Excluding Entry Guard Node's Country from Exit Node?

Question

With the way Tor works, you are tied to a fixed Entry Guard for quite a reasonable time. If you are unlucky, you might get connected to a bad Entry Guard Node owned by X. From now on, it is only a matter of time until you are randomly connected to a bad Exit Node, also in control of X. This is due to Tor keeping the Entry Guard stable for a reasonable time but very frequently changes the Middle- and Exit Node.

I have been wondering why Tor doesn't come with a solution for this by default. For example: If I would be connected to an Entry Guard Node from the UK, wouldn't it be a very smart move to go to

" User > Tor Browser > Browser > Data > Tor > torrc "

and add the following line to the torrc file:

" ExcludeExitNodes {UK}

StrictNodes 1 " ?

If we assume you are connected to a bad Entry Guard Node owned by X, wouldn't it be extremely unlikely that X also runs an Exit Node from a different country?

My solution would prevent the Exit Guard Node from being from the same country as the Entry Guard Node. Doesn't that solve the mentioned problem?

Answer 1

following this with interest and doing own researches. restricting entry guard node and exit guard node too much like only allowing one country to chose will make your tor browser connection stand out. adversary will find suspicious if there is always one connection from lets say entry point united kingdom and exit point russia. this might stand out and be linked together which makes deanonymization more easy. i dont think you do harm only excluding one single country from exit node (entry guard node country). depending what you do on tor and depending what country you reside in, it can make sense if your entry guard is your country and you fear adversary (government) from your country aiming at you because you break the law in your country but maybe not at other. so you restrict exit guard node from being your country as well.

if you for example live in poor country with no freedom of speech it maybe makes sense to restrict your own country to be your exit node. because other countries will maybe not pass information to them and maybe they dont have the money/possibility (maybe not even interest) to rent server abroad.