Tor: anonymity online...<FREE Proxy network...>
ThIs PoSt iS bAsEd On A wIkIpEdIA aRtIcLe...
Overview of "TOR"
Aiming to protect its users against
traffic analysis attacks, Tor operates an overlay network of
onion routers that enable anonymous outgoing connections and anonymous "hidden" services.
Anonymous outgoing connections
Users of the Tor network run an
onion proxy on their machine. This software connects out to Tor, periodically negotiating a
virtual circuit through the Tor network. Tor employs
cryptography in a layered manner (hence the
onion analogy), ensuring
perfect forward secrecy between routers. At the same time, the onion proxy software presents a
SOCKS interface to its clients. SOCKS-aware applications may be pointed at Tor, which then
multiplexes the traffic through a Tor virtual circuit.
Once inside the Tor network, the traffic is sent from router to router, ultimately reaching an
exit node at which point the
cleartext packet is available and is forwarded on to its original destination. Viewed from the destination, the traffic appears to originate at the Tor exit node.
Tor's application independence sets it apart from most other anonymity networks: it works at the
TCP stream level. Applications commonly anonymised using Tor include
IRC,
instant messaging and browsing the
Web. When browsing the Web, Tor is often coupled with
Privoxy – a filtering
proxy server – that aims to add
privacy at the application layer.
Not all Tor nodes are equal. They describe themselves with several flags: DIR, Running, Guard, Authority, Fast, Exit, Stable, Valid, V2Dir, BadExit, BadDirectory. To start with, there are Tor Authority servers which are usually Stable but do not act as an Exit Node. There are Tor Exit Nodes, and the ones with Stable IP addresses announce themselves as such.
Weaknesses
DNS leaks
As with many anonymous web surfing systems, direct
DNS requests are usually still performed by many applications, without using the Tor proxy. Solutions such as the previously mentioned Privoxy or using the command "torify" included with the Tor distribution are possible solutions to this problem.
[3] Additionally, applications using SOCKS5 – which supports name-based proxy requests – can route DNS requests through Tor, having lookups performed at the exit node and thus receiving the same anonymity as other Tor traffic.
As of Tor release 0.2.0.1-alpha, Tor includes its own DNS resolver which will dispatch queries over the mix network. This should close the DNS leak and can interact with Tor's address mapping facilities to provide Tor hidden service (.onion) access to non-SOCKS aware applications.
[4]
Traffic analysis
Steven J. Murdoch and George Danezis from
University of Cambridge presented an article,
[5] in the 2005
IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy,
Oakland, California,
USA, May 8–11, 2005. They presented traffic-analysis techniques that allow adversaries with only a partial view of the network to infer which nodes are being used to relay the anonymous streams and therefore greatly reduce the anonymity provided by Tor. They have also shown that otherwise unrelated streams can be linked back to the same initiator. There have so far been no responses by the development team to this report, which on the face of it seems to destroy the whole aim of Tor.
Eavesdropping by exit nodes
In September
2007,
Dan Egerstad, a
Swedish security consultant, revealed that he had intercepted usernames and passwords for a large number of email accounts, by operating and monitoring Tor exit nodes.
[6] On November 15, 2007, he was arrested on charges stemming from discovering and publishing this information. As Tor does not and by design cannot encrypt the traffic between an exit node and the target server, any exit node is in a position to capture any traffic which is not encrypted at the application layer, e.g. by
SSL. While this does not inherently violate the anonymity of the source, it affords added opportunities for data interception by self-selected third parties, greatly increasing the risk of exposure of sensitive data by users who are careless or who mistake Tor's anonymity for security.
According to Egerstad, "If you analyse the traffic, it's just porn. It's kind of sad."
[7] He also pointed out that Tor is less secure than many users believe. "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."
[7]
Etiquette and abuse
Because Tor is capable of anonymising arbitrary TCP traffic, it attracts its fair share of abuse. Routers maintain an
exit policy of what traffic is and is not permitted to leave the Tor network through that node. It is possible to combat most major abuses of the Tor
network using a combination of addresses and
ports. Potential abuses include:
Bandwidth hoggingIt is considered impolite to transfer massive amounts of data across the Tor network – the onion routers are run by volunteers using their own bandwidth at their own cost.E-mail Anonymous usage of
SMTP (i.e., outgoing
e-mail) can result in
spam. Consequently the default exit policy of Tor nodes rejects outgoing connections to port 25, the port most frequently used for SMTP.
Anonymous hidden services
Although Tor's most popular feature is its provision of anonymity to clients, it can also provide anonymity to servers. By using the Tor network, it is possible to host servers in such a way that their network location is unknown. In order to access a hidden service, Tor must also be used by the client.
Hidden services are accessed through the Tor-specific
.onion pseudo top-level domain. The Tor network understands this
TLD and routes data anonymously to the hidden service. The hidden service then hands over to standard server software, which should be configured to listen only on non-public interfaces. Services that are reachable through Tor hidden services
and the public Internet are susceptible to correlation attacks, and consequently are not really hidden.
An added advantage of Tor hidden services is that, because no public
IP address is required, services may be hosted behind
firewalls and
NAT.
Central sites
The following links only work for web browsers that have Tor installed and enabled. Due to the nature of the network, access to links are dependent on the nodes you are connected to as well as those your tor software queries during each access attempt. As a result, it may take several tries to access these sites. Also, due to the anonymous nature of this network, sensitive material, which may be illegal in one's jurisdiction or simply distasteful, is posted more commonly than on the general Internet.
- core.onion, a simple site containing links to other .onion sites, a simple forum and a comment system.
- The Hidden Wiki, a popular wiki-based index site.
If it is based on u r IP adress i think it would..but i really have no reason to believe that is true...because even if we use a proxy itl only hide u r identity to other sites/servers...but remember u r going thru SLT's server so even if u use a proxy...
WELL TO TELL U DA TRUTH I ACTUALLY DONT KNOW...BUT FOR THA SAKE OF ALL WHO ARE USING BANDWITH LIMITTED ADSL WHY DONT U TRY IT AND POST ???!!!
