Tor (anonymity network)

The following thread has been supported by users on the thread Pirate Bay Release Regarding SOPA and is a direct response to the illegal take-over and shutdown of Megaupload by the U.S. Justice Department on 19 January 2012.

It is important to disclaim immediately that copyright infringement is an entirely different subject matter than Internet users' anonymity; this thread in no way encourages post replies with an agenda aimed at copyright infringement, stealing by or from Hollywood, or the network television/pay-cable industries.

Anonymity Online

Tor is free software for your computer, recommended bundled with its own browser rather than formatting your own, which conceals you, the user, from being monitored and physically located while using the Internet. The Tor network is a series of relays run by volunteers who distribute your communications and transactions throughout the network at random. Any person/corporation monitoring your Internet connection cannot link you to your true destination, nor follow you from site A to site B.

Tor (short for The onion router) is a system intended to enable online anonymity. Tor client software routes Internet traffic through a worldwide volunteer network of servers in order to conceal a user's location or usage from anyone conducting network surveillance or traffic analysis. Using Tor makes it more difficult to trace Internet activity...and is intended to protect users' personal freedom, privacy, and ability to conduct confidential business by keeping their internet activities from being monitored.

[emphasis mine]
Source

Defence against network surveillance and traffic analysis

The idea is similar to using a twisty, hard-to-follow route in order to throw off somebody who is tailing you — and then periodically erasing your footprints. Instead of taking a direct route from source to destination, data packets on the Tor network take a random pathway through several relays that cover your tracks so no observer at any single point can tell where the data came from or where it's going.

Source

The erasing of your footprints on the windy trail you leave through Tor is accomplished by the Tor software incrementally building a circuit of encrypted connections through the relays on the Tor network. Each relay along your path through the Internet only has knowledge of which relay gave it your information, and which relay ahead of it will receive your information. No one relay ever knows the entire path you take from point A to B when accessing the Internet. Each step from relay to relay has a separate set of encryption keys. This is how even your convoluted path cannot be backtracked. Your right hand doesn't know what your left hand is doing.

Onion-like Layers: Origins

Tor was originally designed, implemented, and deployed as a third-generation onion routing project of the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory. It was originally developed with the U.S. Navy in mind, for the primary purpose of protecting government communications.

Source
Official U.S. Navy Web Site operated by the Center for High Assurance Computer Systems in the Information Technology Division of the US Naval Research Lab

The underground railroad must be silent: Privoxy

We have established the virtual tunnels and layered encryptions that are the Tor. Your location and any transactions over your network connection, determined and tracked by IP address, are convoluted and encrypted with forward secrecy (the erasing of your footprints). Your direct route from site A to B is difficult to track.

Your destination from A to B on the Internet is not always direct. Web proxies are computers that allows indirect connections to other network services.

A common proxy application is a caching Web proxy. This provides a nearby cache of Web pages and files available on remote Web servers, allowing local network clients to access them more quickly or reliably.

A proxy is a go-between, for your computer to access information from a source more quickly, or more reliably. Proxies identify themselves as proxies, and reveal the original IP address to the sources they draw from to relay information back to your computer.

When it receives a request for a Web resource (specified by a URL), a caching proxy looks for the resulting URL in its local cache. If found, it returns the document immediately. Otherwise it fetches it from the remote server, returns it to the requester and saves a copy in the cache.

Web proxies also filter content.

Some censorware applications - which attempt to block offensive Web content - are implemented as Web proxies. Other web proxies reformat web pages for a specific purpose or audience; for example, Skweezer reformats web pages for cell phones

Source

Privoxy is a non-caching web proxy with open access to detailed configuration for the user. What you choose to filter from your received information over the web can range from ads to words to images. It is a customizable proxy that gives the user full control over her Internet experience. The name is condenced from Privacy Enhancing Proxy.

Privoxy is a proxy that is primarily focused on privacy enhancement, ad and junk elimination and freeing the user from restrictions placed on his activities. Sitting between your browser(s) and the Internet, it is in a perfect position to filter outbound personal information that your browser is leaking, as well as inbound junk. It uses a variety of techniques to do this, all of which are under your complete control via the various configuration files and options. Being a proxy also makes it easier to share configurations among multiple browsers and/or users.

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Changing Our Habits

Tor specific:
Be smart and learn more. Understand what Tor does and does not offer.

Combine Privoxy (or any anonymity protecting proxy of your choice in your research) with Tor. How do I use Privoxy together with Tor?

This has been a brief overview of the meat-and-drink of Tor as related to Internet users' security, and its sister concern, web proxies. This thread has a used a broad brush to paint the subject with thin at best coverage of the computer science behind its workings.

I would like to invite any users with expertise to expand on any steps of the Tor process, proxies, Privoxy, and especially any further aspects of Internet privacy and anonymity. We have a right not to be followed or eavesdropped on for advertising or any other purpose, without consent.

_____________________

"darknet" warning:

Readers correctly warn each other: ".onion" sites are the deep web of dangerous content. Please be aware that Tor cannot actively lead you to any site with illegal content. It is a method of defence from being tracked. Only you have the initiative to seek out anything illegal.

Be careful what you look for in the deep net. There are some disturbing things on there.
Just saying.

I am glad you mentioned it:

To all readers of this thread

Tor is a method of masking your location and content. You have to actively set up covert meeting points in the Tor Hidden Features section to create dens for illicit activity. Tor itself does nothing to lead you to these place.

Tor is a dark dangerous place... Just like the internet used to be before all the AOL users jumped on.

Its the wild west of the web, just be careful, its a haven for illegal activity including Child Pornography...

.Onion sites are sites that are almost completely untraceable (there are tricks that can be used, recent ANON attacked many of the Child porn providers giving out their real IP addresses)

Anyone who wants to look into TOR better be at least a little internet savvy.

Tor can help you safely browse the normal web as it hides your IP, I would say start of with normal web browsing with TOR, and than if you feel brave branch out in to the deep web looking at .onion sites.

LOTS of conspiracy and gov docs on there too, there are treasure trove of information that I haven't even seen mentioned on ATS.

Yes. If you are unfamiliar to the Tor and the "deep" web, be careful. There are certain types of human sexuality that thrive on places like that. Those sexualities are normally not legal.

Be forewarned.

One thing to consider is TOR along with Bitcoin, pretty much equal an untraceable black market for goods and services.

Imagine what untraceable funds, and a anonymous black market equal... those are the types of things you can find on the Deep web...

Here is an example of a tor URL, you need tor to look it up, this is a "Core" site that links to other sites

eqt5g4fuenphqinx.onion

The address are pretty much unsearchable, so they are hidden, many of the sites you have to be invited too by other users, are someone has to tell you the addy because you can't search for them.

Also worth mentioning that tor should not be used to access websites requiring login / pass on the clearweb.

I was reading an article the other day where someone setup a tor exit node then monitored the traffic on his node, using sslStrip he was able to gather hundreds of login details for accounts including government websites and bank accounts

BEWARE

reply to post by AzureSky


links, or it didn't happen!

Originally posted by benrl
eqt5g4fuenphqinx.onion

Tor is great, I use it myself sometimes.
A question though for anyone who knows: Whenever I try to go to any .onion sites such as the one posted above, I can no longer access them. I've been to a few back when I first started messing around with Tor, but it won't let me connect to .onion sites anymore. I can, however, still use the "normal" internet while on Tor. If someone could u2u me and explain, that'd be great.

So... could I use tor for my everyday things such as ATS, Facebook etc?

I'd never heard of tor before coming to ATS and the idea not being watched by TPTB while catching up with the latest conspiracy or finding an old classmate does sound appealing...

Kyle

ETA: Nevermind, anser above

reply to post by trollz


try updating your tor software, had that happen one time when i missed an update.

reply to post by kai22


You could use it for ATS, it would allow you to look at the site with a fake IP, however if you commented on something that would require a log in, so if you log in with your normal ip at all it would be a method to trace it back to you.

Originally posted by kai22
So... could I use tor for my everyday things such as ATS, Facebook etc?

I'd never heard of tor before coming to ATS and the idea not being watched by TPTB while catching up with the latest conspiracy or finding an old classmate does sound appealing...

Kyle

Yes, you can use it for the normal internet, but here is a major piece of advice:
If you want to use Tor for specific websites or forums where you don't want to be identified, make a list of those accounts and ONLY access them while on Tor, NEVER while you're not on Tor. Once you access them without being connected to Tor, the accounts are no longer anonymous.

(I'm not an expert though so anyone can feel free to add to or disagree with that)

reply to post by benrl


I assume the same would apply to facebook aswell, darn shame lol.

How would it work for something like pirate bay? Obviously it doesn't require a login, so would the download run through the voluntary relays or straight to my own ip?

Thank you

Kyle

tor and privoxy wont save you from whats hidden
if your unfamiliar with anonimity online stay away from the deep web as i guarantee it will come back and bite you in the ass

you think tor and provixy dont have backdoors?

also most users wont ever get past level3 on the deep web and if you dont know wtf im talking about stay away from tor as you will just end up another corpse on the digital burial ground

deep web is not a game and WILL come back to haunt you
depending on what level you reach

enjoy your surfing!!!


This level is the one you browse everyday: YouTube, Facebook, Wikipedia and other famous or easily accessible websites can be found here.
Level 1 - Surface WebEdit

This level is still accessible through normal means, but contains "darker" websites, such as Reddit.
Level 2 - Bergie WebEdit

This level is the last one normally accessible: all levels that follow this one have to be accessed with a proxy, Tor or by modifyig your hardware. In this level you can find some "underground" but still indexed websites, such as 4chan.
Level 3 - Deep WebEdit

The first part of this level has to be accessed with a proxy. It contains CP, gore, hacking websites... Here begins the Deep Web. dicks an weiners are second part of this level is only accessible through Tor, and contains more sensible information.
Level 4 - Charter Web Edit

This level is also divided in two parts. The first can be accessed through Tor. Things such as drug and human traficking, banned movies and books and black markets exist there. The second part can be accessed through a hardware modification: a "Closed Shell System". Here, things becomes serious. This part of the Charter Web contains hardcore CP, experimental hardware information ("Gadolinium Gallium Garnet Quantum Electronic Processors"...), but also darker information, such as the "Law of 13", World War 2 experiments

Level 5 - Marianas Web
you dont need to know what level 5 is because you will never find out and if you do..your allready dead

reply to post by UkRandom


Oh no guys, we have a badass over here.

Seriously? You just took that information from a poorly-constructed mock-informational and pretended to be some kind of know-it-all. And yes, I've seen it.




*"Seen it" as in the poorly-constructed mock-informational I was referring to

reply to post by UkRandom


So what you're saying is that your computer WILL be compromised, regardless of anti-virus/anti-malware?

Kyle