Deploying Tor Relays

http://blog.mozilla.org/it/2015/01/28/deploying-tor-relays/

by leo2urlevan • 11 years ago

541 89 11 years ago

blog.mozilla.org

Neat.

Obviously apples and oranges, but between this and Facebook's Tor Hidden Service we're starting to see adoption of real privacy tools among major companies.

yclept3• 11 years ago

facebook
privacy

dangerlibrary3• 11 years ago

I don't think that Facebook has responded to many demands for data from the Syrian/Burmese/Saudi governments. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

nickik• 11 years ago

There is a diffrence between mostly voluntaryly pushing your own data into facebook and wanting to not be detected when organising political rally.

Igglyboo• 11 years ago

I hope they are going to be deploying exit nodes as well. It's not very safe to run an exit node but I doubt the FBI will be raiding Mozilla and other big companies for them if this practice continues.

frozenport2• 11 years ago

Its much easier to raid a big company because they have a clear physical prescence and a strong interest to focus on their core buisness. For example, some people in the company may defend their tor node, but managers will look to the interests of the company as a whole, concluding that the loss of dozens of jobs is not worth risking over something that is not a core competancy.

AnthonyMouse4• 11 years ago

It seems like you're arguing from a pure realpolitik perspective. The FBI is going to raid your Tor node because they know it will make your boss unhappy.

Even under that assumption, what is the FBI's motivation for doing this supposed to be? They can obviously only do this for Tor nodes within their jurisdiction, but that's where they want them to be because it's easier to capture their traffic. It's not like exit node operators have any actual connection to the crimes the government may be investigating. The main thrust of the other Tor article on the front page[1] is that the primary source of criminality on Tor is hidden services that don't use exit nodes.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8959621

chisleu• 11 years ago

It is plenty safe to run exit nodes. If your host complains, there is even form letters to send. The government knows that seizing an exit node will not help them in anyway (one can go online immediately.)

Do you think Amazon gets raided? Do you know how many exit nodes are in AWS? My guess is lots because I know 2 people who have them and I don't know a lot of people.

dingaling• 11 years ago

It is plenty safe to run exit nodes

... in someone else's data center.

Never, ever in your own home. If you are raided ALL your computers and ancillaries will be seized.

Shank• 11 years ago

AWS specifically says "no" to hosting exit relays. In fact, here's a large list of ISPs and their policies: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/doc/GoodBadISP...

It's also worth noting that there are a large set of tips and guidelines to follow for exit relay operators: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki//doc/TorExitGu...

motoboi• 11 years ago

Do you think Amazon gets raided?

Did you hear of Lavabit?

Do you know they can force Amazon to handle access to all your running instances and you simple will never be informed?

pmalynin• 11 years ago

Ummm, yes. Amazon just got raided yesterday: http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-31000904

JohnTHaller2• 11 years ago

No way. In the US, at least, you're liable for the illegal traffic you route onto the internet as an individual.

linuxguy22• 11 years ago

Has that ever been proven? I suspect it's as unproven as the theory that Tor operators are "common carriers" and as liable for the traffic that passes over their connection as an ISP is for the traffic that passes over its connections.

handsomeransoms• 11 years ago

Part of the problem of running an exit node is that it's unclear how "safe" it actually is, and as a result there is a lot of rumor and paranoia. Every country has different laws that affect the legal status of an exit node operator.

For example, an Austrian man was arrested in 2011 for running an exit node and charged with being an accomplice to crimes that were carried out over Tor using his exit node. He was ultimately found not guilty, but a law was passed as a result that effectively makes it illegal to run a Tor exit in Austria. [0]

Meanwhile, in the US no one has ever been arrested simply for running a Tor exit node (at least to my knowledge). Anecdotal information suggests that the most difficult thing is finding someone to host the node (many cloud VPS providers, for example, will not) if you don't host it yourself. A Reddit commentator and operator of Tor exits suggests that running Tor exits is protected under U.S. law, although I'm not sure if this has been tested in court [1].

I think Mozilla should take the (relatively small, due to their presence in the U.S.) risk of running Tor exit nodes. They could even turn it into a project of its own, to explore the common problems and develop some best practices for running Tor exits. I could imagine this being a fruitful collaboration with the EFF, for example!

[0] https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140701/18013327753/tor-n... [1] http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/20243q/iaman_operator_...

rhinoceraptor• 11 years ago

What would be great is if a foundation came along that offered people a way to sponsor a Tor node without having to own or operate it themselves.

gcb03• 11 years ago

tor exit is effectively a proxy. nobody should run an open proxy. that's just common sense.

on the other hand it may be a good feature if implemented correctly. for example, sites explicitly saying they allow tor exit connections would be a good start.

pfg• 11 years ago

Actually, as for the case in Austria, he was found guilty as an accomplice for distributing child porn (which was carried out on his exit node.)

holri• 11 years ago

The case is Austria was complicated because the court found chat protocols from him:

„You can host 20 TB child porn with us on some encrypted hdds“

The judge argues that this is more than just providing infrastructure, it is advertising illegal content / behavior. So this case is not representative for evaluating the risk of running a tor exit node.

http://futurezone.at/netzpolitik/strafe-fuer-tor-betreiber-g...

cyphunk• 11 years ago

Why isn't the EFF already running an exit node to confront the legal ambiguity issue?

folta• 11 years ago

Missing an L in "Mozilla" in the title - "Mozila deploying tor relays"

leo2urlevan• 11 years ago

Thanks, fixed.

thecatspaw• 11 years ago

Im not sure if mozilla should get into such a political field.

fwn• 11 years ago

Funny. I always thought it is only politicians who think that this field is political.

tosseraccount• 11 years ago

Prop 8? NSA ? Patents?

Can't be avoided these days.

vertex-four• 11 years ago

Mozilla is a political organisation. Aside from the fact that developing free, privacy-focused software is an inherently political thing to do, they have the Mozilla Manifesto[0], which states (the relevant bits here being singled out):

The Internet is a global public resource that must remain open and accessible.
Individuals’ security and privacy on the Internet are fundamental and must not be treated as optional.
We will [...] use the Mozilla assets (intellectual property such as copyrights and trademarks, infrastructure, funds, and reputation) to keep the Internet an open platform [and] promote the Mozilla Manifesto principles in public discourse and within the Internet industry.

[0] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/details/

rmc2• 11 years ago

Mozilla and free software / "the open web" has always been political.

mbrubeck2• 11 years ago

The Mozilla Foundation regularly leads or joins in political action relevant to its mission. For example we campaigned against SOPA/PIPA and CISPA [1], submitted a Net Neutrality proposal to the U.S. FCC [2], and have testified multiple times to the Librarian of Congress and elsewhere in favor of DMCA exemptions and DMCA reform [3].

[1] https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2012/01/17/mozilla-to-join-tom...

[2] http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/05/mozilla-offers-fc...

[3] http://www.cnet.com/news/growing-pressure-in-congress-to-fix...

jstalin• 11 years ago

Can we donate to support this specific initiative?

dublinben3• 11 years ago

Donate to the Tor Project. They currently rely on mostly government grants for funding their important work.

TorServers.net has also been mentioned already.

droopyEyelids• 11 years ago

They better tell their employees not to buy any drugs or use TOR for illegal stuff, because now they'll be representing the whole TOR project and The Free Web.

So it's like, they don't just represent themselves anymore, and an arrest will be a political tool to smash everything into corporate/government control.

mbrubeck2• 11 years ago

Any government agency that wants to trash-talk Tor is already doing so, and already has plenty of ammo for the propaganda machine. They're not going to wait for some Mozilla employee to download a movie torrent, especially since that wouldn't actually change anything.

middleclick• 11 years ago

What does the word "illegal" encompass here?

justcommenting• 11 years ago

bandwidth & other info on mozilla's relays: https://atlas.torproject.org/#search/mozilla

kudos to mozilla for getting involved!

mirimir5• 11 years ago

This is, of course, great news.

However, it's my impression that there is a surplus of entry and middle nodes, and a serious shortage of exit nodes, especially fast ones. Also, I've read that the geographic diversity of exit nodes is inadequate. I base these comments on discussions on the tor-talk and tor-relays lists, and from posts on the Tor Project blog.

sp3322• 11 years ago

Would it help if an ISP ran a couple of exit nodes plugged into core routers?

AnthonyMouse4• 11 years ago

It's actually better if 1000 different people each run a 40Mbps exit node than if one ISP runs a single 40Gbps one. You don't want to centralize control over the exit nodes because it increases the chance that party could control every node in a circuit.

cottonseed2• 11 years ago

This is awesome.

If you have a VPS spare bandwidth, I encourage you to set up a relay, too. It is very easy to do and a great way to contribute to the Tor project.

Is Mozilla planning to set up a hidden service for mozilla.org? I didn't see anything mentioned. The more sites that support hidden services, the less need for exit nodes (which are arguably one of the least secure parts of Tor.)

driverdan2• 11 years ago

If you have a VPS spare bandwidth, I encourage you to set up a relay, too. It is very easy to do and a great way to contribute to the Tor project.

I run three relays right now. I agree that it's pretty easy to setup, especially on Ubuntu, but the documentation could really use improvement. It makes it sound much harder to setup than it actually is.

To anyone who is thinking of running a relay, here are the basic steps:

1. Add the Tor repo to your package manager [1]

2. Install Tor

3. Edit the config file to set a name, your contact info, bandwidth limit, and exit policy. This is all pretty well documented in the config file.

4. Start Tor (eg `sudo service tor start`)

If you want to run an exit node you should read the Tor docs about the topic and decide which ports to open.[2][3]

1: https://www.torproject.org/download/download-unix.html.en

2: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki//doc/TorExitGu...

3: https://blog.torproject.org/blog/tips-running-exit-node-mini...

blacksmith_tb• 11 years ago

I see also that there are some tor relay Docker containers out there, e.g. https://github.com/vpetersson/docker-torrelay

I also quite like Tor Arm if you are running a relay, for an nice eye-candy dashboard: https://www.torproject.org/projects/arm.html.en

mirimir5• 11 years ago

It's good practice to discuss plans with your hosting provider, so that you and they both know what to expect. Stealth doesn't cut it, especially if there's real money at risk.

Also, keep in mind that relay IPs, and perhaps even subnets, may show up on various blacklists. Other services (perhaps those of other hosting customers) may be affected.

javaun3• 11 years ago

We haven't made a decision on either running a hidden service or exits. We do plan to come back and do the analysis and legal review, however we don't have a timeline for this yet. Right now, we're just wading in and will see what we learn.

cottonseed2• 11 years ago

Thanks for the reply!

ecaron• 11 years ago

We chose to make use of our spare and decommissioned hardware. That included a pair of Juniper EX4200 switches and three HP SL170zG6 (48GB ram, 2Xeon L5640, 21Gbps NIC)

In other words, Mozilla has enough money that a 48GB ram machine is otherwise a paperweight...

Implicated• 11 years ago

Silicon Valley problems

gcb03• 11 years ago

i think in most countries the pipe is always more expensive than the server

IgorPartola• 11 years ago

Well, if they were in any way savvy (which I believe they are), they would sell a machine like that or donate it to another project. In this instance, I imagine, instead of selling/donating they repurposed.

evilpie• 11 years ago

For instance a while back Mozilla was giving away old Mac minis: http://armenzg.blogspot.de/2014/05/do-you-need-used-mac-mini...

dublinben3• 11 years ago

That's a five year old server. That's worthlessly depreciated in just about any organization.

DanBC• 11 years ago

Are there tax advantages of donating old equipment to certain good causes?

It seems easier than the alternative of selling the hardware on ebay.

ascorbic• 11 years ago

Yes there is in most jurisdictions. The company can write off the value of the hardware against their taxable profits. However the Mozilla Foundation is a non-profit, so I'm not sure that applies.

politician• 11 years ago

This reads like a progress report from a temporary experiment rather than an announcement of a supported capability. I wouldn't get too excited.

ryanthejuggler• 11 years ago

Is Tor broken? I've heard that its anonymity was proven to be broken, but I'm not sure how reliable my source was. I'm interested in getting involved but hesitant to do so until I have some solid info one way or the other.

d23• 11 years ago

There's something like 2k-8k exit nodes, and all that is needed to compromise it is 51% of those. Given that the CIA started tor and the government has significant interest in breaking it, I would find it harder to believe that they didn't have a few thousand computers lying around.

Also all of this is from memory, but I hope none of it is wrong. Feel free to correct me if so.

Deploying Tor Relays

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