Posts tagged #tor

Introduction

When looking at how Tor works, we’ve looked at the various types of nodes that make up the Tor network. However, you’ll notice that we haven’t dealt too much with exit nodes. Exit nodes are the final link in a Tor “circuit”, or path from the client to the server. Since exit nodes send data to the final destination, they can see the data as if it had just left the device.

This visibility puts quite a bit of trust in exit nodes and, for the most part, they tend to act responsibly. However, this isn’t always the case. This post will take a look at what happens when a Tor exit node operator decides to “break bad” and wreak havoc on Tor users¹.

Introduction

Welcome to the third post in my series on how Tor works! In the past two posts, we talked about how clients tunnel traffic through relays, as well as introduced the idea of unpublished relays called bridges.

But how do clients know what relays are active? How is the Tor network actually organized and maintained? This post will answer this question by talking about a living document called the consensus as well as introducing a few very important Tor nodes that run the show behind the scenes.

Introduction

Welcome back to my series on how Tor works! In the last post, we took a look at how Tor operates from a very high level. In this post, we’ll dive a bit deeper, taking a look at a potential issue with relays in order to introduce a new concept: bridges.

Introduction

Tor is an anonymity tool used by those who want to stay private and uncensored when browsing the Internet. Over time, it’s grown to be pretty darn good at this. This makes the security, stability, and speed of the underlying network critical to those depending on it.

But how does Tor work under the hood? In this series of posts, we’ll take a deep dive into the structure and protocols used by the Tor network in order to see first-hand how Tor operates.

Introduction

The Tor Project has announced that they have received threats about possible upcoming attempts to disable the Tor network through the seizure of Directory Authority (DA) servers. While we don’t know the legitimacy behind these threats, it’s worth looking at the role DA’s play in the Tor network, showing what effects their seizure could have on the Tor network.*

Introduction

Tor is often used to protect the anonymity of someone who is trying to connect to a service. However, it is also possible to use Tor to protect the anonymity of a service provider via hidden services. These services, operating under the .onion TLD, allow publishers to anonymously create and host content viewable only by other Tor users.

The Tor project has instructions on how to create hidden services, but this can be a manual and arduous process if you want to setup multiple services. This post will show how we can use the fantastic stem Python library to automatically create and host a Tor hidden service.