Tor and HTTPS

I concur with your statement that SSL isn't really secure end-to-end communication when 3rd party certificates are involved.

Also, if your platform supports it, Gmail has perfect forward secrecy meaning that even if the NSA records all HTTPS traffic to gmail and later demands Google's private key they can't decrypt any of that captured traffic.

Tor on the other hand is a problem. It has several fundamental flaws as you pointed out like by controlling some gateway nodes and a few others you can start breaking any sort of secrecy that you would get from Tor. Really the only good thing about Tor is that it's well known. I really wish Tor would just die and people would move over to something better like I2P where it's an anonymous network, not just a kludged together anonymous proxy with hidden services slapped on as an afterthought.

Getting a root's key does not enable them to decrypt the traffic. Getting the server's SSL private key USUALLY means you can retroactively decrypt, but it is possible (though uncommon) for servers to be configured to use ephemeral keys (EDH modes) which provide perfect forward secrecy (that is, the property that the session key can't be recovered even with later compromise of the server's long-term key).

Interesting sidenote: AFAIK there are no widely-supported (TLS 1.1 or below) methods of mitigating the BEAST attack while enabling PFS - those modes are TLS 1.2+ which isn't widely spoken yet.

This is all irrelevant though. The issue is with the tech companies giving them the plaintext data themselves. No amount of transport-layer encryption helps with that.

You have to stop using US services.

I've thought the same. But I've also thought that if this is indeed possible, why does Silk Road still exist? Or does this analysis only apply Tor clients connecting to websites, and not Tor hidden services?

If the NSA was to create tons Tor nodes (enter, exit, and relay), the onion may be broken.

Tor is by no means perfect. It is only obfuscating.

It is easy to see how this is broken if you click the TOR button on this thing and then imagine the TOR nodes say NSA on them.

I think it is more fun to imagine security this way (extremely challenging and like you are protecting yourself from the perfect attacker, and the NSA is a good face to put on the perfect attacker). People don't realize how much trust they are putting in their hosting provider, cell carrier, etc.etc. It's insane.

Running an exit node may be a different story. You could get false DMCA takedown notices or get charged with someone else's crime. Think of it this way; you're running an open proxy. Uses of Tor can send any traffic through your connection. That being said, some ISPs are ok with it, others won't tolerate it.

I suggest you checkout https://blog.torproject.org/running-exit-node if your really serious about running an exit node.

(IANAL, may not be legal in all countries)

In terms of trust, your mileage may vary.

In someone else's country, maybe not.

FYI: there's https://pay.reddit.com/ but it doesn't work with HTTP Everywhere because its on a different domain.

It makes imho no sense to authenticate using Tor.

If you use Tor to connect to your VPN-provider, you can hide your location from your VPN-provider.

Since your VPN-provider may have payment information from your creditcard it makes no sense to use a VPN and Tor together, its just a cascade.

And the illustration should add that both the NSA eavesdropper(s) would get that information actually. Since data is shared.

remember - what the nsa wants is both your location and the site. your location alone only means that you were using the internet (and tor, which itself might be regarded a suspicious). the site alone only means someone was using the site. what the NSA have to do is connect those.

so everything depends on whether the two NSA people can "join up the dots" (graphically, in that diagram, the dark blue dots joining them). because there's nothing "obvious" that tells them that the message with the location is connected to the message with the site.

if they can't make that connection, then they don't know anything useful.

but if they can make that connection, then they know that you (well, someone at your location - an open wifi might give you a little deniability, for example) looked at that site.

the way they might be able to do it is by comparing traffic patterns. if they can show, for example, that every time you send a request, the site receives a request, and if that happens again and again, so reliably that it cannot be chance, then they can make the connection.

so it depends on things like the frequency with which you look at the site, the amount of (tor) traffic when you are around, and the ability of the NSA to assemble and correlate large amounts of data.

[disclaimer: not an expert; i don't know the current state of play on how bad a problem this is; i just know it's a known issue. and if i were going up against the nsa, i wouldn't trust tor alone - i'd use an anonymous, disposable, portable connection device, and keep data to an absolute minimum.]

That way you would obfuscate your endpoint against your vpn endpoint/provider.

It would add no further benefit to location obfuscation with Tor, since your VPN-provider will always snitch on you when opposed with lethal force.

Addendum for achievement: Connect to Tor from a public accessible network/wifi that is free from surveillance using a pristine installation and never use that network-device again.

Addendum 2: If you use the network device twice, you may achieve only pseudonymity.