Deploying Tor Relays | Hacker News Reader

Deploying Tor Relays

blog.mozilla.org

541 pointsleo2urlevan89 comments

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.

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.

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

Indeed, but this perspective comes from the large number of people that make up an enterprise and the interwoven net of responsibility. One person can choose to fight for liberty and risk ruin, but its much harder to justify risking the other hundred people in your company.

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.

> 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.

I've ran an exit node in my home for several years and the worst I've seen as a result of it is several DMCA notices and one polite call from the police in another state.

Even that is too much contact for some people. A sane average person wants as little contact with the legal system and authority types as humanly possible, and for good reason.

Even if so far everyone has that exact worst case experience, that doesn't mean tomorrow you won't be arrested for somebody viewing illegal material through your exit host. I know people who've sold drugs and never had any problem, it doesn't mean I'm going to start doing it presuming its safe based off their anecdotes.

That is very much like saying you shouldn't express your political views because you don't know if tomorrow they'll be made retroactively illegal.

And the criticism of anecdotal evidence is that it may not be a representative sample. So what is the actual percentage of Tor exit node operators who have been incarcerated for it in the US then? Is it not 0%?

you can be raided just the same.

fbi will probably send one agent to pick up the server in the data center, and 20 others will be picking you up at your credit card billing address.

That's why you want to rent your server as anonymously as possible. It's also why most hosting providers don't like anonymous customers. And those that are cool with it often charge more.

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...

>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?

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

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

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.

I'd like to suggest

https://www.torproject.org/eff/tor-legal-faq.html.en

which was written by my colleagues at EFF. (It doesn't mention particular legal theories that may help exit node operators, though I think CDA §230 and DMCA §512 might be among the laws you're thinking of that have historically protected ISPs, since ISPs have resisted being classified as common carriers in the U.S.)

Thanks schoen! This EFF document was invaluable to Mozilla's legal team and helped us get this project to approval in record time.

At the very least, you can get your computer and networking equipment seized. Tor's own FAQ says you shouldn't run exit nodes at home:

"Should I run an exit relay from my home?

No. If law enforcement becomes interested in traffic from your exit relay, it's possible that officers will seize your computer. For that reason, it's best not to run your exit relay in your home or using your home Internet connection."

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_...

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.

There already is: https://www.torservers.net/

I work at Mozilla, and the folks at Torservers.net were extremely helpful in helping us get up to speed quickly. We're hoping to contribute to the public body of knowledge on how to operate servers efficiently, both in terms of effort and cost.

Great, documentation and design contributions from Mozilla would be as valuable as running nodes. That is something they do well.

IANAL, but would this just require someone incorporating or starting an LLC and then paying for the exit nodes in the name of that entity? Would that be sufficient protection?

Also not a lawyer, but you can still be charged criminally in the USA:

"Charging a corporation, however, does not mean that individual directors, officers, employees, or shareholders should not also be charged. Prosecution of a corporation is not a substitute for the prosecution of criminally culpable individuals within or without the corporation"

from http://www.justice.gov/criminal/fraud/documents/reports/1999...

"sole proprietor" LLCs don't have as limited liability as one may hope. you need more people to shift the blame around.

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.

Tor is effectively an open proxy (or set of them).

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.)

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...

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

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.)

> 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...

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

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.

> keep in mind that relay IPs, and perhaps even subnets, may show up on various blacklists

Have you got an example of that? I know a few relays intimately and I've never seen this.

Numerous sites pull down lists of exits daily/hourly/$xly and retroactively block them, although I've never heard of a subnet being blocked.

I recall seeing this on tor-talk or tor-relays within the past year or so. Someone started running an exit, and their hosting provider nuked their account, claiming that other customers were being affected by bans. I'll see if I can find it.

Edit: Here's one example, posted by Zack Weinberg on the tor-relays list.[0]

    CMU network operations has decided to move the Tor exit node that my
    group operates (tor-exit.cylab.cmu.edu) to an isolated subnet in order
    to minimize consequences for the rest of the campus network. For
    instance, apparently there have been several cases where third parties
    blacklisted the entire CMU IP space in response to malicious traffic
    from the exit node.  This is currently scheduled to happen Tuesday (Nov.
    4). The new IP address will be 204.194.29.4.

[0] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-relays/2014-Novem...

Note that a tor exit node is quite different from a relay.

It is quite expected if you run an exit node. However this was in regard to a relay node, which is something else entirely.

I've seen a few references to these supposed problems with running a relay nodes lately, but the poster never replies with any information where this have actually happened. This behaviour is new. It wouldn't surprise me if it's coordinated, considering what else we've seen lately.

It happened to me when I ran a tor relay (not an exit) on the same ip as a mailserver. There is one rbl that automatically adds you if you do this. Mind you, I've never found a mailprovider using this list (can't remember the name).

Can you see if you can find the RBL in question? Since there are a _lot_ of relays around the world, surely someone else must have noticed?

This primarily applies to exits, not relays. Relays only work within the Tor network and never know exactly what they're relaying.

Some sites don't bother distinguishing between relays and exits. They just block non-Tor access from all Tor node IPs.

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.

Thanks for the reply!

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

Thanks, fixed.

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.

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

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.

If they're only running exit nodes, they're not going to control every node in a circuit.

If you know which nodes they control you can easily avoid using them in the same circuit. But how are you supposed to know that? There is a configuration option to list other nodes you operate for exactly this purpose, but someone staging an attack is obviously not going to use it.

Can we donate to support this specific initiative?

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

TorServers.net has also been mentioned already.

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

kudos to mozilla for getting involved!

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.

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.

> 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...

Silicon Valley problems

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

> facebook

> privacy

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.

Probably not from any foreign countries but I would bet 110% that they are an open book to the US government.

A problem that is not exclusive to Facebook. In fact, all U.S. companies are open books to U.S. Government employees wielding the right documents.

My point was that a Tor Hidden Service provides anonymity to users in countries whose _links_ to Facebook's servers are policed.

Tor also provides censorship-resistance, through bridges. It is one of the only consistent ways to access the open internet from Iran or China.

How about the United States / China / Russia / Great Britain?

Oh they're on the right side, so it's OK /s

According to their report, they haven't received any data requests from Saudi Arabia, Syria or Burma, but they did hand over data to the governments of 57 countries in the first half of 2014 alone [1].

It appears content was also censored at the request of the Saudi government.

[1] https://govtrequests.facebook.com/

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

A great deal of the data Facebook has must be derived outside of things you have posted yourself. They build and hold a lot of data you do not explicitly consent to share.

Facebook really wants your activity to be based on your real identity, and making associations between you and other people.

Facebook shouldn't be used as a tool for organizing political rallies if there is concern for privacy. Connecting to FB via Tor does not isolate you from much.

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

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

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

Prop 8? NSA ? Patents?

Can't be avoided these days.

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/

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

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...

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.

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.

What does the word "illegal" encompass here?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com