Tor Challenge

https://www.eff.org/torchallenge/

by middleclick • 12 years ago

259 65 12 years ago

tribaal3• 12 years ago

Not a bad idea.

I would however add a little spice to the incentive by having some kind of raffle on top of the t-shirt and sticker, just to get some more traction.

"Run a tor relay for a year, your chance to get a free free laptop!"

I understand many people would enter the raffle just for the laptop, but if they do run their TOR relay for a year to get it, what's the problem?

Of course, it might not be well perceived or even legal in some jurisdictions.

EDIT: This being the EFF, making the winning laptop a Gluglug would make so much sense it hurts. Then you could say "free free" laptop, too :) https://www.fsf.org/news/gluglug-x60-laptop-now-certified-to...

EDIT2: Typoes. Duh!

ISL• 12 years ago

Agreed. To many people, a chance at a substantial prize is worth more than a T-shirt. Those who run exit nodes take tangible risk and provide real value; compensating them is a good thing!

jlgaddis5• 12 years ago

Agreed. I already have a Tor t-shirt and I'd certainly love a Tor sticker (even more so than a laptop or whatever) to put on my already "heavily stickered" work laptop but a bigger incentive might certainly convince some others to fire up a relay.

The FSF is also a "supporter" of this project so the Gluglug X60 would be very fitting as a "grand prize". I first joined both the FSF and the EFF about a decade ago and I would be quite happy to have my membership dollars going towards something like that. Hell, if EFF/FSF/Tor did a fundraiser just for something like this, I would throw in some money specifically earmarked for the purchase of these prizes.

Side note: anyone know where I can get one of those Tor stickers? :-)

jmnicolas• 12 years ago

Back in the days, I used to have a dedicated Freenet box running permanently.

AFAIK I couldn't do this with TOR, my ISP don't allow it.

droope2• 12 years ago

Just don't be an exit node.

jlgaddis5• 12 years ago

You can run a middle relay which won't generate abuse complaints like an exit node would.

nicpottier• 12 years ago

I'm actually mildly interested in doing this, keeping Tor healthy is a worthy goal.

Anybody run the numbers (and are there legal repercussions?) on the cost of running a relay at 1MB/s on AWS for a year?

droope2• 12 years ago

I reckon aws is quite expensive. I'd get a fixed price bandwidth VPS, but I am not sure what hosting to recommend.

jlgaddis5• 12 years ago

Yeah, there are plenty of places cheaper than AWS. From looking into it previously (and following the tor-relays list), it seems that many providers are okay with customers running middle relays (as those don't generate abuse complaints) but frown upon exit nodes (primarily due to the extra workload, AFAICT).

atmosx4• 12 years ago

You don't have legal issues for running relays. Traffic is encrypted so can't be analyzed and since you're not an exit node there's no risk of performing illegal actions with your IP address.

nammi• 12 years ago

The Tor Project has a dedicated page for setting up relays on EC2 instances:

The Tor Cloud images have been configured to use no more than 40 GB of bandwidth out per month. We have estimated that customers who do not qualify for the free usage tier will pay up to $20 a month for an instance located in us-east-1 (Virginia).
Customers who qualify for the free usage tier, but who run bridges that use more than 15 GB of bandwidth out per month, will pay up to $3 per month for an instance located in us-east-1 (Virginia).

https://cloud.torproject.org/

chatmasta2• 12 years ago

I'm working on research for monetizing Tor relays, providing an incentive to relay operators. It's called TorCoin. We introduce an alternative cryptocurrency, like Bitcoin, to reward relay operators for transferring bandwidth. Rather than being CPU intensive, it's bandwidth intensive -- so one TorCoin represents a certain amount of bandwidth transferred.

We will be presenting our research at the HotPETS privacy workshop in Amsterdam in July [1]. Here's a link to the paper if you're interested (I'm Miles). [2] Keep in mind it's an early draft.

[1] http://petsymposium.org/2014/hotpets.php

[2] https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B7r4osQgWVqKTHdxTlowUVpsVmJR...

My email is in the paper, but it's miles.richardson@yale.edu

tribaal3• 12 years ago

That is not a bad idea either... but:

This will be a challenge: the number of people willing and able to run TOR relays is quite small, and the subcategory of those interested in a (new) cryptocurrency is even smaller.

Reaching critical mass for the currency to be interesting is going to be hard.

kylebrown2• 12 years ago

I think you are underestimating the size of the market. Seems like there's demand for every flavor of alt-coin: gimmickyCoin, mediocreCoin, memeCoin, yetAnotherCoin, every single one gets 15 minutes or more.

Try looking at it from the miners' perspective. The pitch isn't "buy our coin, and use this guide to help yourself install the dependencies needed to run our beta software." Instead, its "get paid coins, all you have to do is leave the relayCoin bandwidth-miner running while you sleep."

In the future, proof-of-bandwidth / proof-of-relay "coin" incentives on next-gen layer 3 protocols will bootstrap the transition to a global, p2p wireless mesh network (wireless at the edges and sparse areas, the big pipes and backhauls will still be fiber). It will look something like "leave this wifiMeshCoin nodeBox attached to your cable modem. It will open an unlocked wifi hotspot for anyone nearby. some people will get free access through a metered guest connection, and you might earn a little coin. But if you get lucky and your nodeBox can form a bridge connection to somebody else's nodeBox at a different ISP, that bridge relay will earn a lot of coin. Another option is to invest $2k to get a 4G/5G cellular micro-tower from NextGen Labs, one of those could earn you $500/mo in relayPower if there are enough unlocked CDMA phones in your area. You can resell the unlocked phones as well."

hackety• 12 years ago

That's such a good idea.

Tor really needs some more relays. With this it could be more interesting to companies as a business model.

One thing I could be worried about is abuse - could a scriptkiddie deploy a botnet and earn TorCoins with this, like it's done with bitcoin miners (although not that effective any more).

jlgaddis5• 12 years ago

Quite interesting but I immediately wondered about something. I intend to fully read it later today but so far I have only skimmed over paper so I apologize if my question is answered there. I imagine others here will wonder the same thing, though.

With Bitcoin and others, we've seen malware created that turns compromised PCs and devices (routers, DVRs, etc.) into "zombie miners". If this becomes popular, I can certainly envision malware that instead turns these compromised devices into "zombie relays" in an attempt to benefit $hacker. Have you considered this (I'm sure you probably thought about it at some point) and/or do you have any ideas of ways to discourage (or punish) that behavior?

I am all about having more Tor relays out there but, well, legitimate ones.

belorn• 12 years ago

Vulnerable computer that can be turned in cash is always going to get broken into. Once broken into, the device becomes a zombie miner, zombie spammer, zombie advertiser, zombie scammer, zombie overseer, or some unique form of zombieism.

How important is it to discourage a specific kind of zombie, rather than the infection itself?

wyager2• 12 years ago

How do you protect against people setting up fake nodes that just relay useless data among each other, or claim to do so?

VikingCoder• 12 years ago

I believe the point is when you want to transfer data, you pay for it.

So, transferring data among each other wouldn't get them any coin from outside their own circle...

oceanstone• 12 years ago

Brilliant. Great work EFF!

xwintermutex• 12 years ago

I would like to run a Tor exit-relay, but I am too afraid to do this, as I live in a what used to be liberal western country called "the Netherlands". Where the police sometimes raid Tor exit-relays on purpose, to discourage people from helping Tor [1].

[1] https://blog.torproject.org/blog/trip-report-tor-trainings-d...

vacri• 12 years ago

One of the speakers at Ruxcon last year worked for an enterprise, and mentioned that for fun, he'd spin up a Tor node, then time how long it took for the 'cease and desist' email (not enforceable) to come through. I think he said his best time was 10 minutes.

wcoenen• 12 years ago

"Exit-relay" ? You must mean either "exit node" or "relay node". AFAIK the risk of raids only exists for exit nodes, so you can still run a relay node.

ropiku• 12 years ago

According to https://www.eff.org/torchallenge/what-is-tor.html they call them "middle relays, exit relays, and bridges".

luxpir• 12 years ago

The comments there took a dark turn very quickly. Shame the thread's closed, with no counterpoints offered before doing so.

See also these two independent reports, one written, one an audio recording of a presentation, by a Dutch activist I happened across:

- http://raided4tor.cryto.net/ [text]

- https://archive.org/details/OHM2013-Partyvan [audio]

EDIT: To sum up, the activist advises that activism is not something to be taken lightly, and there is a real cost to being targeted by law enforcement. I know relays are different to exits, but it's not encouraging when you want to assist!

tech-no-logical• 12 years ago

I've been running an exit-node for over 5 years. first on xs4all, now on ziggo. no problems so far... I guess that makes me a target then...

Ihmahr• 12 years ago

Dutch person here. I operate two 10MB exit relays from my home, where I live with my family. Have been doing this for a year now, never had any real problems. My ISP is SurfNet. Also xs4all said today that they would permit exit relays: https://twitter.com/xs4all/statuses/474514247222067200

Also, Dutch police has never actually raided a private domicile where there was an exit relay.

One advantage to running an exit relay from your home is that there is a lot of garbage traffic coming from your address, which I really like because it hides me a little bit more.

na85• 12 years ago

I'm reluctant to jump on this bandwagon as I don't feel that Tor is as secure as they say. There have already been demonstrated attacks against node anonymity and until Tor gets a public audit I'm not sure it's wise to encourage people to use Tor.

As they say, flawed crypto is worse than no crypto at all.

jlgaddis5• 12 years ago

You're right that there have been demonstrated attacks as well as many "theoretical" ones. Interestingly, many of the theoretical attacks become even less theoretical when the number of exit nodes (and, in some cases, even middle relays) goes up. An increased number of end users using the Tor network also decreases the chances of many of them being successful.

Perhaps someone should start a fundraiser for an audit of Tor. I would certainly toss a few dollars into the jar for that myself and I suspect sufficient funds could be raised pretty easily.

cgag• 12 years ago

I've run a non-exit node on my linode for a long time, it's easy and a good way to use the massive amount of leftover bandwidth I have. Everyone with a personal vps should do it.

s_• 12 years ago

One of my linodes have just 1% bandwidth usage. Do you mind sharing your config file.

Spittie2• 12 years ago

Your distro should ship with a sample config file, otherwise you can find one here: https://gitweb.torproject.org/tor.git/blob/HEAD:/src/config/...

Tor has some sane defaults, so you don't need to edit much. I've started running a relay (no exit) node for the challenge, and this is what I'm using:

    ORPort 9001
    Nickname RelayName
    RelayBandwidthRate 6000 KB
    RelayBandwidthBurst 10000 KB
    AccountingMax 500 GB
    AccountingStart month 1 00:00
    ExitPolicy reject *:*

RelayBandWidthRate and Burst control how much bandwidth the tor daemon is allowed to use (average and burst obviously), AccountingMax is how much bandwidth the daemon is allowed to use over a given period, and AccountingStart definite that period (in my config a period is a month, and it start at midnight of the first day).

Also, once you start it, give it an hour or so to appear in the tor swarm. As long as you have "Self-testing indicates your ORPort is reachable from the outside. Excellent. Publishing server descriptor." in your logs, you should be fine and only have to wait.

Sir_Cmpwn• 12 years ago

MediaCrush runs a relay (72302D1D0BB2C2667DC7DC5E4DA138B547D5C115) as of today, and has run a hidden service for a long time: http://mediacrs5ujufxog.onion/

cottonseed2• 12 years ago

I hope they do a hidden services challenge after this. It would decrease pressure on exit nodes and increase security for Tor uses, as watching exit node traffic is one of the primary Tor attack vectors.

perlgeek2• 12 years ago

Ok, here's the deal. I have a VPS where I don't pay for IPv6 traffic. If there was a way to run a tor (non-exit) node that only relays IPv6 traffic, I'd do it immediately.

Last time I looked at the tor documentation (maybe half a year ago?) there seemed to be no way to run an IPv6-only tor node.

Has that changed? Is IPv6 support being worked on?

ChargingWookie2• 12 years ago

As far as I know IPv6 does work. Check out https://people.torproject.org/~linus/ipv6-relay-howto.html

perlgeek2• 12 years ago

That says specifically

There is currently no way of running an IPv6 only relay

which makes it unusable for my application.

basiliothecat• 12 years ago

Nice idea, but doesn't registering your relay in a network made for anonymous communication sound weird? Definitelely does to me.

cottonseed2• 12 years ago

Relays are already registered in the public Tor relay directory. There are two sites to search the directory, Atlas [0] and GLOBE [1]. This is how people know how to connect with them. Tor has unlisted relays, known as bridges, primarily to make it harder to block entry into the Tor network.

The point is not that Tor relays are anonymous, but the traffic going through the Tor network is anonymized by bouncing between relays.

[0] https://atlas.torproject.org/

[1] https://globe.torproject.org/

madaxe_again3• 12 years ago

This strikes me as insanely dangerous? Why would you submit ANY kind of identifying information if you're running a tor relay?

Honeypot. Potentially inadvertent honeypot, but honeypot.

reitanqild• 12 years ago

Running a relay is perfectly legal in many (most?) contries, isn't it?

(AFAIK it was originally deployed by USA as a way to secure their field agents comms. )

madaxe_again3• 12 years ago

Perfectly legal doesn't mean that TLA agencies won't be interested in who's running the nodes.

atmosx4• 12 years ago

Running a relay doesn't mean anything. You're just an extra-node to improve route-mixing and ultimately anonymity. Makes it harder and more expensive for third parties to track back connections.

There's no problem, really. The points you mention arise when you run an 'exit node'.

aendruk• 12 years ago

I don't understand—why would you want to be secretive about running a relay? Especially if you're running an exit relay, I'd expect that you'd be best off doing it in the open so that others can correctly interpret the bizarre traffic they might see.

The challenge FAQ [1] even has two points addressing this:

Is it a good idea to let others know that I'm running an exit relay? Yes. Be as transparent as possible about the fact that you're running an exit relay...
Should I tell my ISP that I'm running an exit relay? Yes. Make sure you have a Tor-friendly ISP that knows you're running an exit relay...

[1] https://www.eff.org/torchallenge/faq.html

madaxe_again3• 12 years ago

why would you want to be secretive about running a relay?

You're varying the "if you've got nothing to hide" argument. You would want to be secretive because spy agencies quite definitely ARE interested in who's running nodes, as if they know who runs the nodes, and where they are, shutting the thing down becomes possible.

This is how they think. Strategic opportunity. Not what they can do with the data today, but what they could use it for tomorrow. What opportunities they might lose if they didn't have it.

This is therefore how you need to think too, and why I think that volunteering this information is a bad idea.

BillFranklin• 12 years ago

EFF at the top of Hacker News? You guys are awesome.

Are you taking part in ResetTheNet? Here's the original thread on the topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7399298

atmosx4• 12 years ago

Hm, this probably does not work if you have 'PublishServerDescriptor 0' in your 'torrc' file.

dandare• 12 years ago

Graphic designer here. I used to run SETI@Home and I would love to contribute by running a Tor relay from my laptop but I have no idea how. The setup process is all but "easy", the project documentation website lists at least 4 download options and if I get it right there is no GUI for OSx. I have downloaded and installed the Browser Bundle but I have no idea where to go from here. If you want more laypersons like me support this good cause you need to make it easier.

zanny• 12 years ago

The config files are really simple - this right here by itself will run you a relay just by running the tor binary:

Nickname whateveryouwant ORPort 9001 BandwidthRate 200 KB BandwidthBurst 500 KB ExitPolicy reject :

Just make sure port 9001 allows TCP traffic in, and is forwarded from whatever world facing device you have.

You can also get the TOR software bundle for Mac: https://www.torproject.org/download/download-easy.html.en#ma...

That includes vidalia, which is a configuration utility that lets you run a relay. It supports UPnP, so you can avoid even needing to port forward with a supported router.

ChargingWookie2• 12 years ago

I saw someone talking about this today in tor-dev. It seems that since laptops/smartphones are not normally helpful as a Tor relay, they've made the instructions difficult on purpose. The consensus seems to be that they only want people with enough knowledge to be able to follow instructions at [0] to host relays.

[0] https://www.torproject.org/docs/tor-relay-debian

RankingMember• 12 years ago

I think many more people would run these if they didn't think their nodes would be used for child pornography and potentially get them into legal trouble as a result.

mcone• 12 years ago

That's only an issue with exit nodes. No one can see the traffic passing through relays, so if you're concerned about this you could run a relay.

wahsd• 12 years ago

I don't think it's quite well understood how important this is. In many places, especially where they are most important, those relays and exit points are not controlled by whom one would expect, let alone a diverse interest group. When you control a certain number of nodes and exits, Tor becomes a pretty open book.

Afforess• 12 years ago

I would if I could, but my home IP would get banned from many of the forums I frequent. I know a lot of forum websites now auto-ban tor exit node IPs.

scott_karana• 12 years ago

Fortunately, this challenge is about relays, not exit nodes. I'm sure that the EFF is well aware of the liability issues running exit nodes. :)

dsl• 12 years ago

Most people don't know the difference. I ran a relay from my home for a while until I started getting blocked from video streaming sites and the websites of things like the Olympics.

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