| Website | https://nothingtohide.nl |
| Location | Netherlands |
Thanks to everyone who joined our Tor Operator AMA on Reddit and Mastodon! Your questions helped highlight the challenges and rewards of running Tor relays, but also highlighted the importance of Tor relays for online privacy.
The Tor network thrives on its community of operators. If you're thinking of running a relay, join the operators channel on Matrix/IRC, mailing list, or forums. We're there to help you get started!
#Tor #TorOps #TorRelays #Anonymity #Privacy #Censorship #AskMeAnything
@tok33 @tor_ama
Some links about the widespread selling of netflow data via Team Cymru:
https://www.404media.co/us-counterintel-buys-netflow-data-team-cymru-track-vpns/
https://www.vice.com/en/article/data-brokers-netflow-data-team-cymru/
But there are other parties that collect netflow data at a massive scale to sell it to adversaries as well.
Getting information from the NSA would take too long, according to internal documents from a counterintelligence agency. So it turned to Team Cymru to buy netflow data that can allow analysts to track activity through virtual private networks.
@tok33 @tor_ama
About data center level surveillance:
Yes very much! We assume most big cloud providers and networks log and share their netflow data. Also it's trivial for a VPS or container provider to listen in on or manipulate the traffic, memory, processes, encryption keys and pretty much anything else.
So we tend to be pretty selective as to which datacenters we use. And we only use our own hardware.
@tok33 @tor_ama
About Tor Project's attitude towards removing suspected malicious relays:
The Tor Project imo is fairly proactive when it comes to researching suspected malicious relays. But that being said, I don't think they are able to detect malicious relays all that well. A fine attitude doesn't bring you much when you aren't able to detect many malicious relays.
As long as there are enough "good" operators/relays, many of the adverse effects of malicious relays should be lessened.
@tok33 @tor_ama
About KAX17:
We think it's okay to ban adversaries from the Tor network, if there is enough evidence to support such a claim. In this case (with some great documentation by @nusenu !) it was established KAX17 was a malicious operator on the network.
But to be honest, I wasn't impressed by KAX17's OPSEC. They made many mistakes leading to them being caught. Imo anyone properly educated/motivated/funded could get away with similar practices, while being undetected.
@tok33 @tor_ama
About fan mail:
What is often? We get fan mail by government agencies and judicial authorities about once per week on average. And sometimes we get called or invited for a videoconference by a government agency. But the latter is rare.
Generally most government agencies are fairly understanding, both in the technical and non-technical sense.
Judicial authorities often don't understand anything about anything and can be a pain in the ass.
Bonus question:
I once screwed up the compilation of a critical part of our pretty extensive DNS infrastructure, effectively resulting in 22% of the Tor network's circuits not being able to resolve any domain on the clearnet/internet. I only found out the following morning.
Yeah, I'm not proud at that moment...
My takeaway:
Never make significant changes to your infrastructure closely before going to bed and always test thoroughly!
Great question indeed :).
We actually receive emails thanking us fairly regularly, and those are very much appreciated.
But in the end we don't need thanks to do what we do. We know that what we're doing helps a lot of people in situations where certain freedoms are not a given. And that is motivation enough to keep going :).
Join us today for an Ask Me Anything (AMA) session with experienced large-scale Tor operators!
Whether you're a privacy advocate, a network enthusiast, a developer, or just curious – we want to hear from you :).
Post your questions on Mastodon by using #TorOps or on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/TOR/comments/1la9zgw/tor_operators_ask_me_anything/.
#Tor #TorOps #Privacy #Anonymity #Censorship #InternetFreedom #AskMeAnything #TorRelays
Nothing to hide
Tor Relay Operator AMA
The Tor Project