There is a lot of misinformation being promoted in various privacy circles about Tor. This article will examine some facts about Tor and assess whether it is the infallible privacy tool it’s made out to be by some.
There is a growing chorus of people who blindly recommend Tor to anyone looking for online anonymity. This recommendation often ignores mountains of evidence suggesting that Tor is not the “privacy tool” it’s made out to be.
No privacy tool is above criticism or scrutiny, and each has pros and cons. Unfortunately, Tor has garnered a cult-like following in recent years among people who pretend it’s infallible. Honest criticism of Tor is often met with accusations of “FUD” and ad-hominem attacks, so as not to disrupt the collective Groupthink.
Never mind the fact that the Tor network is a popular hangout for pedophiles and drug dealers – along with the law enforcement these types attract. Now, Tor is being marketed as some kind of grass-roots privacy tool that will protect you against government surveillance and various bad actors.
According to Roger Dingledine (Tor co-founder) and other key Tor developers, getting people (outside the US government) to widely adopt Tor is very important for the US government’s ability to use Tor for its own purposes. In this goal, they have largely succeeded with Tor being widely promoted in various privacy circles.
But is Tor really a secure and trustworthy privacy tool?
Here are the facts.
1. Tor is compromised (and not anonymous)
That governments can de-anonymize Tor users is another well-known point that’s been acknowledged for years.
In 2013 the Washington Post broke an article citing reports that US government agencies had figured out how to de-anonymize Tor users on a “wide scale”. From the Washington Post:
Since 2006, according to a 49-page research paper titled simply “Tor,” the agency has worked on several methods that, if successful, would allow the NSA to uncloak anonymous traffic on a “wide scale” — effectively by watching communications as they enter and exit the Tor system, rather than trying to follow them inside. One type of attack, for example, would identify users by minute differences in the clock times on their computers.
There are also reports of government agencies cooperating with researchers to “break” or somehow exploit Tor to de-anonymize users:
Then in July, a much anticipated talk at the Black Hat hacking conference was abruptly canceled. Alexander Volynkin and Michael McCord, academics from Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), promised to reveal how a $3,000 piece of kit could unmask the IP addresses of Tor hidden services as well as their users.
Its description bore a startling resemblance to the attack the Tor Project had documented earlier that month. Volynkin and McCord’s method would deanonymize Tor users through the use of recently disclosed vulnerabilities and a “handful of powerful servers.” On top of this, the pair claimed they had tested attacks in the wild.
For $3,000 worth of hardware, this team from Carnegie Mellon could effectively “unmask” Tor users. And this was in 2015.
In 2016, a court case brought more information to light about how the US federal government hired software engineers to effectively crack Tor and de-anonymize users.
ARS Technica also discussed this case in February 2016 where they noted:
A federal judge in Washington has now confirmed what has been strongly suspected: that Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) researchers at its Software Engineering Institute were hired by the federal government to do research into breaking Tor in 2014.
The following year, in 2017, more evidence came forward showing how the FBI can see what you’re up to on Tor.
There are also researchers who devised attacks allowing them to de-anonymize 81% of Tor users in the wild. This article came out in 2014, before the Carnegie Mellon research was carried out.
And there’s more…
2017 court case proves FBI can de-anonymize Tor users
The means by which the FBI is able to de-anonymize Tor users and discover their real IP address remains classified information. In a 2017 court case, the FBI refused to divulge how it was able to do this, which ultimately led to pedophiles on the Tor network going free. From the Tech Times:
In this case, the FBI managed to breach the anonymity Tor promises and the means used to collect the evidence from the dark web make up a sensitive matter. The technique is valuable to the FBI, so the government would rather compromise this case rather than release the source code it used.
“The government must now choose between disclosure of classified information and dismissal of its indictment,” federal prosecutor Annette Hayes said in a court filing on Friday.
The cat is out of the bag. The FBI (and presumably other government agencies) has proven to be fully capable of de-anonymizing Tor users. Most Tor promoters simply ignore these different cases and the obvious implications.
2. Tor developers are cooperating with US government agencies
Some Tor users may be surprised to know the extent to which Tor developers are working directly with US government agencies. After all, Tor is often promoted as a grass-roots privacy effort to help you stay “anonymous” against Big Brother.
One journalist was able to clarify this cooperation through FOIA requests, which revealed many interesting exchanges.
Here is one email correspondence in which Roger Dingledine discusses cooperation with the DOJ (Department of Justice) and FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation), while also referencing “backdoors” being installed.
You can see more details from this correspondence here.
In another exchange below, Tor developer Steven Murdoch discovered a vulnerability with the way Tor was handling TLS encryption. This vulnerability made it easier to de-anonymize Tor users, and as such, it would be valuable to government agencies. Knowing the problems this could cause, Steven suggested keeping the document internal,
…it might be a good to delay the release of anything like ‘this attack is bad; I hope nobody realizes it before we fix it’.
Eight days later, based on the emails below, Roger Dingledine alerted two government agents about this vulnerability:
While there is disagreement as to the seriousness of these issues, one thing remains clear.
Tor developers are closely working with the US government.
The journalist who collected the FOIA documents also suggests that, “Tor privately tips off the federal government to security vulnerabilities before alerting the public.” I do not really agree with this statement or some of the other conclusions made by this person. Nonetheless, the big issue remains the close cooperation between Tor developers and US government agencies.
You can see numerous exchanges between Tor developers and US government agencies here. (Backup copy of documents.)
And if you really want to dive in, check out the full FOIA cache here.
3. When you use Tor, you stand out like a glow stick
Meet Eldo Kim. He was the Harvard student who assumed Tor would make him “anonymous” when sending bomb threats.
Kim didn’t realize that when he connected to Tor on the university network, he would stand out like a f***ing glow stick.
The FBI and the network admins at Harvard were able to easily pinpoint Kim because he was using Tor around the time the bomb threat email was sent through the Tor network. From the criminal complaint:
Harvard University was able to determine that, in the several hours leading up to the receipt of the e-mail messages described above, ELDO KIM accessed TOR using Harvard’s wireless network.
Eldo Kim is just one of many, many examples of people who have bought into the lie that Tor provides blanket online anonymity – and later paid the price.
Had Kim used a bridge or VPN before accessing the Tor network, he probably would have gotten away with it (we’ll discuss this more below).
4. Anybody can operate Tor nodes and collect your data and IP address
Many proponents of Tor argue that its decentralized nature is a major benefit. While there are indeed advantages to decentralization, there are also risks. Namely, that anybody can operate the Tor nodes through which your traffic is being routed.
There have been numerous examples of people setting up Tor nodes to collect data from gullible Tor users who thought they would be safe and secure.
Take for example Dan Egerstad, a 22-year-old Swedish hacker. Egerstad set up a few Tor nodes around the world and collected vast amounts of private data in just a few months:
In time, Egerstad gained access to 1000 high-value email accounts. He would later post 100 sets of sensitive email logins and passwords on the internet for criminals, spies or just curious teenagers to use to snoop on inter-governmental, NGO and high-value corporate email.
The question on everybody’s lips was: how did he do it? The answer came more than a week later and was somewhat anti-climactic. The 22-year-old Swedish security consultant had merely installed free, open-source software – called Tor – on five computers in data centres around the globe and monitored it. Ironically, Tor is designed to prevent intelligence agencies, corporations and computer hackers from determining the virtual – and physical – location of the people who use it.
People think they’re protected just because they use Tor. Not only do they think it’s encrypted, but they also think ‘no one can find me’.
To not assume government agencies are doing this right now would be extremely naive.
Commenting on this case, security consultant Sam Stover emphasized the risks of someone snooping traffic through Tor nodes:
Domestic, or international . . . if you want to do intelligence gathering, there’s definitely data to be had there. (When using Tor) you have no idea if some guy in China is watching all your traffic, or some guy in Germany, or a guy in Illinois. You don’t know.
In fact, that is exactly how Wikileaks got started. The founders simply setup Tor nodes to siphon off more than a million private documents. According to Wired:
WikiLeaks, the controversial whistleblowing site that exposes secrets of governments and corporations, bootstrapped itself with a cache of documents obtained through an internet eavesdropping operation by one of its activists, according to a new profile of the organization’s founder.
The activist siphoned more than a million documents as they traveled across the internet through Tor, also known as “The Onion Router,” a sophisticated privacy tool that lets users navigate and send documents through the internet anonymously.
Are governments running Tor nodes for bulk data collection?
Egerstad also suggests Tor nodes may be controlled by powerful agencies (governments) with vast resources:
In addition to hackers using Tor to hide their origins, it’s plausible that intelligence services had set up rogue exit nodes to sniff data from the Tor network.
“If you actually look in to where these Tor nodes are hosted and how big they are, some of these nodes cost thousands of dollars each month just to host because they’re using lots of bandwidth, they’re heavy-duty servers and so on,” Egerstad says. “Who would pay for this and be anonymous?“
Back in 2014, government agencies seized a number of different Tor relays in what is known as “Operation Onymous”. From the Tor Project blog:
Over the last few days, we received and read reports saying that several Tor relays were seized by government officials. We do not know why the systems were seized, nor do we know anything about the methods of investigation which were used. Specifically, there are reports that three systems of Torservers.net disappeared and there is another report by an independent relay operator.
Commenting on this case, ARS Technica noted in 2014:
On July 4, the Tor Project identified a group of Tor relays that were actively trying to break the anonymity of users by making changes to the Tor protocol headers associated with their traffic over the network.
The rogue relays were set up on January 30, 2014—just two weeks after Blake Benthall allegedly announced he had taken control of Silk Road 2.0 and shortly after the Homeland Security undercover officer who infiltrated Silk Road 2.0 began getting paid to be a site administrator. The relays not only could have de-anonymized some users, but they also “probably tried to learn who published hidden service descriptors, which would allow the attackers to learn the location of that hidden service,” Tor project leader Roger Dingledine wrote in a July 30 blog post.
No quality control!
The fundamental issue here is there is no real quality control mechanism for vetting Tor relay operators. Not only is there no authentication mechanism for setting up relays, but the operators themselves can also remain anonymous.
Assuming that some Tor nodes are data collection tools, it would also be safe to assume that many different governments are involved in data collection, such as the Chinese, Russian, and US governments.
See also: Tor network exit nodes found to be sniffing passing traffic
5. Malicious Tor nodes do exist
If government-controlled Tor nodes weren’t bad enough, you also have to consider malicious Tor nodes.
In 2016 a group of researchers presented a paper titled “HOnions: Towards Detection and Identification of Misbehaving Tor HSDirs“, which described how they identified 110 malicious Tor relays:
Over the last decade privacy infrastructures such as Tor proved to be very successful and widely used. However, Tor remains a practical system with a variety of limitations and open to abuse. Tor’s security and anonymity is based on the assumption that the large majority of the its relays are honest and do not misbehave. Particularly the privacy of the hidden services is dependent on the honest operation of Hidden Services Directories (HSDirs). In this work we introduce, the concept of honey onions (HOnions), a framework to detect and identify misbehaving and snooping HSDirs. After the deployment of our system and based on our experimental results during the period of 72 days, we detect and identify at least 110 such snooping relays. Furthermore, we reveal that more than half of them were hosted on cloud infrastructure and delayed the use of the learned information to prevent easy traceback.
When conspiracy “theory” becomes conspiracy fact.
The malicious HSDirs identified by the team were mostly located in the United States, Germany, France, United Kingdom and the Netherlands.
Just a few months after the HSDir issue broke, a different researcher identified a malicious Tor node injecting malware into file downloads.
According to ITProPortal:
Authorities are advising all users of the Tor network to check their computers for malware after it emerged that a Russian hacker has been using the network to spread a powerful virus. The malware is spread by a compromised node in the Tor network.
…It has emerged that one of these exit nodes had been modified to alter any program downloaded over the network. This allowed the attacker to put his own executable code in such programs, and potentially take control of victims’ computers.
Due to the altered node, any Windows executable downloaded over the network was wrapped in malware, and worryingly even files downloaded over Windows Update were affected.
Use at your own risk.
See also:
OnionDuke APT Malware Distributed Via Malicious Tor Exit Node
6. No warrant necessary to spy on Tor users
Another interesting case highlighting the flaws of Tor comes form 2016 when the FBI was able to infiltrate Tor to bust a pedophile group.
According to Tech Times:
The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) can still spy on users who use the Tor browser to remain anonymous on the web.
Senior U.S. District Court Judge Henry Coke Morgan, Jr. has ruled that the FBI does not need a warrant to hack into a U.S. citizen’s computer system. The ruling by the district judge relates to FBI sting called Operation Pacifier, which targeted a child pornography site called PlayPen on the Dark web.
The accused used Tor to access these websites. The federal agency, with the help of hacking tools on computers in Greece, Denmark, Chile and the U.S., was able to catch 1,500 pedophiles during the operation.
While it’s great to see these types of criminals getting shut down, this case also highlights the severe vulnerabilities of Tor as a privacy tool that can be trusted by journalists, political dissidents, whistleblowers, etc.
The judge in this case officially ruled that Tor users lack “a reasonable expectation of privacy” in hiding their IP address and identity. This essentially opens the door to any US government agency being able to spy on Tor users without obtaining a warrant or going through any legal channels.
This, of course, is a serious concern when you consider that journalists, activists, and whistleblowers are encouraged to use Tor to hide from government agencies and mass surveillance.
Now let’s put this all into context by looking at the history of Tor and it’s funding.
7. Tor was created by the US government (for a reason)
I forgot to mention earlier, probably something that will make you look at me in a new light. I contract for the United States Government to build anonymity technology for them and deploy it. They don’t think of it as anonymity technology, though we use that term. They think of it as security technology. They need these technologies so that they can research people they’re interested in, so that they can have anonymous tip lines, so that they can buy things from people without other countries figuring out what they are buying, how much they are buying and where it is going, that sort of thing.
— Roger Dingledine, co-founder of Tor, 2004 speech
This quote alone should convince any rational person to never use the Tor network, unless of course you want to be rubbing shoulders with government spooks on the Dark Web.
The history of Tor goes back to the 1990s when the Office of Naval Research and DARPA were working to create an online anonymity network in Washington, DC. This network was called “onion routing” and bounced traffic across different nodes before exiting to the final destination.
In 2002, the Alpha version of Tor was developed and released by Paul Syverson (Office of Naval Research), as well as Roger Dingledine and Nick Mathewson, who were both on contract with DARPA. This three-person team, working for the US government, developed Tor into what it is today.
The quote above was taken from a 2004 speech by Roger Dingledine, which you can also listen to here.
After Tor was developed and released for public use, it was eventually spun off as its own non-profit organization, with guidance coming from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF):
At the very end of 2004, with Tor technology finally ready for deployment, the US Navy cut most of its Tor funding, released it under an open source license and, oddly, the project was handed over to the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) remains one of the biggest promoters of Tor today, which is not surprising given EFF’s deep ties to the project.
8. Tor is funded by the US government
It’s no secret that Tor is funded by various US government agencies.
The key question is whether US government funding negatively affects Tor’s independence and trustworthiness as a privacy tool.
Some journalists have closely examined the financial relationship between Tor and the US government:
Tor had always maintained that it was funded by a “variety of sources” and was not beholden to any one interest group. But I crunched the numbers and found that the exact opposite was true: In any given year, Tor drew between 90 to 100 percent of its budget via contracts and grants coming from three military-intel branches of the federal government: the Pentagon, the State Department and an old school CIA spinoff organization called the BBG.
Put simply: the financial data showed that Tor wasn’t the indie-grassroots anti-state org that it claimed to be. It was a military contractor. It even had its own official military contractor reference number from the government.
Here are some of the different government funding sources for the Tor Project over the years:
Broadcasting Board of Governors:
“Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) [now called U.S. Agency for Global Media], a federal agency that was spun off from the CIA and today oversees America’s foreign broadcasting operations, funded Tor to the tune of $6.1 million in the years from 2007 through 2015.” (source)
State Department:
“The State Department funded Tor to the tune of $3.3 million, mostly through its regime change arm — State Dept’s “Democracy, Human Rights and Labor” division.” (source)
The Pentagon:
“From 2011 through 2013, the Pentagon funded Tor to the tune of $2.2 million, through a U.S. Department of Defense / Navy contract — passed through a defense contractor called SRI International.” (source)
The grant is called: “Basic and Applied Research and Development in Areas Relating to the Navy Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance.”
We can also see what the Tor project has to say about the matter.
When soliciting funds in 2005, Tor claimed that donors would be able to “influence” the direction of the project:
We are now actively looking for new contracts and funding. Sponsors of Tor get personal attention, better support, publicity (if they want it), and get to influence the direction of our research and development!
There you have it. Tor claims donors influence the direction of research and development – a fact that the Tor team even admits.
Do you really think the US government would invest millions of dollars into a tool that stifled its power?
9. When you use Tor, you help the US government do spooky stuff
The United States government can’t simply run an anonymity system for everybody and then use it themselves only. Because then every time a connection came from it people would say, “Oh, it’s another CIA agent looking at my website,” if those are the only people using the network. So you need to have other people using the network so they blend together.
—Roger Dingledine, co-founder of the Tor Network, 2004 speech
The implications of this statement are quite serious.
When you use Tor, you are literally helping the US government. Your traffic helps to conceal CIA agents who are also using Tor, as Dingledine and journalists are pointing out.
Tor is fundamentally a tool for the US government, and it remains so today:
Tor’s original — and current — purpose is to cloak the online identity of government agents and informants while they are in the field: gathering intelligence, setting up sting operations, giving human intelligence assets a way to report back to their handlers — that kind of thing. This information is out there, but it’s not very well known, and it’s certainly not emphasized by those who promote it.
You will never hear Tor promoters discuss how important it is for the US government to get others on the the Tor network. This remains a taboo topic that Tor advocates simply avoid.
The Tor Project’s website also discusses how Tor is actively used by government agencies for different purposes:
A branch of the U.S. Navy uses Tor for open source intelligence gathering, and one of its teams used Tor while deployed in the Middle East recently. Law enforcement uses Tor for visiting or surveilling web sites without leaving government IP addresses in their web logs, and for security during sting operations.
Michael Reed, another early developer of Tor, explained how it has always been a tool for US government military and intelligence operations:
The original *QUESTION* posed that led to the invention of Onion Routing was, “Can we build a system that allows for bi-directional communications over the Internet where the source and destination cannot be determined by a mid-point?” The *PURPOSE* was for DoD / Intelligence usage (open source intelligence gathering, covering of forward deployed assets, whatever). Not helping dissidents in repressive countries. Not assisting criminals in covering their electronic tracks. Not helping bit-torrent users avoid MPAA/RIAA prosecution. Not giving a 10 year old a way to bypass an anti-porn filter. Of course, we knew those would be other unavoidable uses for the technology, but that was immaterial to the problem at hand we were trying to solve (and if those uses were going to give us more cover traffic to better hide what we wanted to use the network for, all the better…I once told a flag officer that much to his chagrin).
Here’s another early Tor developer who spilled the beans. Tor was never meant for “dissidents in repressive countries” or helping various privacy activists fighting for human rights, which is how Tor is promoted today.
Just as Roger Dingledine asserted in the opening quote to this section, Paul Syverson (Tor co-founder) also emphasized the importance of getting other people to use Tor, thereby helping government agents perform their work and not stand out as the only Tor users:
If you have a system that’s only a Navy system, anything popping out of it is obviously from the Navy. You need to have a network that carries traffic for other people as well.
Tor is branded by many different individuals and groups as a grassroots project to protect people from government surveillance. In reality, however, it is a tool for government agents who are literally using it for military and intelligence operations (including spying on those who think they are “anonymous” on Tor).
Tor’s utility for the military-surveillance apparatus is explained well in the following quote:
Tor was created not to protect the public from government surveillance, but rather, to cloak the online identity of intelligence agents as they snooped on areas of interest. But in order to do that, Tor had to be released to the public and used by as diverse a group of people as possible: activists, dissidents, journalists, paranoiacs, kiddie porn scum, criminals and even would-be terrorists — the bigger and weirder the crowd, the easier it would be for agents to mix in and hide in plain sight.
According to these Tor developers and co-founders, when you use Tor you are helping US government agents in doing whatever they do on the Tor network. Why would anyone who advocates for privacy and human rights want to do that?
10. IP address leaks when using Tor
Another recurring problem with Tor is IP address leaks – a serious issue that will de-anonymize Tor users, even if the leak is brief.
In November 2017 a flaw was discovered that exposed the real IP address of Tor users if they clicked on a local file-based address, such as file://., rather than http:// or https://.
This issue illustrates a larger problem with Tor: it only encrypts traffic through the Tor browser, thereby leaving all other (non-Tor browser) traffic exposed.
Unlike a VPN that encrypts all traffic on your operating system, the Tor network only works through a browser configured for Tor. (See the ‘what is a VPN‘ guide for an overview.)
This design leaves Tor users vulnerable to leaks which will expose their identity in many different situations:
- Tor offers no protection when torrenting and will leak the user’s IP address with torrent clients.
- Tor may leak IP addresses when accessing files, such as PDFs or other documents, which will likely bypass proxy settings.
- Windows users are also vulnerable to different types of leaks that will expose the user’s real IP address.
It’s important to note, however, that oftentimes de-anonymization is due to user error or misconfiguration. Therefore blame does not lie with Tor itself, but rather with people not using Tor correctly.
Dan Eggerstad emphasized this issue as well when he stated:
People think they’re protected just because they use Tor. Not only do they think it’s encrypted, but they also think ‘no one can find me’. But if you’ve configured your computer wrong, which probably more than 50 per cent of the people using Tor have, you can still find the person (on) the other side.
Once again, non-technical users would be better off using a good VPN service that provides system-wide traffic encryption and an effective kill switch to block all traffic if the VPN connection drops.
11. Using Tor can make you a target
As we saw above with the bomb threat hoax, Eldo Kim was targeted because he was on the Tor network when the bomb threat was sent.
Other security experts also warn about Tor users being targeted merely for using Tor.
In addition, most really repressive places actually look for Tor and target those people. VPNs are used to watch Netflix and Hulu, but Tor has only one use case – to evade the authorities. There is no cover. (This is assuming it is being used to evade even in a country incapable of breaking Tor anonymity.)
In many ways Tor can be riskier than a VPN:
- VPNs are (typically) not actively malicious
- VPNs provide good cover that Tor simply cannot – “I was using it to watch Hulu videos” is much better than – “I was just trying to buy illegal drugs online”
As we’ve pointed out here before, VPNs are more widely used than Tor – and for various (legitimate) reasons, such as streaming Netflix with a VPN.
So maybe you still need (or want?) to use Tor. How can you do so with more safety?
How to (more) safely use Tor
Given that Tor is compromised and bad actors can see the real IP address of Tor users, it would be wise to take extra precautions. This includes hiding your real IP address before accessing the Tor network.
To hide your IP address when accessing Tor, simply connect to a VPN server (through a VPN client on your computer) and then access Tor as normal (such as through the Tor browser). This will add a layer of encryption between your computer and the Tor network, with the VPN server’s IP address replacing your real IP address.
Note: There are different ways to combine VPNs and Tor. I am only recommending the following setup: You > VPN > Tor > Internet (also called “Tor over VPN” or “Onion over VPN”).
With this setup, even if a malicious actor was running a Tor server and logging all connecting IP addresses, your real IP address would remain hidden behind the VPN server (assuming you are using a good VPN with no leaks).
Here are the benefits of routing your traffic through a secure VPN before the Tor network:
- Your real IP address remains hidden from the Tor network (Tor cannot see who you are)
- Your internet provider (ISP) or network admin will not be able to see you are using Tor (because your traffic is being encrypted through a VPN server).
- You won’t stand out as much from other users because VPNs are more popular than Tor.
- You are distributing trust between Tor and a VPN. The VPN could see your IP address and Tor could see your traffic (sites you visit), but neither would have both your IP address and browsing activities.
For anyone distrustful of VPNs, there are a handful of verified no logs VPN services that have been proven to be truly “no logs”.
You can sign up for a VPN with a secure anonymous email account (not connected to your identity). For the truly paranoid, you can also pay with Bitcoin or any other anonymous payment method. Most VPNs do not require any name for registration, only a valid email address for account credentials. Using a VPN in a safe offshore jurisdiction (outside the 14 Eyes) may also be good, depending on your threat model.
For those seeking the highest levels of anonymity, you can chain multiple VPNs through Linux virtual machines (using Virtualbox, which is FOSS). You could also use VPN1 on your router, VPN2 on your computer, and then access the regular internet (or the Tor network) through two layers of encryption via two separate VPN services. This allows you to distribute trust across different VPN services and ensure neither VPN could have both your incoming IP address and traffic. This is discussed more in my guide on multi-hop VPN services.
Note: The claim that “VPN is fully, 100%, a single point/entity that you must trust” is false. This claim comes from this Tor promoter who coincidently works for the US government’s Naval Research Lab.
When you chain VPNs, you can distribute trust across different VPN services and different jurisdictions around the world, all paid for anonymously and not linked to your identity. With Tor alone, you put all your trust in The Onion Router…
Tor Project agrees on the benefits of adding VPN
The Tor Project also agrees on the benefits of correctly using a VPN with Tor, as I recommend above. Here are a few quotes from the Tor Project about the benefits of using a VPN before Tor (archived):
- “might prevent your ISP etc from seeing that you’re using Tor”
- Routing Tor through a VPN “can be a fine idea assuming your VPN provider’s network is in fact sufficiently safer than your own network.” [A verified no logs VPN is a lot safer than an internet provider that has your name, date of birth, payment details, and is collecting your data and sharing it with surveillance agencies, such as the case with US internet providers.]
- “Another advantage here is that it prevents Tor from seeing who you are behind the VPN. So if somebody does manage to break Tor and learn the IP address your traffic is coming from, … then you’ll be better off.”
While I generally agree with the points above, unfortunately, the Tor Project also stated some incorrect information in the beginning of their article as follows, “Most VPN/SSH provider log, there is a money trail, if you can’t pay really anonymously.”
These points are incorrect.
- “Most VPN/SSH provider log” – This is simply not true. There are many no-logs VPN services and also a small number of VPNs that are verified to be no logs, having undergone third-party audits, server seizures, or court subpoenas for user data.
- “there is a money trail” – This is a huge misconception that is promoted by people who don’t know what they’re talking about. A “money trail” has no bearing on the effectiveness or encryption of a VPN. VPNs are not illegal and are becoming mainstream privacy tools. If an adversary knows you have a subscription with a specific VPN service, this has zero bearing on the effectiveness of your VPN. Even if the adversary has your username and password, this still has no bearing on the effectiveness or encryption of the VPN (it just means your adversary can use the VPN for free). VPN encryption is dynamic and negotiated new with each connection. And if you are worried about “money trails” then pay anonymously.
- “can’t pay really anonymously” – This is again false, perhaps blatant lying to scare people away from VPNs. Most VPNs offer anonymous payment options, such as gift cards or Bitcoin, with no name required. You only need a valid email, and you can easily setup an anonymous/burner email for this purpose that’s not connected to your identity. Done.
Note: While there have been various cases proving the FBI can easily de-anonymize Tor users, there has never been any court cases (that I’ve seen) proving the FBI (or any government agency) can de-anonymize VPN users, assuming there’s good encryption with no leaks. Instead, we have seen a few isolated cases where the FBI pressured VPNs to log user data and provide this to authorities to identify a specific user, such as with the IPVanish logging case in the US.
Tor vulnerabilities and VPNs
There are other attacks that the Tor Project admits will de-anonymize Tor users (archived):
As mentioned above, it is possible for an observer who can view both you and either the destination website or your Tor exit node to correlate timings of your traffic as it enters the Tor network and also as it exits. Tor does not defend against such a threat model.
Once again, a VPN can help to mitigate the risk of de-anonymization by hiding your source IP address before accessing the guard node in the Tor circuit.
Can exit nodes eavesdrop on communications? From the Tor Project:
Yes, the guy running the exit node can read the bytes that come in and out there. Tor anonymizes the origin of your traffic, and it makes sure to encrypt everything inside the Tor network, but it does not magically encrypt all traffic throughout the Internet.
However, a VPN can not do anything about a bad Tor exit node eavesdropping on your traffic, although it will help hide who you are (but your traffic can also give you away).
I discuss these points more in my VPN vs Tor comparison.
Conclusion on Tor
No privacy tool is above criticism.
Just like with Tor, I have also pointed out numerous problems with VPNs, including VPNs that were caught lying about logs, VPN scams, and dangerous free VPN services. All privacy tools come with pros and cons. Selecting the best tool for the job all boils down to your threat model and unique needs.
Unfortunately, for many in the privacy community, Tor is now considered to be an infallible tool for blanket anonymity, and to question this dogma means you are “spreading FUD”. This is pathetic.
In closing, for regular users seeking more security and online anonymity, I’d simply avoid Tor altogether. A VPN will offer system-wide encryption, much faster speeds, and user-friendly clients for various devices and operating systems. This will also prevent your ISP from seeing what you’re up to online.
Additionally, VPNs are more mainstream and there are many legitimate (and legal!) reasons for using them. Compared to Tor, you definitely won’t stand out as much with a VPN.
For those who still want to access the Tor network, doing so through a reliable VPN service will add an extra layer of protection while hiding your real IP address.
Further Reading:
Tor and its Discontents: Problems with Tor Usage as Panacea
Users Get Routed: Traffic Correlation on Tor by Realistic Adversaries
Tor network exit nodes found to be sniffing passing traffic
On the Effectiveness of Traffic Analysis Against Anonymity Networks Using Flow Records
Judge confirms what many suspected: Feds hired CMU to break Tor
185.159.156.0 185.159.156.255 256
AS8473 ProtonVPN-SE1
SE, Arno
185.159.157.0 185.159.157.255 256
AS59898 ProtonVPN-CH2
CH, Plan-les-Ouates
185.159.158.0 185.159.158.255 256
AS56704 ProtonVPN-IS1
IS, Reykjavik
185.159.159.0 185.159.159.255 256
AS19905 ProtonVPN-CH1
CH, Plan-les-Ouates
Autonomous System 8473
AS name BAHNHOF
Reg. date 1997-09-18
Organization http://www.bahnhof.net/
ID ORG-BIA1-RIPE
Country
SE, Sweden…ups
RIR RIPE NCC
prefix count 96
unique ip count 591.104
ipv4 peers 80
Autonomous System 59898
AS name AS-ALLSAFE
Reg. date 2017-03-27
Organization Allsafe LLC Hauterive, Neuchatel, Switzerland
ID ORG-AS591-RIPE
Country
CH, Switzerland
RIR RIPE NCC
prefix count 7
unique ip count 1.792
ipv4 peers 4
Autonomous System 56704
AS name FARICE-AS
Reg. date 2011-04-28
Organization
ID ORG-Fe9-RIPE
Country
IS, Iceland
RIR RIPE NCC
prefix count 5
unique ip count 4.096
ipv4 peers 21
Autonomous System 19905
AS name NEUSTAR-AS6
Reg. date 2007-08-24
Organization NeuStar, Inc.
ID NEUS
Country
US, United States….ups
City Sterling
Region/State VA
RIR ARIN
prefix count 154
unique ip count 41.728
ipv4 peers 32
good luck with the 100eyes
would you say Mozilla Firefox modified for privacy according to your guide with a VPN is better than tor browser with a VPN in terms of privacy?
It seems with the latest Tor browser update, they are making it more and more difficult to use the Tor browser without the Tor network. So yes, at this point, I’d opt for modified Firefox that is secure and hardened for privacy, with one of our recommended VPN services.
> Tor has garnered a cult-like following in recent years among people who pretend it’s infallible. Honest criticism of Tor is often met with accusations of “FUD” and ad-hominem attacks, so as not to disrupt the collective Groupthink.
I have experienced this. I was viciously attacked on Reddit a couple years ago when I brought up what I thought was a valid point which should be investigated, about the first Tor node which was always the same. Intuitively this does not feel like a secure situation, but I was kind of shouted down by some users. Curiously, I can’t find back my post now which as I remember I posted on r/Tor.
vpns arent more secure than tor, tor isnt more anonymous than vpns. tor nodes are all registered ip nodes, vpns are all registered, aswell as proxies of all kind, therefore vulnerable to spy . fingerprinting is gotten more sophisticated than most ppl are aware of. IX nodes , aka internet exange nodes (probably all) are not your friends. bckd0rs everywhere, full of fake ssl, fake secure software, fake secure hardware, etc.. who has the taxpayers money?..exactly, those who have everything. dont forget it , lazy sheeps in tha democracy. you let it happen.. the law_warfare against you and your children.
Hi Sven,
Thank you for writing this article. I learned a lot from it.
I’m no expert, but it seems to me that one should define an objective, define a threat model, and then choose tools to either (a) maximize the probability of successfully achieving the objective given an acceptable level of risk (as defined by the threat model) or (b) minimize the level of risk given a probability of successfully achieving the objective. If you’re a journalist and you wish to talk with a source, a “tool” could be anything from a “Deep Throat” meeting in a garage to a dead drop in a public place to, yes, an OTR chat on Tails over Tor.
Should one not use Tor? If, for every objective and threat model, another technology is preferable, then of course, one should not use Tor. But surely that can’t be. If I wanted to start an activist website and hide the server on which it resides, I would probably setup a Tor hidden service. If I wanted to read the New York Times uninterrupted while traveling abroad, I would probably use my VPN. I want to choose the best tool for the job understanding the risks associated with using each tool. I worry that some of these discussions miss the broader point.
Again, thank you for the information. I have only recently begun to take my online privacy seriously, and your website has been very educational.
Best,
Joe
Hi Joe, indeed, Tor is just a tool with pros and cons. Whether one wants to use it has to do with what one is doing and if Tor is a good fit for the situation. The problem is that there’s a vocal contingent of people who pretend Tor is perfect and ignore the concerns, risks, and drawbacks, while also attacking people who point out problems with Tor.
This is a great and informative page. One more Tor story that I think deserves some attention is the one about Matthew Falder. He is a creep of the highest order. But what I find interesting is how he used Tor and was still caught. I have found no info as to HOW he was caught, what OS he used, or what encryption. Did he use Windows, Linux, Tails? According to the BBC it took 2 years and multiple countries working together to catch him. They also managed to crack his “double encryption.” The story give little to no technical detail so it wasn’t much use. But I do wonder why so little has been said about it on the tech blogs. It seems Tor is still pretty good if you can hide for 2 years while the whole world is looking for you. On the other hand – how did they defeat the encryption? Weak password? What encryption did he use? Did they compromise Tor relays and exit nodes to get the data they needed to catch him? So many questions but so few answers. I’d love to hear what you and others think of this case and what it means for Tor. I feel somewhere better about Tor in the sense that if it takes this much effort to catch someone then they don’t have time to snoop on everyone. Imagine spending countless man hours and dollars just to find out someone has an embarrassing porn fetish!
Per the news story:
“A special taskforce involving the NCA, GCHQ, Homeland Security Investigations in the US, the Australian Federal Police and Europol – as well as law enforcement in Israel and Slovenia – was set up specifically to “enhance evidence gathering against the suspect”.
“Police and spy catchers in Europe, New Zealand, America, Slovenia and Israel spent more than two years tracking his activities on the Dark Web but still there was not enough to identify him.”
“Police seized his computers and a USB stick but its information had been double-encrypted to hide its vile contents.Computer experts working on both sides of the Atlantic cracked them..”
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-birmingham-42921977
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/5629159/matthew-falder-was-caught-by-nca-gchq-and-16-year-old-girl/
‘Did he use Windows, Linux, Tails?’
In the one picture they show a PC and the desktop is Windows (familiar to anyone who has a Windows PC). This is how they credit the pic.
This is the home office desk from where Falder preyed on his victims
Credit: PA:Press Association
Seems he used a service that is no longer available.
“using the now defunct Tor Mail.”
“Scientist Dr Matthew Falder pleads guilty to 137 sexual offences against boys, girls, men and women”
And he only got 32 years? WOW! From earlier: “And after the 29-year-old was jailed this week for 32 years”
He knew how to hide it seems: “He used around 70 online identities”
His list of what he did, what he wanted to do and his use of his “daughter” as his avatar are enough to make me sick.
This could be a great article if it were not because Eduard Snowden or the FBI in declassified documents would not have recognized that the Tor network remains the king of anonymity and privacy on the Internet.
But of course, you cannot navigate through the tor as people usually do and there are a number of guidelines to follow to preserve that anonymity. In fact, Edward Snowden himself as a security expert declares that he is in love with Tor and it is an essential tool to preserve anonymity.
Obviously if you use a vpn in addition to tor you will increase the level of security but remember that every system needs records and logs for its administration and all commercial VPN systems have them, so somewhere your original IP address will be associated with a connection to an input node in the TOR network.
“Never mind the fact that the Tor network is a popular hangout for pedophiles and drug dealers …”
firstly i think the mention of this is unnecessary because it’s the service that should be of interest, not who uses it nor for what purpose – i drive a car – cars are used to transport drugs
secondly, i think this fact in and of itself challenges the arguments against Tor – if criminals use it, and some for a very long time apparently, i think that speaks to its trustworthiness
also i think many of the same arguments made against Tor could be applied to any VPN, browser or operating system – all have bugs and vulnerabilities that have been discovered and patched and more that haven’t yet been discovered, or haven’t been disclosed
in the case of Tor, the association with the government/intel is indeed worrisome in my opinion, however as others have mentioned, intel could be running uber-popular VPN services as well and indeed it is difficult in some cases to discover the actual owner of some VPN services (Nord comes to mind)
that said, i am not suggesting that one is better than the other, merely that perfect privacy on the wild world web is a pipe dream
Can you please post a donation address for XMR? I want to give regularly, I value your site
Working on it, thank you!
Does excluding Tor exit nodes from the 14 eyes and nato countries do anything to help or would that create its own unique fingerprint? I have read that it is not possible to identify who is excluding nodes but that excluding that many may leave you with too few nodes, but if they were going to be malicous nodes, it would be harder to have them in the non 14 eyes countries. Thoughts?
You dont talk much about hardware security, what are your throughts on libreboot and security risks of Intel managment?
You dont talk much about OS security, what are your thoughts on Qubes, Trisquel and Tails?
With excluding exit nodes from 14 eyes and fingerprinting, I don’t know…
Correct, hardware security is a huge issue, especially with the IME thing, it’s quite the rabbit hole to go down and I may address it at some point, but haven’t yet.
> what are your thoughts on Qubes, Trisquel and Tails?
All good options, but I don’t spend much time playing with (or commenting on) various Linux distributions, due to other projects and demands that take up time…
MUST READ TOR ARTICLE:
https://medium.com/@thegrugq/tor-and-its-discontents-ef5164845908
http://archive.is/n2BPW
When you use Tor, “you’ll stand out like a f***ing glow stick and you have no good reason to use it except as an evasion tool against state authorities. Good luck explaining that when they ask uncomfortable questions.”
More good quotes:
In addition, most really repressive places actually look for Tor and target those ppl. VPNs are used to watch Netflix and Hulu, but Tor has only one use case – to evade the authorities. There is no cover. (This is assuming it is being used to evade even in a country incapable of breaking Tor anonymity.)
In many ways Tor can be riskier than a VPN:
* VPNs are (typically) not actively malicious
* VPNs provide good cover that Tor simply cannot – “I was using it to watch Hulu videos” is much better than – “I was just trying to buy illegal drugs online”
Good stuff, thanks for sharing. I included some points in the updated article.
Problem with VPN is that your IP and credit card / bitcoin wallet info are linked. And who’s to say VPNs aren’t run by spooks? Of course they are.
One fundamental contradiction in the whole presentation. If the govt uses it to hide their spooks, Tor can’t be broken by design. In other words, “9 times out of 10” it’s got to work. The CMU technique is worrying, as is the SIGNIFICANT compromises from within the Tor organization itself. But “9 times out of 10”, IPs are got through Tor browser flaws, not by breaking Tor itself. Turn off javascript and you’re pretty safe. Proof? Look how many people survive major site busts and show up at the next site. Are they really compromised but the intel agencies wont leak the info to the FBI? Possibly. That’s just to say there are many levels to this Tor game. Unless you’re a top level actor the intel agencies are willing to burn a zero-day exploit on, you’re probably safe on the Tor network.
If intel agencies are willing to burn a zero-day exploit on, you probably need to work harder than adding a VPN before the Tor entry node.
Otherwise, a very interesting article.
Hi Tong Dong Wu Shu
Hey I’m no expert are you ?
Your entitled to say and think –
“Problem with VPN is that your IP and credit card / bitcoin wallet info are linked. And who’s to say VPNs aren’t run by spooks? Of course they are.”
@That doesn’t make it’s understandingly correct to the RP readers or TRUE as well… Just possibly being a malformed inexperienced hearsay opinion spread by an intel agencies spook ; )
–
Nothing should be LINKED with a VPN’s purchase/use of a user if done correctly using the leading vetted VPN’s.
Key use in a VPN on the data transmission as it’s encrypted through the VPN tunnel to the server of your choice or hops chosen. In a VPN’s enlisted use you know the flow of your data as you’ve chosen it.
VPN’s are out there in advertising, vetting user and audited reviews on their service so hopefully no government sponsored lies or spys.
*Using Tor you do not know or choose, Tor routes your traffic through several Tor servers and the path is random and changes every 10 minutes.
Tor Nodes can be poisoned making it’s network questionable.
–
VPN’s
*The IP address is shared with many others of it’s paid users connected to a specific server and it’s user selectable.
*You can sign up with many paid top ranked VPN’s anonymously and pay with a Gift Card purchased with cash locally (brick-n-mortar).
*Alias email or temp burner mail used for VPN login credentials as well using a browsers proxy or VPN to hid your IP/location at signup.
– – – VPN’s can link purchases if you make it an easy digital trail – you want anonymity and paying for it starting out with a new VPN that way doesn’t hurt .
Just before reading this article, I saw that TAILS 4.0 is out. It relies on the Tor network, but also has a lot of other privacy/security features. From the sounds of your article, it looks like I could get most of the benefits of TAILS if I used it on a machine that has a good VPN installed, despite the problems with Tor.
Is this a reasonable analysis?
–Bill
Yes, for example if you’re running Tails in a VM, with a VPN running on your host machine.
Nice article but why do you think using Tor over VPN is great idea? Tails documentation says that VPN creates permanent exit or entry node (depends on whether you set up VPN befor or after Tor). VPN is not what you want to become more anonymous.
As explained in the article, correctly using a VPN with Tor is better than using Tor alone, for the reasons stated in the article.
HI Sven,
Thanks for the great articles and May I suggest.. you should write in http://www.medium.com so that you will get some incentive.
> Never mind the fact that the Tor network is a popular hangout for pedophiles and drug dealers – along with the law enforcement these types attract.
Lol, what a hell of a statement
I don’t even think it’s a difficult choice to determine whether Tor is safe or not, plus it’s slow as hell.
When I first tried it, I looked at where my data was going on the “Tor nodes” & when I kept seeing different connections, my first thought was “who the hell does that server/PC belong to”? It wasn’t like I was dealing with a private company.
Once I saw that, I thought it’d be unsafe to use, so never went back to it. To me, it was an easy risk assessment.
Sven, a good no logs VPN is a wise choice…for now…but there is something more worrying on the not-too-distant horizon. Are you aware of the reports that Google has achieved “quantum supremacy” using a 53-qubit D-Wave quantum computer? Also D-Wave has just announced a 2048-qubit model. Sure, these machines cost millions of dollars so that only wealthy organisations can afford them, but of course that includes governments, especially the military. Such powerful machines will surely render even top-level military-grade encryption as we know it (RSA, AES) OBSOLETE!! Now the NSA will be able to crack any encryption as a quantum computer excels at this one task. Unlike a standard computer, it addresses the problem symmetrically (not asymmetrically) which reduces the time to crack encrypted data by orders of magnitude – from many millions of years using the best modern supercomputers (not a viable or possible option) to mere seconds using a quantum computer. I thinks it’s going to take a new method such as quantum encryption (using tangled pairs) to even begin to address the problem, but the machinery for that is prohibitively expensive at present. Any thoughts about this coming threat to online security are appreciated. Regards, Paulie.
I’m not a cryptographer so I’m not sure. However, even with today’s quantum computers, strong encryption standards remain unbreakable from a purely mathematical standpoint. This is an interesting topic. I read that Tutanota decided to not use PGP because it limited their ability to upgrade encryption standards against future quantum computer attacks. So yes, upgraded encryption will be necessary to stay ahead.
I didn’t know that about Tutanota, so it’s interesting that they were already thinking that far ahead. I’m not a cryptographer either, but, as I understand it, todays quantum computers have so far not been able to crack strong encryption because they did not have “supremacy” – meaning that a 53-qubit machine such as Google are using can only crack a 53-bit algorithm instantaneously, something to do with bit equivalency. So to crack a 256-bit encryption quickly requires a 256-qubit quantum machine. Now that D-Wave has a 2048-qubit machine surely no current encryption will be unbreakable due to the massively parallel processing of individual bits. Cryptocurrency could be one of the first victims! I guess we’ll just have to wait and see…
Hi Paulie,
Great heads-up !
Would you be so kind to offer link(s) to yours/or/the sourced information’s origin. As help aids for learning/researching folks
Any supplied support-sourced link(s) in a comment here would be for-
1) Backups your comment’s point and offers a location to the sourced information’s, [hopefully chaining back] to original origin. As well as, gives a landmark [here] to the source of the comment’s information. [Proof – for the hard to sell or learning sort – kind]
2) Makes it easy for the RP readers to follow up on/for/to more facts and details into an interesting topic they find of value.
Hope to see more of your comments being offered here : )
Thanks and Greetings
@Paulie: What difference does it make about whether Google have this “quantum supremacy”? Did we doubt that a government wouldn’t or already get it already? I don’t doubt the Chinese have been using quant computing for decryption for at least a couple of years, the fact is, everyone here, Sven included, has no idea whether governments current capabilities are or will be in the next 1-2 years.
The question is, are users like us doing as much we can to ensure private communication? The answer is yes & that’s as true now as before standards like OpenVPN came to be, prior to previous VPN standards, some created by Microsoft, have been cracked by the US government. There was nothing users can do then & there may not be now, IF quad computers can decode VPN protocols, my guess would be…for now…they can’t, but none of us here are foolish enough to believe that’ll be in perpetuity, as the only thing that’s permanent, is change.
So what’s the solution? New VPN standards come out, with a mathematical calculation that a Quad computer can’t solve, there’s probably some front-of-the-class maths nerd with a revolutionary method working on it right now with a private or even a government cyber-security institution & as it gets adopted commercially.
And then when this becomes the VPN/encryption standard, a “Septillion” processor method will eventually be developed in an attempt to defeat it & the cycle goes on.
The sky isn’t falling, it just appears closer sometimes.
Wow Richard Allen what a perspective, hope you keep your comments like this coming.
But Paulie’s comment is just as good in another area that we are children to.
Compared mildly to – calling out are we there yet!
Like the cross country car rides of our youth being hauled around by the parents. I don’t doubt we’ll get there or it’s here now in some fashion.
I could also apply your logic of – “the fact is, everyone here, Sven included, has no idea whether governments current capabilities are or will be in the next 1-2 years.”
– Holds a true ring to me as quantum computers loom in technologies path.
.
Then where’s the practical aptitude here going to be of firing up one of these futuristic nex-gen babies as that each units run might be as expensive as one of the early space missions.
I’m not talking building components but, I’m talking built ready made to hit the on switch.
I see the areas of National Defense, Space related, and serious global climate change as it’s first use.
Will the NSA have a chair at the console of one, again (I’d imagine) these super computers size being compared to and if not much larger than the very early IBM/UNIVAC computers that big business and our government had in the mid early 70’s.
Not pocket size but complex size scattered out as the rooms in a 4,000 sq. ft. homes layout say.
Someday NSA will get access and I see it depending on the targets profile, rank level of threat, priority and such factors.
People living today I’d hope would of pasted on before NSA is doing 24hr operations at the console of a quantum computer. Then I’d worry of the vast data pools being trapped and stored today of our online life and the not so distant past when it all started being done on ourselves by big brother.
Then that knowledge gained in the data is used to CONTROL the future descendants of our genes. The rich also just happened to be the founders of the US, they have a stake in it to stay rich as the US is to be powerful.
Thanks
Hello Hard Sell and Richard Allen, great points from both of you, which I appreciate 🙂 We know the sky is not falling just yet, but it does pay to be aware of what changes are happening. It is true, as Richard mentions, that big governments have been hoovering up citizens’ data for a long time now and always use the best technology available, probably tech that is maybe 5 to 10 years ahead of tech that has been released to the consumer sphere. I mentioned Google because they are, to my mind at least, one of the most nefarious companies who have no qualms about engaging in military research. It is true also that trying to stay ahead of hackers and other privacy invaders has always been, and probably always will be, a cat and mouse game. However, it appears that the rapid developments in quantum computing present a huge paradigm shift in favour of bad actors. Why should this be? Just one reason at the moment – cost! When everyone was just using readily available PCs with silicon-based processors the playing field was more level and advantage was gained only by a programmer’s efficiency and creativity. With a quantum computer which uses exotic metals such as niobium or holmium, uses expensive cryogenic cooling, is bigger than an American refrigerator and costs over 15 million dollars, it becomes a unit unfordable by even most academic research labs in many countries. I think it will be a LONG time before this tech filters down to the masses. There is the catch – such a system is also needed to program quantum encryption which is unbreakable by another quantum machine. I have no doubt that there are some very bright mathematical minds somewhere at work on such problems, and one can only hope that there may be another easier method that can resist quantum decryption! Here is one link I found about this. Putting aside for a moment what perhaps appear to be some outlandish views by the author, there is some solid background info there with graphics and links to other sources.
[https://www.naturalnews.com/2019-09-24-d-wave-2000-qubit-quantum-computing-encryption.html]
Kind regards and thanks 🙂
Greetings Paulie,
Love to clear up somethings by offering my aid.
I noticed the 🙂 square boxes in your last comment.
Your offering a : ) here and getting the 🙂 shown – just put a space-bar character between the : and the ) to show your : ) or ; )
I don’t know a lot of academic knowledge from my past to use in the present, but by just experimenting with things and applying what I do know – I find solutions just like : ) being described above.
50% – is then maybe possible where people like me (the oldschool kind) conversing on a medium as this to the different levels of savvy tech heads, especially where it opens up thoughts into good protective actions and solutions for all can hurt any.
I do mean by oldschool as evaluating myself to how a very early caveman learnt. His world was not a tech driven one and as my early youth’s life was near the time in modernization to US life after the last great war in a push-button world era that was growing fast but, we were poor.
So the only virtual reality we had was our imagination – that in itself, I believe helps aid my troubleshooting and problem solving skills.
Amongst that era was scouts, chores and hobbies and paid kids work if lucky – where one really laid hands on everything in gaining their knowledge as nothing was electronic or virtual growing up in a 1960’s timeline.
.
Cavemen had to learn to exist by observing his world and how it’s creatures there went about it.
Quick Ex: trees fall and roll down a hill = wheel
Beavers teeth and tail = tools
Ants working together = society and civilizations start
Then alive and moving life shared common traits and/or Anatomy items. *Body parts head – limbs, eat and excrement, shelter down.
Quick, but I hope threads it together from my perspective – as just in understanding how to observe and then in breaking it down into sub-smaller parts and comparing them to common patterns found, or of the logical effect and actions therein to anything you’ve known.
– – Can’t help but feel society will loose some survival mechanism to itself in time with all of modern techs affect on life.
)Women want to air problems – Men hear problems and want to fix it.(
POINT I’ve been long worded to get to is – doing it real in a hands on approach is setting you on a path to be able to accept or dismiss by your own skill set (troubleshooting and problem solving) and not to follow so much as a cloned cog in the big capitalism wheel where it’s greed knows no empathy or restrictions as long as it’s powered by your consumer dollar and the military behind it can bark loud enough to thwart off any change or revision…
–
Please allow me these in aid for all as I try to pull things together for RP readers.
THIS IS PART 1
Part 2 follows – because I can’t do KISS
@Paulie, THIS IS PART 2
– *Then I believe it was me ‘Hard Sell’ that you meant associated with “big governments have been hoovering up citizens’ data for a long time now” – great mental picture (vacuum cleaner) by the way…
THIS has been a pet peeve of mine since I’ve learnt of it back in my early years in coursing the web as I’ve stumbled on knowledgeable Digital Privacy and Data Retention topics.
All that I found were mostly shared as ISOLATED warnings of what’s possible to come or revealed in Trending tech advancements or being hot news for a future doorstep’s availability.
–
There was no RESTOREPRIVACY.COM like sites back then I knew of, so only a brief flash and glimpse into something futuristic as it developed were released as news worthy or an individual’s isolated warning of bleakness in digital privacy issues they could see coming soon.
–
Not seeing these a necessary warning or as I feel now a DEFCON THREAT system that’s needed for today internet use till our governments act globally and we all get a handle on making new laws and their globally being enforced as one basic set concerning the Internets definition as a utility in the modern world regarding it’s abilities, and rolls used thereof in transit/storage of very personal information, and the crime that lives there because a void to enforcements.
As the internet becomes the staple to everyday citizens life around the world, to our children growing up in today’s web life standards need to be set.
The internet is the host for the shortfall to everyone’s privacy and as the web has opened up our boarders and now that connected us all – it’s everybody’s problem…
–
This time I said – “Then I’d worry of the vast data pools being trapped and stored today of our online life and the not so distant past when it all started being done on ourselves by big brother.
[ I refer also to, but didn’t go that far in mentioning Big Data – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_data
-as to where the retention and unknown trap-age in ones web use leads to a cataloging, ID-ing capabilities as the data’s easy availability is achieved of today’s tech era and the big data pools that are being added to as people interact on the web. ]
–
That on the businesses part alone (big or not), amounts in the whole sum of a multi-million/billion dollar advertising online market that has grown up as the result. It’s what I understood that started this digital data trap-age (retention) and it’s roll was actually being meant for advertising purposes.
But, nothing thought to give safeguards in any of the attributes in/of/to it’s forever retention or having established indurated privacy guards in place / and last not the foresight to know any better.
Thus in allowing for it’s (data retention) as an original advertising purposes to which that has yet caused another use for the private users digital data as BigData storage and search capabilities in new tech opened up and widened this gaping hole to our privacy over our Internets use in the US as well the world.
This in turn with technologies rapid advances and not vetted deployments throughout the digital industry realm has yet created another challenging entity for our private data’s retention especially for sales and closely the same as Big Data, though it’s a Brokage to sell off to the highest bid that wants your data.
MUST WE FORGET KNOWLEDGE IS POWER – who holds the most information has the power over money…
–
This fact of a loss to our digital privacy must travel the path of lest resistance – is there a connection here as the US is the gravity holding the 5, 9, and 14 eyes nations at bay in some consortium terms not disclose to average laymen.
In the US if the internet system was to be classified as a Utility, it would be protected by regulatory laws for our privacy just the same as our landline phones and snail mail systems have developed.
The FCC was very close during the last seated president’s tenure to this classification.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/05/why-losing-title-ii-means-losing-net-neutrality-and-privacy
But as I understand, the currant FCC chairman’s seated ruling 5 year termed time length can be shortened by a new elected inbound presidents choice to change over the FCC agency members in favor of their political party outcome in voting on the issues presented to it as there are 5 seats.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Communications_Commission
SCROLL to Commissioners.
If I’ve got something wrong or think I’ve used a good link and it’s bad- advise me please, as some time ago I was embroiled to everything I could find for discovery.
Related bookmarks from my past:
Consumer capitalism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_capitalism
Onguard Online –
https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/features/feature-0038-onguardonline
7 Ways to Protect Yourself Like a Cyber Security Expert
https://blog.f-secure.com/7-ways-to-protect-yourself-like-a-cyber-security-expert/
A new era in protecting your digital footprint
http://www.assurantsolutions.co.uk/A-new-era-in-protecting-your-digital-footprint.html
Concerned About Your Digital Privacy? You Should Be
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/security/how-to/a12895/why-you-should-be-concerned-about-your-digital-privacy/
Steps towards tracking and managing your digital footprint
http://www.idt911.ca/KnowledgeCenter/Articles/ArticleDetail.aspx?a={5162210D-25A0-4B76-83B9-FA90F00588CF}
Digital Footprint
http://digitallearn.org/sites/default/files/cop/Your Digital Footprint.pdf
Nearly One-Third Of Americans Hide Information Online
http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2015/03/16/393337446/pew-nearly-one-third-of-americans-hiding-information-online?snowingthem=
this has been very enlightening thank you sven. there are many clueless people on reddit who outright recommend *against* using a vpn with tor, claiming it will jeopartise your anonymity. they usually like to back up their claims with this link: https://matt.traudt.xyz/p/mRikAa4h.html. myself i would just feel naked entering this rotten network without a vpn don’t even have to read your reasoning for it. it just makes sense.
Yes, reddit (today) has largely become an echo chamber where everyone thinks the same. The platform (just like social media) rewards people with points for going along with the group consensus, i.e. Groupthink. With this article, many will scream “FUD” and then just ignore all facts.
Sven, Tor developers themselves recommends not to use Tor with VPN.
More detalis: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/doc/TorPlusVPN
Not correct! In my article I am specifically recommending that if people want to use Tor, they should do the following: You -> VPN -> Tor (Combining Tor and a VPN with other methods can be problematic and risky. Maybe I’ll add an update to the article to explain this more.)
Tor developers actually agree with me in that my recommended setup can offer more privacy and security:
“might prevent your ISP etc from seeing that you’re using Tor”
“This can be a fine idea, assuming your VPN/SSH provider’s network is in fact sufficiently safer than your own network.” [Since nearly ALL internet providers are spying on people and recording traffic, a non-encrypted network through your ISP is NOT safe in terms of privacy.]
“Another advantage here is that it prevents Tor from seeing who you are behind the VPN” [This point is key]
“So if somebody does manage to break Tor and learn the IP address… then you’ll be better off.”
As we proved in this article, Tor is broken and is being exploited by US government agencies. People can scream “FUD” all they want, but this is a proven fact and beyond debate. Therefore everyone still using Tor should enter the Tor network through a VPN to mask their real IP address.
The obvious caveat here is to use a good VPN provider, such as a verified no logs VPN service in a safe privacy jurisdiction.
There are also some false claims in the beginning of that article:
“Most VPN/SSH provider log, there is a money trail, if you can’t pay really anonymously”
Logs: There are verified no logs VPN services.
“Money trail”: This is a huge misconception that is promoted by people who don’t know what they’re talking about. A “money trail” has no bearing on the effectiveness or encryption of the VPN. VPNs are not illegal and are becoming mainstream privacy tools. If an adversary knows you have a subscription with a specific VPN service, this has literally zero bearing on the effectiveness of the VPN. Even if the adversary has your username and password, this still has no bearing on the effectiveness or encryption of the VPN. VPN encryption is dynamic and negotiated new with each connection. And if you are paranoid about “money trails” then pay anonymously.
“can’t pay really anonymously”: Totally false, perhaps blatant lying to scare people away from VPNs. Most VPNs offer anonymous payment options, such as gift cards or Bitcoin, with no name required. You only need a valid email, and you can easily setup an anonymous/burner email for this purpose that’s not connected to your identity. Done.
Update: I added a section to the article addressing some of these issues.
Another great rebuttal given – Sven.
1) Trouble with some people’s set in stone beliefs, is that it could be a foundations point (area), as they grown from in any knowledge they’ve achieved of topic.
You shake their foundation(s) hard enough by your no nonsense logic with providing experience of the facts in proof and to any sourced links into it’s origins.
– They either open up to theses new insights for them of your perspective, or they stay hard set as tunnel visioned tuned in and closed off to an inspection – possibly for fear of everything comes tumbling down to them – they would feel.
– – Some other site owners response is given like a lightening bolt to the seat of their pants or it’s flash is meant blinding hot to drive them away.
Your not that way Sven, you give care and respect when due with your responses of help to the comments left by your readers here.
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If I were them and HEY – I REALLY LIKED ‘THAT’ = ? to what.
I’d evaluate the new learnt facts of the ? against my own threat model and that of it’s roll to my own OP systems hardened foundation (setup/programs/service = foundations armor) I’ve tried to create. If I’d then find the ? a bust for me, I’d keep all the bust factors learnt in mind looking for suitable replacement(s).
Really I’ve lost nothing as we have to learn/relearn anyways in anything. Especially relearning as technology advances in everything.
So it’s filed in the brain as it’s one circle of knowledge that I’d then look for any commonality with my other learnt circles of knowledge I’ve gained over time.
**THINK about the Olympic flags image (here) – where you see the circles overlap, I see these as doorways or intersections into some circles that I feel I know nothing about, or as I as anyone would naturally think for an area new to them.
But I find in comparing the patterns and abilities of said new circle’s knowledge with my other knowledge circles for commonalities can open it’s exploration path(s) quicker to my own understanding a new topic circles area.
Hope that last part is helpful to the novice.
Good insight, Hard Sell.
I understand that “money trail” can be mitigated through cryptocurrencies but that’s not the main concern. The use cases of Tor over VPN in my opinion are mainly two. Hiding your Tor usage from ISP and the other is hiding your IP address from the entry node(guard node). The first problem is easily solved by using a bridge, which is the recommended option. The second problem depends on your choice. Who gets to see your IP address — the VPN server or the entry node. I get the possibility of malicious nodes but Tor has strong defence to mitigate their capability. Tor is open-source and constantly updated. It is under heavy watch from security advocates so injecting malicious code is not easy. “No logs VPN” are only reliable if they are open-source and audited regularly, not a one-time stunt. In my knowledge only Mullvad does this. If I have to trust a VPN to protect my privacy, not for streaming, I would choose them.
Thank you for this article. The main problem remains the cost and lack of anonymity for using VPN’s.
If a user decides to use a VPN, he will have to give all his details and most likely bank/card details to the VPN provider: therefore removing all anonymity and full privacy.
Tor, obviously is far from being really anonymous and private. You can even see when using it the discrepancy between the IP addresses they pretend to use and the real IP addresses seen by the server/website you browse. The last versions of Tor being even less practical as they don’t even show the circuits anymore.
Clearly, if I was a dictator and if I wanted to catch all my opponents, I would create a ‘fake private’ network where they would feel safe to share the most private information, so I just have to wait until I can fetch, collect, and catch them.
Maybe Tor has never been anything else than that…
Yes, there are many people who see Tor as a sort of honeypot, data-collection tool.
Regarding your comment on VPNs, “If a user decides to use a VPN, he will have to give all his details and most likely bank/card details to the VPN provider: therefore removing all anonymity and full privacy.” This is not correct. With most VPNs you only need to provide an email address (for account credentials) and then pay. This can easily be done anonymously if you want to go that route:
1) Simply get a burner or anonymous email that’s not connected to anything. There are numerous options here.
2) Pay with an anonymous payment method:
– Cryptocurrency
– Gift cards
– Virtual card, which allows you to use a fake name and address for the billing information. With Privacy.com, for example, the VPN won’t have your real name, but the virtual card service will.
I personally think the need for anonymous payment with VPNs is overblown, especially if you are using a verified no logs VPN that does not correlate traffic/browsing activity to user accounts, while also using shared IPs with other users (blending in).
Totally agree with your rebuttal given – Sven.
For laymen s gift cards are the way to go.
Buying gift cards locally in brick-n-mortar with cash is the easiest way to conceal an online payments information – if accepted by a service, (doesn’t require a separated account setup to use gift cards, as the re-loadable cards would have you do !)
††† The thing with VPN’s is the payment has a great chance of being tracked to one’s identity. Pay with a Visa or pay with some crypto-currency purchased with a Visa, and you may as well invite the FBI into your home to personally view your browsing! At least that way, you can try to explain why you are looking at unlawful gay-conversion classes or talking about Jesus in a public school while your friends who are researching how to use hormones and surgery to become the opposite sex need no VPN – that’s perfectly legal.
No. You are assuming that because an adversary knows you use a VPN, then that means they can automatically decrypt your traffic and see everything. This not how VPNs work. Even if an adversary knew your VPN username and password, it still does not affect the encryption or security of the VPN. It just means the adversary could use the VPN for free. VPN encryption is dynamic and negotiated new with each connection. Don’t think of it like a password for emails, it doesn’t work that way.
In the same light, anonymous payment also does not matter if you are using a trustworthy no logs VPN. VPNs are not illegal and are becoming more mainstream every day. Having a VPN account means nothing, especially with so many average people using VPNs for streaming, Netflix, torrenting, etc. So don’t confuse buying a VPN = de-anonymization. That is a false assumption.
Thanks so much Sven for setting them and the record straight.
So much mis-information people have beliefs of.
.
Read a few top comments of late and too, A gush of Proton trolls in comments? Or simply they buy into the printed hype of proton not knowing any better..
– Is not the majority of internet traffic of the world being routed though the good ole’ US of A a matching concern here as well?
Couple of comments mentions Proton VPN from Switzerland, but if one search the net one would find some question marks around Proton’s privacy, it works for average Joe and is pretty safe but in all honesty so is Google too, but it’s not the first choice, do a search and investigate!
There is another very effective, reliable, and trustworthy VPN provider that also provides secure email services. Its name is ProtonVPN and ProtonMail, which is in Switzerland and was started by people who worked for CERN.
>”(generally too slow to stream a Youtube video without interruptions)”
You forgot to mention that many Tor advocates and users heavily advise to not stream anything over Tor, as Tor was not designed to handle streaming, which is, another drawback from using Tor for day-to-day average-life purposes.
First, forgive me for my poor English! 🙂
Well, despite the fact that privacy is a chimera (not only on the internet: we use credit cards, walk under cameras and so on), we can use some tools to mitigate the control of the Big Brother. Tor is not the best tools, but good VPN’s (not that free scam we find on Play Store) can be a first good step to be a bit safer.
I suggest Proton VPN: I use it on my Linux Debian and it works like a charm: it has the multi-hop option (in several countries), it has the kill switch, it doesn’t leak DNS or IP at all and it has a bunch of ready to go TOR dedicated servers, so you don’t have to set up the onion router! You just have to choose the connection marked with “TOR”. Ok, it’s not safe as the multi hop server, but if you use this solution your ISP cannot see you’re using TOR: it can go back at least to the VPN and not to your real IP. In other words VPN is a shield between you and your ISP while using TOR. Many other VPN use similar solutions but in my opinion Proton is one of the coolest.
Please, don’t trust free VPN services: you don’t know how they make money and they can be honey-pots! Perhaps selling your data to gov agencies and corporations. Choose a trusted paid VPN (Proton is an option but there are many other good services) and you can get a decent corner (if not the whole garden) of privacy.
Finally, if we want to communicate using our smartphone we’d better choose tools like Threema, Wire, or Wickr ME and Signal (even if somebody says Signal is a trap, a honey-pot, but I cannot say who’s right and who’s wrong).
> Please, don’t trust free VPN services: you don’t know how they make money and they can be honey-pots!
Riseup VPN is trustworthy, and doesn’t need an account.
1. Based in the US, which resulted in:
2. Riseup confirms it received two FBI warrants and gagging order
What about I2P? Any current alternatives?
Well, aside from I2P, there’s also the Freenet Project.
What about the Jap/Jondo project? It was a thing some time ago, but now you
don’t hear too much about it.
https://anonymous-proxy-servers.net/en/jondo.html
https://anon.inf.tu-dresden.de/index_en.html
Not directly related to the Tor browser, but media and journalists often “hang-out” on the “dark” and “deep” web to obtain information from their “sources” which they normally couldn’t get anywhere else.
Obviously, search engines like Google can’t index the deep or dark web. Are there any directory listings you would be able write about or discuss in the comments section here on how one can find and access these tor/ “onion” links?
Well I’m not sure what .onion sites you are referring to, but you can simply download the Tor browser bundle and access .onion sites.
While I see the concept of Tor as something as being good for privacy, before I ever considered using it, I read about how it was a network of volunteers & how I could’ve set up my PC as a Tor node, so my first thought was “Well, surely I’d be open to virus & information I send could be read be anyone, who has the means to intercept my data”.
I always considered it a non-starter &…it was too damn slow.
I cannot understand how people could think that a network controlled by people whom they didn’t know, for free, verses a paid service like a VPN with a reputation to uphold, would be safe, where the potential for data gathering & hacking is almost unlimited, particularly if a state agency opts to or controls much of the infrastructure.
Snowden can praise it all he wants, easy for him to say, he’ll be stuck in Russia for the rest of his life probably (I do praise him for his courage).
Tor for me, is a thumbs down.
VPN is a centralization of information about you and thus centralization of power over you. The perceived safety of Tor comes from decentralizing this information and its power. It’s analogical to autocracy vs democracy debate. You can argue that a country under one wise and virtuous ruler works way better and more efficiently than any democratic one, but for many such system is just too dangerous. They prefer to let idiots vote rather than give all the power to one person, whoever he would be.
Hi Sven,
Friendly like help me understand : )
1. “Tor truly is like an onion” wouldn’t that mean spying agencies communicating over it would occupy layers (best anonymity) than the public can access of the more than seven thousand relays known ?
[The core principle of Tor, “onion routing” in purpose was protecting U.S. intelligence communications online.]
2. “TLS encryption” otherwise known as symmetric cryptography, where both keys are used for the encryption and decryption of data.
The first public release of TOR occurred in 2003, and TLS updated last in RFC 6176 (March 2011), Doesn’t raise a flag of concerns and do you know when TOR was last updated ?
3. In a 2009 study revealed Tor and the alternative network system JonDonym (Java Anon Proxy, JAP) are considered more resilient to website fingerprinting techniques than other tunneling protocols.
Would that still hold true in 2019 ?
4. What’s your opinion of JonDo, JonDonym , JonDo/Tor-Secure-Live-DVD?
5. In 2016, (Mouse fingerprinting) in a proof of concept exploits the “time measurement via JavaScript” issue which has been an open ticket on the Tor Project. Do you know anything about this and is it still a open ticket ?
6. In July 2016 why did the complete board of the Tor Project resign ?
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Tor is not meant to completely solve the issue of anonymity on the web. Tor is not designed to completely erase tracks but instead to reduce the likelihood for sites to trace actions and data back to the user. In reaching a TOR exit node at which point the cleartext packet is available and is forwarded on to its original destination.
–
Criminals already have lots of options available that provide better privacy than Tor provides. If all the money for TOR comes from the US, then tax payers (private-business) are footing it’s bill’s – YES ?
–
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tor_(anonymity_network)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_Layer_Security
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symmetric-key_algorithm
https://anonymous-proxy-servers.net/en/jondo-live-cd.html
Thank you…
Hi Sven, I don’t plan to reply to your answers or offer a counterpoint.
It’s things I’d like to know and could help others interested – Sir : )
Trackers… trackers everywhere.. )))