Stetting up a Tor Bridge in Amazon EC2 - Amazon AWS

Question

Its been around 2 months since I had been using Tor and I am in love with it.

I want to try running a Tor relay using the Amazon EC2 account I signed up today. I am pretty new to this service but after proper understanding of the tutorial on https://cloud.torproject.org/#get_started which isn't exactly up to date with the new Amazon interface but is of course understandable what needs to be done to set up a proper Tor relay I sort of have the need to run a Tor relay.

I am on the free year, so I think running this machine int too hard to afford as Amazon provides 720+ hours of free monthly up time for an instance for all new user for one whole year. This I believe creates great opportunity for people who cannot contribute to the Tor network with cording to truly support the community.

Question 0:

But the keyword here is 720 hours of up time for one month. This is almost the amount of hours in a month. So for a first year free Amazon user, running a single instance that has Tor in it is all he/she can run for free for a month. Am I right? Or is there a way we can run two? i.e. one dedicated to Tor and keep another n ON state? (disregard expenses that might occur on both due to processing which are unpredictable)

Question 1:

I followed the guide provided on the https://cloud.torproject.org/#get_started and noticed that we are only

• creating a linux virtual server
• Creating Key pairs to SSH the virtual machine later
• Applying security settings to allow SSH,HTTPS, 40872 and 52176 ports.

Now I haven't noticed Installing Tor in any of those steps recommended. So how come allowing these ports will actually Enable me to run a Tor relay? Does any Linux flavor has Tor build in?

Does it mean when I am running Tor in my Laptop (running Tor version 2 which I received for Trisquel version 7 - latest) is actually running as a Tor relay too? Yes, I do use the browser bundle whenever complete anonymity is required. I just find it easy and so convenient when Tor automatically loads at system start up without any browser.

Is there a specific flavor required to be chosen During the Amazon Instance creation? I couldn't find the place it was recommended on the previous Tor guide to create a Tor relay.

Question 2:

I am still understanding Tor and I am a newbie. I also know that Tor works based on encryption and not on trust. So I too would like to run a Tor Exit relay on my Amazon EC2 account. I mean its my server and I think Amazon shouldn't have any problem me running a Tor Exit node on it. yes I know the increased amount of data that it may cause me but If I successfully run it, probably I may have a chance convincing some people who are heavy Amazon users to run exit nodes. so the question is, should I follow the same procedure that is provided on the Tor website for creating a Tor Exit relay to prepare a Tor exit instance in my Amazon EC2 account?

love Tor!

Answer 1

in the directions on their site they tell you to click the link on this page (https://cloud.torproject.org/#get_started) to the correct AMI images (us-east-1-virginia)... this is a ubuntu with the tor config stuff already to go (Tor-Cloud-EC2--us-east-1-04-13-2013-20616 - ami-4a7c1a23)

as far as your last question it is not so much on trust or encryption but anonymity of the traffic. because the request packet is bounced around inside the tor network and no packet contains a map of who it came from and where the end goal is.. there is little chance you can map the person with the packet from the entrance node to the exit node. once it exits the traffic is not encrypted .. you just cant tell who created it. now if you do something like use a tor network but then request a page to login to then that maybe traceable as the user account name can be mapped to you. they dont really care what ip it came from.