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posted by martyb on Monday July 31 2017, @06:52AM   Printer-friendly
from the Shocked,-shocked! dept.

A Tor Project grandee sought to correct some misconceptions about the anonymizing network during a presentation at the DEF CON hacking convention in Las Vegas on Friday.

Roger Dingledine, one of the three founders of the Tor Project, castigated journos for mischaracterizing the pro-privacy system as a bolthole exclusively used by drug dealers and pedophiles to hide from the authorities.

In fact, he said, only three per cent of Tor users connect to hidden services, suggesting the vast majority of folks on the network are using it to anonymously browse public websites for completely legit purposes. In other words, netizens – from journalists to activists to normal peeps – use Tor to mask their identities from website owners, and it's not just underworld villains.

Dingledine even went as far as saying the dark web – a landscape of websites concealed within networks like Tor – is so insignificant, it can be discounted.

Only 3%, but what a 3% it is, eh?


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  • (Score: 4, Informative) by c0lo on Monday July 31 2017, @08:08AM (2 children)

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Monday July 31 2017, @08:08AM (#547028) Journal

    How much of the 3% are:
    - hidden services pertaining to .cia, .nsa and .mil? (given that Tor was initially designed "with the purpose of protecting U.S. intelligence communications online." [wikipedia.org])
    - honeypots ran by "children"? (the internet, where men are men, women are men and children are FBI agents [tvtropes.org])

    --
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 31 2017, @09:20AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 31 2017, @09:20AM (#547057)

    I realize this is a stupid question, but I'm asking for a friend: if the Tor network is anonymous how does he know only 3% of the traffic is connecting to hidden services? If the destinations are that easy to determine wouldn't some TLA just analyze them and see what those 3% are offering?

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Monday July 31 2017, @11:14AM

      by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Monday July 31 2017, @11:14AM (#547090) Journal

      I think (only think, I don't know) that it would be relatively simple to watch the exit nodes. If 97% of all traffic goes out an exit node, then it's reasonable to extrapolate that only 3% of traffic is making use of hidden services. Of course, while such a fact may be true of all nodes under $organization's control, that doesn't necessarily mean the same is true of all tor nodes. The location of a node may very well change the amount of various types of traffic that it handles.