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IP address on public network
Renegade:
Actually, I think that the more traffic there is on TOR, the better it is. More nodes means higher reliability and faster, while more traffic means more noise to obscure your signal. So no matter what people are using it for, the fact that they are using it makes it better.
Or do you mean that ISPs might decide to murder the baby when they throw out the bath water by banning TOR traffic altogether and blame it on file sharing?
Xenonym:
Actually, I think that the more traffic there is on TOR, the better it is. More nodes means higher reliability and faster, while more traffic means more noise to obscure your signal. So no matter what people are using it for, the fact that they are using it makes it better.
Or do you mean that ISPs might decide to murder the baby when they throw out the bath water by banning TOR traffic altogether and blame it on file sharing?
-Renegade (June 16, 2010, 12:51 AM)
--- End quote ---
No, the problem is that Tor relies on its users to route traffic through the network, and if you use BitTorrent over it, you inevitably hog everyone's bandwidth and make things slower for everyone. Also, I think that ISPs can't actually ban Tor because it uses encryption, and also because it does not really have a predictable traffic pattern (unlike BitTorrent).
Renegade:
Has there been some update in the last while? I remember reading an article about people using TOR with no encryption and passwords getting lifted. Some government office or embassy was particularly hard hit. I think that was a while back though. Sigh... guess I need to keep up to date more.
40hz:
^Xenonym beat me to it! ;D
But yes. Congestion issues caused by the use of certain protocols remains a problem for TOR regardless of any future capacity increases on it's network. If you have people using "high demand" apps behind TOR, it will contribute to slowing everybody down. And according to TOR's creators, simply adding more nodes and relays won't solve that problem.
Besides, the folks who brought us TOR have very politely asked us not to use torrents in conjunction with their network. Maybe I'm a little old fashioned, but (to me at least) common courtesy dictates this alone should be reason enough not to.
8)
steeladept:
Am I wrong here or is everyone missing the one point that can't be worked around. While the download may not be determined due to encryption, and the source may not be trackable due to anonymizers, to make the connection in the first place, the router assigns (albit temporarily in the case of DHCP) the IP address to a MAC address. This guarantees that the routing goes to the right place (assuming the IP address doesn't point to more than one address, but that is another issue that shows immediately to at least one person with that address). Therefore, with even the most basic logging, all sources, even wireless, has access to the MAC address of that interface.
THEORETICAL DISCUSSION POINT HERE - MAY OR MAY NOT BE FEASIBLE IN REALITY!
Once you have the MAC address, you can then follow MAC address connections and if you use wireless in your house regularly, you can determine where that MAC address connects most of the time. Even if not, you can narrow it to a specific location and frequent any location that seems to show a regular connection to the hotspot. Once you see that connection made, you found the person.
/THEORY
Is this time consuming - absolutely. Will it happen? Probably not. Is it possible in reality? This I do not know, as you would essentially have to gain access to each hotspot and search the history to track the MAC Address. This would require a HUGE amount of resources and probably a ton of cooperation that may or may not be available. Would someone attempt this for an illegal torrent, doubt it. For National Security, Weapons trafficking, or espionage? Not so doubtful. The real question here is can it happen vs. how likely is it to happen.
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