy. Tor is more about anonymity than about privacy.

That exit notes can sniff traffic has been known for a long time. Compromised exit nodes do not compromise anonymity as long as you don't give up personally identifiable information in traffic that gets routed via exit nodes.

More problematic is that compromised exit nodes could inject or run man in the middle attacks on your outbound traffic. These could then make you give up your real IP. This is why you shouldn't run exploitable protocols when exiting via Tor (ie. don't use javascript, flash, etc. if you want to remain anonymous).

If you're engaging in sensitive escapades via Tor to conceal your true identity, shouldn't the intentions and identity of who you're tunneling all your traffic through be one of your top priorities?

How do you know if that node with the pretty flag saying it's in Switzerland isn't logging all IPs, DNS requests, and packet headers straight to another Room 641A?

I just dislike when people suggest things like Tor without having used it themselves and seen the glaring issues and essential deficiencies with the tool.

Especially when there are such better and faster solutions available.

Because of Tor's design there's no need for trust at the exit node. Plus, you hop between exit nodes at 10 minute intervals, giving any one node at best a scrappy picture of your activities. You can also blacklist exit nodes that you consider suspicious.

Even if an exit node's logs are compromised an adversary wouldn't know your identity if you haven't given it up in the compromised traffic.

What better solutions are available? As far as I know Tor is still the most resilient option out there.

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