Newzbin2 Uses TOR To Kill Domain Blocking Before It Even Happens

enigmax
March 27, 2011
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Last year the MPAA took legal action against UK ISP BT in an attempt to force it to block the domain of Usenet indexing site Newzbin2. While the government and its communications watchdog run around trying to find out if effective site blocking is feasible, Newzbin2 have just taken steps to neutralize it before it even happens.

newzbin As revealed earlier this week, rightsholders from the music and movie industries have identified 100 “copyright infringing” websites which in their ideal world would be blocked at ISP level.

However, if website blocking should prove ineffective at reducing infringement these requests would become pointless even if authorized. So, to ascertain the effectiveness of blocking, Secretary of State for Culture Jeremy Hunt asked communications watchdog Ofcom to look into the matter and report back by spring.

But as the wheels and processes slowly turn, accompanied by calls from the Open Rights Group for citizens to challenge the proposals, those unencumbered by layers of bureaucracy are acting quickly.

As widely predicted, a way around website blocking has been found quicker than it has even been assessed, let alone implemented. First up, one the MPAA’s primary blocking targets – Usenet indexing site Newzbin2.

“Since web blocking seems to be the new DRM for the Dirty Half Dozen and our name has featured high as a prospective victim of a domain name grab or a block, we thought we’d address the problem by the use of the free speech tool Tor,” Mr White from Newzbin2 told TorrentFreak today.

“We have set up a hidden Tor service accessible at http://sc3njt2i2j4fvqa3.onion,” he added.

Without going into huge amounts of detail, what Newzbin2 have done is set up what is known as a ‘hidden service’ with the world-famous TOR anonymity network. This means that by using the above URL with a TOR-enabled browser, anyone can access Newzbin2, even if its domain name is blocked or seized.

For those that don’t want to install TOR there is also another solution. By exchanging the .onion pseudo-TLD with tor2web.org (e.g http://sc3njt2i2j4fvqa3.tor2web.org), .onion URLs can be accessed from a normal browser with no addons whatsoever.

“By running a hidden service we make the MPA’s attempt to knock our name off the web entirely futile,” says Mr White.

“Newzbin2: 1 Stupids: 0,” he concludes.

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Jackschitt10

That last remark was win.
- RANDIE
  
  Usenet is soo god damn EPIC!
Guest

Cryptoanarchy is happening. Awesome.
- Anonymous
  
  pssst… Use IP adresses.
  
  http://85.112.165.75
- Momo
  
  Until encryption is banned, like in China. Or, until all encryption is legally required to have a backdoor built in, like the US is trying to do.
  - SolidSquid
    
    Both are unlikely, as they would both put companies in whichever country tried to put it into place first at a disadvantage to those who were able to exploit this for industrial espionage
  - Scary Devil Monastery
    
    “Banned like in China”?
    
    Yes, perhaps in theory. However, as can be seen clearly in China a ban on encryption remains highly theorethical.
Blah

The only problem with TOR is that it’s slow as fuck.
- Legion
  
  Realistically to get a decent speed you’d need to set up your own exit node, pretty much defeating the object of TOR in the first place…
  - CaptainObvious
    
    You don’t need decent speeds to view web pages or download nzb files though, so the fact that TOR is slow is not a problem at all.
    - Anonymous
      
      Still, people should get with the program and contribute, even if it’s just as a relay rather than an exit node.
      
      It’s the users that make the network work, and running an exit node brings plausible deniability.
  - merethan
    
    Legion, when using a TOR hidden service, no exit node is ever used, as all data transmission remains “within” the TOR network.
    
    One can configure his/her tor node to route data but not be an exit node. This is called “bridge”.
    - Anonymous
      
      No, they are called relays.
      
      Bridges are a specific type of relay:
      
      “Bridge relays (or “bridges” for short) are Tor relays that aren’t listed in the main Tor directory. Since there is no complete public list of them, even if your ISP is filtering connections to all the known Tor relays, they probably won’t be able to block all the bridges. If you suspect your access to the Tor network is being blocked, you may want to use the bridge feature of Tor.”
  - Ninja
    
    Gives you alibi for whatever legal claims. “I’m only an exit node, I dunno what goes through my tor enabled system.”
    - Bob
      
      I hope the court believes that ‘alibi’ when you are up for distrubuting child porn or suchlike. It sucks i know but i wouldnt want to be accused, simply for not knowing what went through my node. I believe the saying goes…Ignorance is no defense in law.
    - Anonymous
      
      Ignorance of the law is not the defence claimed here.
      
      An entity which provides routing services is not liable for the traffic they carry as long as that traffic is carried without prejudice and is not examined or modified in any way except as may be required to facilitate said routing.
      
      So, basically, the “I’m only an exit node, I dunno what goes through my tor enabled system” is a valid defence unless it can be proved that the traffic wasn’t Tor traffic and/or it originated directly from, or was destined for, the local system.
    - Bob
      
      I hope the court believes that ‘alibi’ when you are up for distrubuting child porn or suchlike. It sucks i know but i wouldnt want to be accused, simply for not knowing what went through my node. I believe the saying goes…Ignorance is no defense in law.
- The-wank
  
  well then set up a node and help out dipshit
- Gargamel
  
  lol yup. Welcome back to to Usenet, on dial-up :D
  - merethan
    
    .nzb files are very small. No need for 4MB/s.
    
    Same with bit torrent: It is perfectly possible to contact ye tracker using TOR and do the p2p file transmission directly between peers.
    Or: Get the .nzb at a hidden service and contact the usenet servers directly.
    - Ninja
      
      I’ve yet to find a trustful source of nzbs before I can venture into any usenet paid service. Any tips?
    - Rugg
      
      Nzbmatrix – one stop shop .
    - BuRnCycL
      
      But, with bittorrent, the tracker is less the issue. It’s the peers you have to concern about. Any one of the peers could be “the man”. Is there a clever way to maintain anonymity to the peers?
    - ed
      
      TOR if you don’t care how long it takes
    - herrblau
      
      using bittorrent over tor isn’t safe, and it can also compromise your other tor activities see https://blog.torproject.org/blog/bittorrent-over-tor-isnt-good-idea
Blah

The only problem with TOR is that it’s slow as fuck.
Blah

The only problem with TOR is that it’s slow as fuck.
Hunter-Killer

HaHa MAAFIA HAS AIDS.
Hunter-Killer

HaHa MAAFIA HAS AIDS.
Hunter-Killer

HaHa MAAFIA HAS AIDS.
http://twitter.com/ltamake Link Tamake

The Newzbin2 owner is awesome.
- Anonymous
  
  All a case of if your enemy is planning to launch an attack on you then to neutralise their attack even before they have begun.
  
  Still this is more to highlight that whatever Jeremy Hunt and Ofcom plan that this can always be bypassed. I am sure that Newzbin2 would much prefer people to enter by their front door and such a block would still be very disruptive.
Anonymous

TOR Made for USG Open Source Spying Says Maker

http://cryptome.org/0003/tor-spy.htm
- Hiod88
  
  Yes, the entire idea of Onion Routing was created by the DoD. That doesn’t mean they can get around it, doesn’t mean they can bypass Tor, doesn’t mean they have anything to do with the owners of Tor or Tor itself, and is therefore irrelevant.
  - Peter
    
    Right, the Government just gives millions of bucks to somebody they don’t have any affiliation with at all .. One of them calls himself ‘Roger Dingledine’ FFS !
    But go ahead and run a exit-node if you like, nothing like helping Uncle Sams spies blend in .. Or you could sniff it, just to see how naive people actually are ..
    - Anonymous
      
      Governments do fund many types of projects that can surprise you including a BT client with video streaming support.
      
      It is easy to see what interest a government has with Onion Routing when this can bypass local foreign Government blockages. This is not so much about Government worker use, who have their own communication methods, but about promoting free speech and democracy.
      
      In other words this is a large attack on the censorship done in countries like China, Iran and North Korea. Citizen exposure to western values can make them become more friendly or even pro-democracy. And that is why sections of the US Goverment would pump funding into this project and promote it in other ways.
      
      I am also quite sure they do exactly know who is behind this for the same reason NASA once found me based only on my name and country. I was surprised then that the US Government would be keeping the names and addresses of foreign citizens and go to all the effort of mailing them some posters.
      
      They can find you… if they want to.
    - Scary Devil Monastery
      
      Given that TOR is open source what you are saying is that the several thousands of unaffiliated software geniuses who’ve looked at the source code and protocol are ALL in conspiracy with uncle Sam…or that the Department of Defense is all-knowing, omnipotent, and has access to super-science technology capable of magically predicting and breaking encrypted networks.
      
      You win a tinfoil hat.
      
      No, seriously.
      First: Yes, the DoD created the TOR project at the outset in order to give operatives behind enemy lines a chance to communicate without enemy interception. In order for that to even work, the method requires security of such a kind that no one can reliably break it. Not even the DoD itself.
      
      Or China/Russia would just toss a billion in research and/or bribes, find out the magic key, and quietly listen in to every US spy at will.
      
      Secondly: The TOR networks strengths and weaknesses are well known and as it’s an open source protocol, any “hidden” catch would be exposed. Not COULD be exposed, WOULD be. The DoD no doubt has skilled programmers and analysts, but even so, they are not good enough to pull the wool over the eyes of several thousand equally skilled programmers with a vested interest in taking the thing apart and checking every last bit for backdoors.
      
      Thirdly: TOR works wonders in countries which have ample political will to block it, technical know-how, and resources. If there was a weakness in TOR capable of casual exploitation, China’s or Iran’s dissidents would NO LONGER be dissenting.
      
      The idea that the TOR network is subverted has the minimum requirement of the DoD possessing powers far surpassing those mythical Iluminati – and which would as a side effect enable the DoD to more or less make the “American Hegemony” a reality in a week or two. Since this hasn’t happened, i judge TOR relatively safe.
    - Peter
      
      ‘what you are saying is that.. blablabla… tin foil hat…blablabla… iluminati…blablabla’
      No, I did not say any of that, YOU did .
      
      People ARE looking at the code, as you say, and you know what ?
      Surprisingly often they find major flaws, like this :
      
      https://eta.securesslhost.net/~pgpboar/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=416&p=588&sid=bbfa23d8538371baaee609c88ff45761#p588
      Get it ?
      Now you tell me that this wasn’t done on purpose ..
      Do you really think the Iranians and Chinese are so stupid that they can’t identify and/or block traffic that has a unique identifier ? So, since Tor-traffic CAN be positively identified, people in repressive countries are running a HUGE risk,
      just so US spies (your colleagues I presume) can conspire on how to install a new
      dictator and/or steal the countries oil .
      
      And how about the Dalai Lama who had his traffic sniffed for months by a rouge
      exit-node operator ?
    - Scary Devil Monastery
      
      No, i very much doubt it was done on purpose. Being able to recognize a protocol by way of DPI is a very hard barrier to surmount, simply because the traffic still carries a recognizeable pattern although you can’t decipher it. A pattern you actually need since the idea is that a recipient should be able to recognize the protocol. The same way you may be able to identify a language as dutch or german even though you don’t speak it.
      
      This is a very old weakness with the tor setup and has been known for quite a while. Here’s the thing. Yes, you can identify traffic as being part of a Tor network. It still isn’t identifiable who sent the message in the first place, nor is it possible to read the traffic. At most you’d be able to guesstimate the size of the data transfer.
      
      That’s part of why onion routing protocols have been developed using tor as a baseline but which carry a somewhat more complicated setup – padding files in order to avoid guesstimation, for example, and randomized TTL.
      
      It STILL doesn’t prevent the fact that in order to expose a Tor user you need physical control of infrastructural hardware which even the DoD does not possess.
      
      So no, i do “get it”. Better than you do, it appears. There are a thousand tricks to hide Tor traffic in the first place – using a secure VPN or proxy in order to log on to it, wardriving a suitable wifi connection, and so on.
      
      Oh, and one more thing – pointing out the feverish fallacies of a conspiracy nut because the poor schmuck doesn’t know computers or how to read a technical review doesn’t make anyone a US “Spy”. I’m on the other side of that particular fence, believing that secure communications belongs in the hands of ordinary people, and that government agencies have neither right, legally or morally, to pull a STASI-like surveillance on anyone without due process.
      
      For all real intents and purposes we actually do know that neither the Iranians nor the Chinese are capable of identifying their own dissidents, nor able to block communications. Tor is one tool enabling people to circumventing such surveillance – but it’s not the only one. That’s why Iran simply pulls the plug on their entire national internet at the ISP level whenever they think there’ll be people in the streets.
      
      Tor is also a dual-use tool. With hundreds of thousands of people using it in a country, trying to find out whoever has something to hide is as realistic as trying to go over every inhabitant of a city in order to find the one criminal you’re after. At best the weaknesses Tor carries intrinsically reduces the amount of people you’d need to raid from a few million to a few hundred thousand.
      
      Now i have no problems believing the DoD or the OOHS would dearly love to spy on every one of it’s citizenry. But I do have big problems with the idea that they’d go about it using a method so daft it’s comparable to a pair of clowns with a bucket and ladder. You want to worry about the DoD start worrying about keylogger trojans and other mass-distributed malware/spyware. Not open source protocols which every skilled hacker around the globe has taken apart for analysis for over ten years.
      
      TL;DR?
      
      Your conspiracy theory fails because it assumes every skilled programmer isn’t. And it makes you a nut because you assume the DoD are, in fact, completely incompetent which goes very badly with the image of them as dangerous.
    - Scary Devil Monastery
      
      No, i very much doubt it was done on purpose. Being able to recognize a protocol by way of DPI is a very hard barrier to surmount, simply because the traffic still carries a recognizeable pattern although you can’t decipher it. A pattern you actually need since the idea is that a recipient should be able to recognize the protocol. The same way you may be able to identify a language as dutch or german even though you don’t speak it.
      
      This is a very old weakness with the tor setup and has been known for quite a while. Here’s the thing. Yes, you can identify traffic as being part of a Tor network. It still isn’t identifiable who sent the message in the first place, nor is it possible to read the traffic. At most you’d be able to guesstimate the size of the data transfer.
      
      That’s part of why onion routing protocols have been developed using tor as a baseline but which carry a somewhat more complicated setup – padding files in order to avoid guesstimation, for example, and randomized TTL.
      
      It STILL doesn’t prevent the fact that in order to expose a Tor user you need physical control of infrastructural hardware which even the DoD does not possess.
      
      So no, i do “get it”. Better than you do, it appears. There are a thousand tricks to hide Tor traffic in the first place – using a secure VPN or proxy in order to log on to it, wardriving a suitable wifi connection, and so on.
      
      Oh, and one more thing – pointing out the feverish fallacies of a conspiracy nut because the poor schmuck doesn’t know computers or how to read a technical review doesn’t make anyone a US “Spy”. I’m on the other side of that particular fence, believing that secure communications belongs in the hands of ordinary people, and that government agencies have neither right, legally or morally, to pull a STASI-like surveillance on anyone without due process.
      
      For all real intents and purposes we actually do know that neither the Iranians nor the Chinese are capable of identifying their own dissidents, nor able to block communications. Tor is one tool enabling people to circumventing such surveillance – but it’s not the only one. That’s why Iran simply pulls the plug on their entire national internet at the ISP level whenever they think there’ll be people in the streets.
      
      Tor is also a dual-use tool. With hundreds of thousands of people using it in a country, trying to find out whoever has something to hide is as realistic as trying to go over every inhabitant of a city in order to find the one criminal you’re after. At best the weaknesses Tor carries intrinsically reduces the amount of people you’d need to raid from a few million to a few hundred thousand.
      
      Now i have no problems believing the DoD or the OOHS would dearly love to spy on every one of it’s citizenry. But I do have big problems with the idea that they’d go about it using a method so daft it’s comparable to a pair of clowns with a bucket and ladder. You want to worry about the DoD start worrying about keylogger trojans and other mass-distributed malware/spyware. Not open source protocols which every skilled hacker around the globe has taken apart for analysis for over ten years.
      
      TL;DR?
      
      Your conspiracy theory fails because it assumes every skilled programmer isn’t. And it makes you a nut because you assume the DoD are, in fact, completely incompetent which goes very badly with the image of them as dangerous.
- http://arancaytar.ermarian.net/ Arancaytar
  
  I don’t even get where Young is going with this. Is he claiming that the government might use and support Tor in order to use it for anonymity? Well, yes; Tor is anonymity software and you can’t publically provide anonymity software while simultaneously restricting access to entities you dislike. If the government uses Tor, this is a good thing because they cannot do that and simultaneously impede or harm it. The benefit of individual citizens securely communicating online infinitely outweighs the cost of the government also doing so, particularly in view of last year’s Wikileaks disclosures being entirely unimpeded by the availability of Tor to the government.
  
  Or is he claiming that there is a backdoor in the publically available source code because the original invention comes from declassified military research, without being able to show evidence? Because that kind of claim is on a level with 9/11 “truth”, the birther movement and creationism.
  
  While I rarely take Young at his word, I usually took him seriously so far, even when his words sounded paranoid. However, it’s hard to do so while reading this, because the reasoning seems to run counter to the foundations of mathematics and science. If a theorem or algorithm is proven to be correct, then it is correct irrespective of its origin.
  
  Onion Routing and tor have known flaws when improperly used, which its developers consistently warn about. However, the concept and implementation are publicly documented. Any criticism of tor’s integrity must come either show evidence from its public source code or from cryptological evaluation. Attacking it based on the origin of the research is disingenuous, fallacious and dishonest.
anonymous

It’s Tor, not TOR
- Anonymous
  
  Yeah, it is now. But it used to be TOR.
- http://twitter.com/Th3_5p3ctr3 Anonymous
  
  Protip: no one cares about Tor’s obsession with specific capitalization. We all knew what he was talking about.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_IZ5BM5GNLA54OADSWGSXAMA7SY Jay

And so, the next game of Whack a mole begins…
- Anonymous
  
  actually, no. It’s more like whack-a…wtf? Since there is nothing to really whack except the physical server or their hosting provider.
  So good luck with that guys.
Neotoasty

Tor. Sounds like that ultra zord from power rangers.
- Anonymous
  
  Yeah, but you can’t kill this one with plastic swords and running around in tights.
  
  But good to see more sites move to TOR. Means more bandwidth in the end.
Anonymous

I believe the U.S. wants Tor to survive for espionage purposes but the U.S. is constantly being lobbied by media pimps to go nuclear on anything and everything that could possibly have anything slightly related to infringement. Knowing the U.S., they will probably take the pimps money but leave Tor be. World War III has started and its the pimps vs. the Internet.
http://www.facebook.com/eric.boehm Jack Murdock

I guess they’re that delusional that they think they can beat the state with a program that they downloaded. If the fed wants to shut the site down the site, they will just confiscate the servers and detain the admins.
- http://twitter.com/xRDVx xRDVx
  
  They can do that now. And that is not the objective of the usage of such tool. The objective is to remain reachable even if government were to block his domain/ip. Nobody said they wanted to run away from getting in jail. But I guess you didn’t really read the headline which is: “Newzbin2 Uses TOR To Kill Domain Blocking Before It Even Happens” — I think it clearly states “kill domain blocking” not “avoid getting in jail” or anything like that. lrn2read
  - Phobophobia
    
    Well done jack – another misquote followed by some propaganda spin.
    
    - let the flaming begin!
  - fr3ak
    
    “were to block his domain/ip” I guess YOU didn’t read the title either, this is to get around domain blocking only, no amount of DNS shenanigans is going to stop an IP block, you would need to use a VPN or similar service that wasn’t affected by the IP block.
    - Anonymous
      
      IP blocking is used to protect against brute force attacks (to the server). It is not something you can use to stop a site from being online. IP’s are dynamic (most of the time), that is one of the reason for the DNS system.
    - fr3ak
      
      Wow that’s just total crap and demonstrates a complete lack of knowledge of network technology. How do you think peerguardian et al work? They aren’t blocking domain names, they are blocking specific IP addresses. IP addresses are not dynamic “most of the time” for websites (though you are correct for most private connections), except in the sense that the owners of domains use their DNS provider to change the IP address(es) assigned to their domain when and if they choose to change the IP (due to host change/server change/whatever). At an ISP level it is totally possible to block an IP address via a firewall, totally ineffective as as I stated previously the domain owner can just change to a new IP address via their DNS provider and the change takes place within a few hours (generally).
- Anonymous
  
  They’ll have to find them first, Jack. And the beauty of a Tor hidden service is that’s nigh-on impossible to do.
- http://twitter.com/Th3_5p3ctr3 Anonymous
  
  1) Tor Hidden processes are difficult to find even with direct access to the server itself.
  
  2) You assume the Hidden process isn’t something that migrates from one server to another.
  
  3) You assume the USG has the ability to bypass the multi-layered encryption Tor uses so they can locate the IP address of the Server with the Tor process…
  
  and 4) Even with all of those prerequisites in place, unless the server is in a country that gives a rip…there’s nothing anyone can do about it.
  
  Obviously you know nothing about how the internet works. Troll elsewhere or lurk moar.
  - http://www.facebook.com/eric.boehm Jack Murdock
    
    The assumption here is that they will be able to confound the collective intelligence services of every US law agency including the FBI, the CIA, etc and they will just give up and ignore the hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of copyrighted material that Newzbin is handing out like it’s candy. I would encourage you to look at the history of the FBI. They have caught some very hard to find criminals. They all thought they would never be found because they had x clever scheme up their sleeve and they would outsmart the entire world. Well Ive got news for you. Now they are locked away.
    
    Anonymous likes to think that they are “anonymous.” They are probably very tech savy kids (who probably dont have much of a social life, but thats another story) and used a lot of the stuff here, but now the FBI is on to them, and some smug kid is gonna get a knock on the door when he least expects it.
    
    You are also assuming that you know more about “how the internet works” than the FBIs entire cybercrime department. I don’t have to be the l33test hacker to know that they have the best of the best and they can and will find you. TF gave out the details, so the FBI need only start here.
    
    Everyone also missed what I was trying to hint at. If they can’t block the site, they will take it off line by force. They think they are safe behind their connections, but wait till a group of armed agents raid their their place. They aren’t going to make the FBI give in. A free program won’t stop one of the most powerful law enforcement agency. If it were that simple, then people would never get caught but they do. All the time. Im not a hacker or someone with any encyclopedic knowledge of computers, but what I do know is that a few people never beat the state. It’s on the news all the time. It sounds corny granted.. you can run but you can’t hide.
    
    And no, I have nothing to do with the recording industry. Im just an ordinary college student. Saying that anyone who opposes illegal file sharing is only doing so because they are being paid off by the copyright industry is just like saying that anyone who is in favor of this stuff is being paid off by the torrent sites. It’s just a dumb excuse so stop embarrassing yourself by using it. Money isn’t the the only motivation in the world. Some people actually believe in moral values.
    - CaptainObvious
      
      There’s a slight flaw in you logic. The FBI has no durisdiction outside the US.
    - http://www.facebook.com/eric.boehm Jack Murdock
      
      Have you ever heard of this organisation called interpol that work with US authorities to enforce laws?
    - Anonymous
      
      But Interpol has no arrest or detention powers, whatsoever. From Wikipedia: “Interpol differs from most law-enforcement agencies—agents do not make arrests themselves, and there is no single Interpol jail where criminals are taken.” Looks like you REALLY know what you’re talking about!
      
      Not.
    - Phobophobia
      
      Interpol are impotent when faced with any local law enforcement. The have little or no jurisdictional powers and normally take an advisory role.
      AND TEAM AMERICA DON’T EXIST!!!!
    - Anonomouse
      
      …wow
    - Guestjeremie
      
      troll detected. *shows radar screen with a distinctive troll shaped blip*
    - Anonymous
      
      Dude, you really have no idea how Tor works, do you?
      
      The US military use it for good reason.
      
      Without almost-omniscient network observation powers (and by that I mean monitoring the traffic passing through almost every router on the Internet in real time, and then decrypting and correlating the data as it happens) there’s next to no chance of tracing a connection from source to destination.
      
      That goes for your all-powerful and almighty US Government and their agencies and military, let alone a few people trying to find someone to sue for copyright infringement.
    - http://www.facebook.com/eric.boehm Jack Murdock
      
      If they wanted to, they could just get log files from the developers of tor if they wanted to. They could get the locations of the servers and use those to trace the connections that way. A few weeks ago there was an article on TF about how anyone could find the IPs of seeders just by using a torrent client. Now newzbin isn’t the same, but the system isn’t perfect either. There are probably some loop holes that they can use.
      
      Plus, the fact that that the government uses it too means that they just understand it that much better.
    - Darth_yoda
      
      What you have said here is frankly wrong. People cannot be traced by reading any kind of log from the developers of Tor. Also Tor is set up in a MASSIVLY robust way that is designed to guard against the type of node attack you have stipulated. If you are interested in understanding the technical details of Tor Steve Gibson (a very well known and respected American computer security expert) explains the technology behind Tor here: http://www.grc.com/sn/sn-070.pdf (about half way down the page). Please educate yourself before you start making incorrect statements, GG.
    - Whatever
      
      Don’t bother, its his most technically retarded comment yet.
      
      Previous trolls mostly stayed away of making baseless technical assumptions.
      
      Maybe some day he needs to screw in a light bulb himself and gets electrocuted in the process because he had another assumption.
      
      PS: All who are running a Tor node, on Jack Murdocks request, please send your data to “the developers” to have them logged.
    - Anonymous
      
      Like I said, you really have no idea how Tor works do you?
      
      Go do some reading and find out just how wrong your statement is.
    - Ninja
      
      Wow Jackie, there you are embarrassing yourself again. I’m no expert at TOR but even I can see how insanely hard would be to even TRY to track something encrypted that flows around several home pcs all around the world before going out to the internet itself. And we’ve seen several blunders from the so called US experts at CIA/FBI/whatever, IT related or not.
      
      No really, you are working against millions here, to try and reach one. And while at that, you are labeling them criminals when most ordinary ppl disagree.
      
      So I’d say it’s safe to assume there’s something wrong here.
    - Hobophobia
      
      shut up murdock,
      
      im sick and tired of your dead business model, and your dumb vibes!
    - Anonymous
      
      Dear God, you’re an idiot. Get off the internet and go to one of your kinesiology classes. That’s the problem with the prolification of higher education, every retard with a computer and a schedule at the local community college assumes they have some authority to speak on matters they don’t undersand. Do some research and come back. No body cares about your opinion if it’s not based on actual knowledge.
    - Scary Devil Monastery
      
      No they can not. It’s that simple. The “developers” have no relevant logs, and every Tor network is spontaneously generated.
      
      Trying to brute force Tor is possible, but the computing power required exceeds that required to predict the precise movements of every atom in the sun by a factor of a few million.
      
      So you can get back to how all-powerful the FBI is when they can teleport, read minds, and have invented the holodeck. Until then, just accept that you are claiming they have powers like super-advanced aliens from some old sci-fi sitcom.
      
      And no, the “government” does not understand Tor better than the average computer expert quite simply because there really isn’t that many advanced things to understand about it. The math and the protocol are dead simple. Which is part of what makes them so powerful.
    - Samkr8
      
      STFU!
    - Gargamel
      
      The FBI is aworld wide joke. If you want a real intelligence service then start talking about one thats actually good like Mossad or MI5 & MI16.
      
      FFS the FBI and CIA still cant find a guy hiding in fucking caves for 10 years lol.
    - http://disqus.com/ Rob8urcakes
      
      Lol
      
      In fact, EPIC lol
      
      btw, he also needs a power supply in his “remote, undiscoverable cave” for the dialysis machine (and I aint kidding).
      
      Sorry about this – but even more LoL ….
    - Phobophobia
      
      “Saying that anyone who opposes illegal file sharing is only doing so because they are being paid off by the copyright industry is just like saying that anyone who is in favor of this stuff is being paid off by the torrent sites.”
      WHAT A CROCK OF SHIT!!
      
      The copyright industry is a multi billion dollar industry – and has made payments to countless individuals.
      just for one example: U.S. District Court Judge Beryl Howell paid 415,000 USD from the RIAA for lobbying work, from 2005 to 2008.
      sources:
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beryl_A._Howell
      http://www.implu.com/lobbyist/37183
      http://www.opensecrets.org/revolving/rev_summary.php?id=31911
      
      Also it was posed on TF yesterday.but you decided not to comment on that thread did you Jack?
      http://torrentfreak.com/judge-green-lights-bittorrent-user-mass-harassment-scheme-110326/
      
      “It’s just a dumb excuse so stop embarrassing yourself by using it.
      
      Your the one who is peddling dumb excuses.
    - Foo
      
      “copyrighted material that Newzbin is handing out like it’s candy.” Newzbin2 is a search engine: thy don’t hand out anything except search result you fool. It’s Usenet servers that do the ‘handing out’.
      
      As for the FBI: they are inept clodhopping policemen. They can’t catch Bin Laden after 10 years & 100s millions of dollars spent. Stop swallowing the propaganda you donkey.
    - Phobophobia
      
      he is the propaganda
    - Anonymous
      
      If Osama Bin Laden was wise he would have been dead, burned and burried years ago. You cant find someone who is dead when even the few people who assisted would be dead or very silent.
      
      Then many previous recordings would keep him alive for many years while the US Government spends billions trying to find him.
      
      Well the Americans are not doing good in their searches from WMDs in Iraq to Bin Laden in Afghanistan. At least they have their Plan B.
    - Anonymous
      
      If governments wanted to carry on with their campaign repression and the removal of civil liberties and rights in the name of “the war on terror” then they wouldn’t advertise it if they believed that he was already dead. They’d be better off fabricating videos and using them for propaganda for purposes…
      
      …oh, wait a sec…
    - Scary Devil Monastery
      
      As usual…you are an idiot. Encryption and anonymization are used by foreign intelligence simply because these tools are extremely potent. You can throw as much money as you like, but actually identifying what is inside an encrypted stream of information requires, for starters, that your vaunted FBI actually implants a trojan at the end points.
      
      Now, we can go on and on about civic rights until the sun falls into the sea but i guarantee you one thing – the day the FBI actually tries to bug the physical computers of several million american citizens presumed to be innocent, that is the day the FBI ceases to exist. Or a US president decides to leave before impending impeachment.
      
      Free speech is free for a reason. It has always been assumed, even at the worst of times in the US during the McCarthy regime, that everyone has the constitutional right to communicate with his fellows without government supervision. As long as that right exists, there will never be a method to catch those file sharers.
      
      Case in point. Are you willing to shift the entire US budget spent on catching spies, terrorists and really serious criminals into catching downloading teenagers? No? Then how will you justify spending ten or twenty times that sum on catching downloading teenagers?
      
      No. I’m afraid that you, sir, are a retard. I can only assume that or that you’re trolling with the simple intent of getting a reaction.
- Ninja
  
  True. Except that they aren’t in the US ;))
Censor This Comment

Let’s see the curly-haired hook-nosed beady-eyed MAFIAA cronies figure this one out.
- Hunter-Killer
  
  niggayouhavegonefullretard.jpg
Anonymous

lol, those idiots jsut do not know when to quit do they? I though Usenet died like YEARS ago??

privacy-online.it.tc
- We Hate Spam
  
  Fsck off spammer
  - SPAM
    
    Yeah fsck off! Eat snit and die you basshole!
DocGerbil100

Interesting article. Thanks very much for the tor2web link, as well, TF. I especially enjoyed reading tor2web’s incredibly simple and clear instructions for anyone who wants to set up their own version of tor2web. High-court cock-blocking is now surely one of the most easily-bypassed copyright-enforcement scams ever! :D
Cujo

another alternative ;)

http://www.hm2k.com/posts/find-the-ip-address-of-a-seized-website
Predat

I love TOR.
Predator

About the Jack Murdock [HB gary software generated fake personality]”

All these FBI criminals who are doing the work of the corporations of parasites instead of serving the nation are going to end up with their head on pics.

Mark my word.
Predator

“And no, I have nothing to do with the recording industry. Im just an ordinary college student. Saying that anyone who opposes illegal file sharing is only doing so because they are…” Ya, Riiiigggght!

How do we detect a recording industry parasite?

Simple: By the stupid lies they post.
- Phobophobia
  
  only a government agent could be this inept at thinking for himself.
  
  keep believing everything your superiors tell you jack, because if you question them, you’ll never get that promotion!
- Phobophobia
  
  only a government agent could be this inept at thinking for himself.
  
  keep believing everything your superiors tell you jack, because if you question them, you’ll never get that promotion!
Cid

Tor wasn’t meant for this. It was meant for real victims of censorship. Not being able to pirate movies isn’t the same as being arrested and tortured because you posted something that was deemed threatening or offensive to the regime.
- Devanite
  
  And yet people are being censored from these movies and music every day, either by affordability or availability if outside of, YOU GUESSED IT, the United States…
  
  and with the way things are shaping up in the US soon if you disagree with media companies online whatsoever you ARE POSTING SOMETHING THATS THREATENING TO THE REGIME Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr why do I even bother reiterating… oh yea, cause if no one speaks out on our side (regardless of how many times we have to do it) then by proxy the side with more money will be the only one heard!
  
  But of course who would want that, lets begin with the Media Conglomerate, soo far everythings progressing nicely in the US for them, soo much corporate power over a citizens life to the point where you guys rank below Canada on the Democracy scale!!! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index
  
  Next up is the ever increasing number of 3 letter organizations that continuously pump out information for your buddies there and raid helpless peoples homes, and yes I am talking to you Monsieur Murdock, this is the world you want to live in, where everyone is simply arrested for trying to enjoy entertainment, humm, can we say police state in less than ten years? Sure for the old schoolers who don’t really rely on the internet life wont really change much perceptive-ally but yet for those of us who have grown up in our tech savvy generation we would really like to not see our legacy and the level of enjoyment we got from the internet ten years ago destroyed by a bunch of greedy corporatists. (although I will grant you your one of the few companies that exists without the support of a customer base or consumer demand, you exist against these things)
  
  Which brings me to part three of my little nightly rant (so much for sleep) dont you find it one of the most retarded things that you have ever heard of that on one side we want to bring our western ideals of democracy and MTV to the North African/ Arab/ Oriental worlds by creating tools that will effectively get around a government block, and on the other pissing and moaning for doing it, yet your government is spending money to do exactly BOTH?
  
  Until next time…
- Peter
  
  I guess you know better than one of the original developers what Tor is meant for :
  
  ‘TOR Made for USG Open Source Spying Says Maker
  
  Date: Tue, 22 Mar 2011 16:57:39 -0400
  From: Michael Reed
  To: tor-talk[at]lists.torproject.org
  Subject: Re: [tor-talk] Iran cracks down on web dissident technology
  
  On 03/22/2011 12:08 PM, Watson Ladd wrote:
  > On Tue, Mar 22, 2011 at 11:23 AM, Joe Btfsplk wrote:
  >> Why would any govt create something their enemies can easily use against
  >> them, then continue funding it once they know it helps the enemy, if a govt
  >> has absolutely no control over it? It’s that simple. It would seem a very
  >> bad idea. Stop looking at it from a conspiracy standpoint& consider it as
  >> a common sense question.
  > Because it helps the government as well. An anonymity network that
  > only the US government uses is fairly useless. One that everyone uses
  > is much more useful, and if your enemies use it as well that’s very
  > good, because then they can’t cut off access without undoing their own
  > work.
  
  BINGO, we have a winner! 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). I should
  know, I was the recipient of that question from David, and Paul was
  brought into the mix a few days later after I had sketched out a basic
  (flawed) design for the original Onion Routing.
  
  The short answer to your question of “Why would the government do this?”
  is because it is in the best interests of some parts of the government
  to have this capability… Now enough of the conspiracy theories…
  
  -Michael
  _______________________________________________
  tor-talk mailing list
  tor-talk[at]lists.torproject.org ‘
- Anonymous
  
  It is threatening or offensive to the regime. Don’t you understand? The USG is not a government, its a corporation, so when corporations feel threatened they respond under the guise of the USG regime.
Clarion

@ Cid

What the fuck do you call being arrested and interrogated for hours, your computer confiscated, smashed to bits and stripped of personal information…even if there is nothing on it; even if you’re only arrested on the suspicion that your IP was used for an alleged crime? What do you call that if not censorship?

What do you call being blackmailed to betray fellow members and filesharers in the forum or community you posted? Coercion at the very least, eradication of human rights at worst.

Things are getting worse, brother. Being tortured for Bugs Bunny ain’t that far away. You had better get used to that idea and wake up like the rest of the world is slowly doing. When they get the green light proper to go after a target for infringement, IF the Law changes in their favor, it don’t matter if you’re just a casual, occassional swapper of trivia like cartoons…you’ll be treated the same as a paedophile or a terrorist.

Remember: we’re all equal in the eyes of the Law…we are all scumbags.
- http://disqus.com/ Rob8urcakes
  
  I don’t speak for Cid, but I call it fascism.
  
  And I genuinely don’t like what I see when I look into the eyes of these demented, profiteering asswipes.
  
  We need to stand up and say our piece NOW. Write to your locally elected politicians and ask them to stop this censorship and allow market forces to prevail before the damage to society and human values becomes an otherwise avoidable tragedy for our children and our future.
  
  Sharing IS Caring.
MSU7

Look: pedophiles use Tor to download child porn. Wikileaks use Tor. People use Tor to send (often important officials) death threats. People use Tor for a wide variety of illegal purposes.
And guess what? Unless they enable Flash and get caught in a law enforcement trap or they use a bad exit node, they NEVER get caught.

So stop all this bullshit arguing about how unsafe Tor is and how it can be bypassed. It CAN’T.
- Darth_yoda
  
  Precisely, to quote Steve Gibson of GRC.com “It is just deliciously robust. I just love it”.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Don-Dilly/1624894683 Don Dilly

Most sites these days also run a t and If it is a site I use frequent I usually follow their twitter feed if only to have a back channel to the site in case it goes down or suddenly vanishes.

While tor makes the site reachable , any resulting url isnt memorable.

I wonder how development of that p2p dns is getting on.
InternetUser

This is great! I hope all the child porn websites set up a similar thing as described here – so that I dont have to be affected by this damn policing on the Internet! :)
- Phobophobia
  
  sick
  - http://www.facebook.com/people/Don-Dilly/1624894683 Don Dilly
    
    @Phobophobia, InternetUser I think is trying to make a valid point albeit in a jocular manner. The fact that IP holders are making lunatic demands and driving internet censorship of mainstream net users is what is driving the development of circumvention methods which in the long run will make the authorities job that much harder to detect and stop real criminals.
    
    If you want to detect real criminals, the last thing you should do is criminalise everyone for trivial matters forcing them to use similar forms of circumvention
    - Phobophobia
      
      Yeah, It was the “jocular manner” that yanked my chain.
      
      I agree with your point wholeheartedly,
      The IP lobby are going to ruin it for everyone.
      The “netpolice” should be focusing on the serious “netcrimes”, especially the ones where kids get abused (I’m a family man after all), and stop pandering the the falsified claims of big business, in the name of profit maximisation.
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Anonymous

Then they just seize Tor.
- Anonymous
  
  How? It’s open source and already out there.
Pingback: Newzbin2 con Tor para evitar la censura de la MPAA « BN
Poopesuckehamsterlord

tor is junk its too slow, then again it could be caused by people using it for huge torrents…
- Anonyomous
  
  So join in and run a router instead of complaining. Without volunteers stepping up and helping, instead of just using the system, it won’t get any faster.
Guest

“Then they just seize Tor.”

You can not “seize Tor.” it is only a piece of code running on million of system just like limewire pirate edition or utorent.
- Bob
  
  Just like a parasitic worm (tape, thread, ring whatever) sucking the life out of its host. These pieces of code will continue to suck the lifeblood out of the film and music industry until there is nothing left. If you have any filesharing software on your computer you are nothing more than a worm and you live in my ARSE.
  - Anonymous
    
    You have no idea do you?
    
    Tor is not filesharing software, it is simply an anonymous router.
  - Scary Devil Monastery
    
    My my…we could assume you’re just a troll but for the benefit of the sane readership:
    
    Intellectual Property ceases to exist in any civilization which has access to mass communication. It’s that simple. And any civilization where the market allows, for example, Rebecca Black to earn a cool million iTunes sales of a song which cost 2000 to record, or where Trent reznor can sell a million copies of an album he already gave away for free, your comparison to parasitism fails.
    
    However, i will yield to you on one point – idiots clinging to the horse-and-cart business model in an age of automobiles will no doubt perish.
    
    And that is a good thing.
    
    So, “Bob”, with any luck there should still be an opening in the line for the homelessshelter. I’d advise you get in line now.
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Borderliner

One thing is certain – if they use the benefits the network provides, then the right thing to do is give a little back to the network. In this case – set up a server or two to provide bandwith for Tor.
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Troll Basher

Wow, look at all the trolls in this thread! If the trolls want to believe something that’s incorrect, let them. Why would you want to educate a troll? That’s dangerous.
R00ted

The only weakness I can see, would be going after the domain name itself…..

.tor2web.org

Or…….pressuring .tor2web.org to “give up” the secure service at that address……

Direct IP address navigation for the win? :P

Sure, this makes one step more secure……but how secure really?

They can still go after each host along the route to .tor2web.org and get the route shutdown/blocked…..
lol

Email Ed Vaizey, and tell him domain blocking will NOT work! He’s the man behind the UK’s plans to block ThePirateBay.

vaizeye@parliament.uk

TorrentFreak

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