This attack has been known for years now. And tor is simply not able to defend against it without a complete redesign.
The potential for timing attacks has been known since the beginning of Tor. In other words, more than a decade. But that doesn’t mean you can’t defend against it. One way to defend against it is by having more nodes. Another way is to write clients that take into account the potential for timing attacks. Both of these were specifically mentioned in the article.
Based on what was in the article and what’s in the history books, I’m not sure how to interpret your comment in a constructive way. Is there anything more specific you meant, that isn’t contradicted by what’s in the article?
I2p has issues that can more easily lead to deanonymization attacks. It says it on the FAQ
Confirmed the troll.
From the FAQ:
Before you use I2P, use Basic Computer Hygiene Always! Apply your OS vendor provided software updates in a prompt manner. Be aware of the state of your firewall and anti-virus status if you use one. Always get your software from authentic sources.
It may be dangerous to use I2P in what the project calls “Strict Countries”
Most I2P peers are not in those strict countries and the ones that are, are placed in “Hidden Mode” where they interact with the rest of the network in more limited ways, so that they are less visible to network observers.
Unlike Tor, “exit nodes” - or “outproxies” as they are referred to on the I2P network - are not an inherent part of the network. Only volunteers who specifically set up and run separate applications will relay traffic to the regular Internet. There are very, very few of these.
There is an outproxy guide available on our forums, if you would like to learn more about running an outproxy.
If you are hosting something sensitive, then your services will go down at the same time that your router goes down. Someone who observes your downtime and correlates it to real-world events could probably de-anonymize you with enough effort.
I2P has defenses available against this like multihoming or Tahoe-LAFS
I2P does not encrypt the Internet, neither does Tor - for example, through Transport Layer Security (TLS). I2P and Tor both aim to transport your traffic as-is securely and anonymously over the corresponding network, to its destination.
In addition, you may be vulnerable to collusion between the outproxy operator and operators of other I2P services, if you use the same tunnels (“shared clients”).
In theory, if you’re accessing the clearnet, then it is no better or worse than TOR. It is a little better if you’re stay in I2P land.
Don’t listen to me or him. If you’re reading this, go to the FAQ (https://geti2p.net/en/faq) and make your own decisions.
Nope, I2P is still vulnerable to timing attacks. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garlic_routing
You linked an article that doesn’t say anything to back up your claim. Why do you say i2p is vulnerable to timing attacks?
isn’t it less vulnerable, though?
it has higher latency, even variable latency if you set up variable hops, and everyone routes the traffic of a lot of other users, so a lot of data they can gather from timing info is noise by default
The TOR network itself is safe - at least assuming the TLAs don’t control at least half of the nodes, which is far from impossible. But let’s assume…
The weak point comes from the browser: that’s how the fuzz deanonymizes users. The only safe browser to use on TOR is the TOR browser, and that’s the problem: it disables so many unsafe functionalities that it’s essentially unusable on a lot of websites. So people use regular browsers over TOR, the browser leaks identifying data and that’s how they get caught.
My understanding is that Tor Browser works fine, there’s just some dumb website owners that block Tor traffic by IP address.
And … guess what … www.bleepingcomputer.com, the source of the story, is one of those.
Maybe email them and let them know about the misconfiguration
Let them know that tor users can’t read their article about Tor
I mean, the advice I’ve heard for one who’s threat model is “the feds are actively trying to identify me” is to have a dedicated burner computer that you do all of your illegal activities on and no other activities. Then of course on top of that avoid saving secrets onto the device and type them in manually every time (ephemeral distros like Tails are good for that)
All VPNs do is change who has your browsing data: your ISP or the VPN operator. You may or may not trust either of them not to keep records, in either case you have no way of verifying this.
ISPs definitely keep records. At least some VPNs claim that they don’t, and that their networks are set up in such a way that they can’t. Some organizations claim to validate the claims of the VPNs, but it’s unclear if they’re trustworthy.
So your choice is to use something that definitely keeps logs, or to use a company that at least says that they don’t/can’t.
As I read, they used timing analysis which should be preventable by using an anonymous VPN to connect to tor and streaming something over the VPN connection at the same time. Some of them support multi-hop, like mullvad, which will further complicate the timing analysis because of the aggregated traffic.
How do you get an anonymous VPN? I see mullvad has a pay in cash option. Is that how?
Mullvad accepts monero, that’s probably the most convenient way to pay for it anonymously.
First, randomize your mac, shutdown anything that can “dial home” (updates, sync, logged in apps, etc) then connect to internet then anonymous VPN, then connect to the tor network, use an anonymized browser with NO java enabled, never download anything -copy paste text, and screen cap images-, if your network drops the popo’s are trying to do a “reconnect” attack to see if they can get an unprotected connection to the material you were looking at. Use a livedisk on USB and you likely won’t get bios level attacks, as live disks make it harder to access your bios. Source: a boring ass individual that just wants the gov off their jock strap, suck it Joe my FBI agent, you know what you did.
This looks like it was a timing analysis attack. Basically, they’re trying to figure out which user did something specific. They match the timing of the event with the traffic from the user, and now they know which user did the thing.
It can be fuzzed by streaming something at the same time, because now your traffic is way harder to time analyze when you have a semi-constant stream of data running. But streaming something over Tor is an exercise in patience, (and it’s not something the typical user will just always have running in the background) so timing analysis attacks are gaining popularity.
If I understand correctly, stream isolation will route different connections through different circuits. If you’re doing two different things of a sensitive nature, open different browsers and applications, use random user-induced delays in your actions/responses and PGP-encrypt everything. And listen to what the TOR project says about the mitigations. I have some reading to do myself I guess
That’s for encrypting text, regardless of the medium. Explain “not very good”?
Well it’s not very good, it’s just pretty good.
It uses the same public key unless you manually change it. You don’t get the rolling keys provided by other systems
