Hacker News Reader

Comment by guitarbill | Hacker News Reader

> An IP address isn't perfect, but it's far more specific than knowing the perp is an "asian male."

No, it's not - one example the article lists is a Tor exit node.

Statistically, what's the probability that it's a Tor exit node, versus being the IP address the actual perpetrator has had for months?

Seems I remember a previous article estimating 1.5 million Tor exit nodes, but I may be wrong. And in another article from memory, active ip address estimates were in the 100's of billions maybe. My bet is most illicit activity from a perpetrator would go through Tor, but I wonder how many of the police raids are due to people being 'swatted'?

You shouldn't trust your memory...

There's only just under 4.3 Billion IPv4 addresses available. And you can write off a decent chunk of those as being not available for public use.

As of right now there are only 891 listed Tor Exit nodes.[1]

[1]https://www.dan.me.uk/tornodes

When I include 'I may be wrong' in a comment, I'm not trusting my memory.

https://metrics.torproject.org/userstats-relay-country.html

http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2012/06/06/internet-grows-by-tri...

I am indeed guilty of ignoring details when indifferent.

I made this argument in a different comment [0], but often the IP address only points to a router. The router then routes the traffic to devices on an opaque LAN (opaque from the WAN side).

In residential settings, there's a collation that whoever owns the router is likely to own the devices on the LAN - but there are also enough cases where this isn't true. Hotels, universities, cafes. Also, Tor exit nodes or people with compromised Wifi. I'm sure it's possible to come up with more scenarios. As for a statistical probability, no idea. Is 80% or 95% acceptable? I think that's EFF's argument, that there's still enough room for error.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12561381

Reply on news.ycombinator.com