I ask because I have 5-6 Raspberry Pis, a couple retired Supermicro boxes, and old Cisco gear that isn't doing much...
Well, I've only linked to communities listed by the Tor Project itself.
Otherwise, the same way you would check whether HN or your local tea store is the NSA. You do your own research, run your own risk analysis, and if you want to stay sane, by default you give people the benefit of the doubt.
Generally, it's best not to run Tor relays from home as services will start to blacklist your IP as a proxy.
If you are going to be an exit node, then you should inform yourself about he legal challenges you might face, since you don't know what people will access with your IP address.
https://blog.torproject.org/tips-running-exit-node
https://www.eff.org/torchallenge/faq.html
Being an entry or middle-level node is less of a problem but some uncertainties remain, so this depends on your local laws.
I actually tend to assume websites like HN are the NSA or at least the NSA have read access to their databases. Maybe it's my tinfoil hat tendencies but instead of giving them the benefit of the doubt I would rather not give them any data I don't mind the NSA having.
> Everyone has read access to HN
No, not to their databases as OP is discussing. It would be definitely a crime if any of us had that info as it would imply we broke in and stole it - but OP is suggesting that they assume NSA already has it (a potentially paranoid but also reasonably fair thing to do, IMO).
From a personnel standpoint, isn't Thiel on the board of HN/YC and doesn't Thiel have basically uncountable NSA/CIA/etc connections? I'm not saying Thiel has anything to do with HN's security - but clearly, saying HN's databases might be accessed by someone like CIA (while a board member of YC is active in sales & partnerships to CIA etc) isn't that crazy.
He is not.
None of us know how many points your comment has, or if you have an email address on file, or how many times you visited HN today, or what IP you're using, etc. But all of those things are in the HN database(s) I'm sure!
I'll go out on a limb and predict that my HN internet points score is not a signal of interest to NSA selection criteria.
Social voting data is a rather sizable and useful dataset for surveillance agencies. HN has a high concentration of current-high-impact and future-high-impact individuals and is therefore a reasonably interesting trove of information.
I realize all this is indeed tinfoil-hat-ish stuff. But I'd be shocked in NSA/CIA/FBI etc was disinterested in online social voting habits of users.
Also, you latched on to a single example I gave. HN may have your email address privately (if you gave it to them) and they also have your IP/access logs. This is all stuff that they save but is not publicly available information.
I'm sure there's more as well. It's not just "internet points" and reducing the discussion down to simply dismissing a single one of my thoughts isn't going to get us anywhere.
But you can't calculate the 'score' without knowing who those people are, when they voted, and what else they voted on too. The score is a summary generated from lots of information. It's not just some number that carries no value.
I'm pretty certain there's nothing the NSA doesn't already have. See the Swowden gifts on MUSCULAR[1] the better-known PRISM[2], and XKEYSCORE[3]. There are other relevant programs, but I don't have my notes on that stuff with me at the moment.
Anyway, I won't argue about how much the NSA values internet scores. Let's just say I can imagine a targeted extortion campaign against a specific individual using such inputs, but I can't see how the Great Hoover would use them as any sort of actionable signal.
[1] http://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/page/world/how-the-nsas-mus...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_%28surveillance_program%...
(And if you don't, APTs, will assign one to you....)
Being a Tor relay you participate in a public proxy network, so you automatically run risk that someone will harvest your IP address for whatever reason, e.g., lists for companies trying to prevent browsing via tor, etc.
No communication channel can be guaranteed to be 100% secure in the broad sense, i.e. even One-Time Pads can be stolen, recipients of messages can be watched to see what they’re up to, etc.
Users of Tor should assume that the whole channel (not just the Tor part) can be compromised by a willing and capable adversary, and take additional precautions if they feel it’s necessary, e.g. “tradecraft” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tradecraft
Conversely, if you're engaging in illegal online behavior from your home IP, intermittently running a TOR exit node could be a useful mechanism for creating plausible deniability.
I think this also specifically refers to exit nodes, no ? Running an intermediate relay should be fine as you'll only be shuffling encrypted tor traffic to other relays.
As for exits, you'll be dealing with abuse reports from countless parties, including the off-chance that someone sends a death threat through your exit and you have may to fend off law-enforcement that still hasn't gotten the memo on Tor. In countries, like the US where any police encounter might turn deadly, I'd highly advise against running exits at home.
As a Tor exit operator, I can in fact honestly tell you not to run exits on production business networks, or basically anywhere where you're not prepared to be a recipient of a lot of unwanted attention.
It's also worth setting up a Tor relay to use a different external ip address. Because VPN/Procy whitelists employed by dumb web firewall products will temporarily blacklist all publically listed Tor relay IPs.
Here's a typical residential setup: ISP-provided broadband modem in bridged mode + some sensible home router with security patches you should be using anyway and the Tor relay server connected to the modem with a non-managed switch (if needed).
Please note that Bridges give help directly to individuals who can't access Tor, due to blockage in their home country. They don't use a lot of bandwidth and aren't listed publicly, so bad actors on the firewall market won't block them.
So, if you only have one IP address available and you want to do the internet at large a huge solid, just run a Bridge.
For anyone interested in running Tor relays, here's an intro to why your new box won't use all available bandwidth for a while https://blog.torproject.org/lifecycle-new-relay
In practice, though, TOR is more convenient for such things because a resource's name (the onion address) doesn't change when the content does. This difference makes it rather unlikely that you're going to find the lets-make-an-illegal-deal crowd gathering around BitTorrent.
But legally, and from the ISP's perspective, seeding a torrent with incriminating content is no different than running a TOR exit node that happens to be trafficking that content--it's just that since they attract different crowds, one is more likely to attract the wrong kind of attention than the other.
Also, you get to choose what you seed on BitTorrent, but when you run an exit node, you don't. So you're unlikely to even know what kind of incriminating content is going through your internet connection.
When I was hosting a exit node I was getting over 50GB/day
Also the "limiting bandwidth" section here: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/TorRelayGuide#...
The (non CIA ) people who use it primarily act as traffic in order to improve the security for operatives . Your Mileage May very
You shouldn't run exit nodes from a home connection due to possible abuse. If a person uses it to do something illegal you may end up with law enforcement busting down your door. Relays are safe though.
Is this not the case, or is it not a black/white answer?
Tor's anonymity depends on distributed control of its nodes. If one entity, say a government org, controls a large portion of entry and exit nodes it may be able to trace some requests. That's an attack that has been known since the beginning though, it's not new.
Tor is just a proxy. A fancy proxy that uses onion routing, but a proxy nonetheless. Think of it as a CDN that does not have to hand over customer details because they have plausible deniability about who you are. Unlike commercial CDN's however, Tor does not try to prevent hacking. That exercise is left to the people running the servers that Tor is routing to. As it turns out, some criminals may be lazy or inept.
Citation please? Last I checked people get charged with things they didn't do, or weren't responsible for, in just about every system of justice - that's why we have courts.
This leads to the other issue of your service being cut...