15
votes
How to properly start tor service
Normally the Tor service should be started/stopped with either:
sudo systemctl start/stop tor.service
Or:
sudo service tor start/stop
Personally I've always used the service command because it is ...
- 1,239
6
votes
Security of Tor bridges and Captcha
Any captcha system can be broken by paying people.
The captcha has been attacked in the past by a nationstate adversary.
The captcha isn't critical to the security of Tor, it does present problems ...
- 11k
5
votes
Accepted
Is Tor completely anonymous?
This setup may, or may not, be completely anonymous, depending on a whole bunch of factors, some extremely subtle. Adding a VPN to Tor basically never improves anonymity, though. Exactly how someone ...
- 562
4
votes
Routing Bittorrent through a Tor relay...
my thinking is that having all this Tor relay traffic co-mingling with the BitTorrent traffic would make any sort of traffic analysis of my Internet much more complicated.
Not in any meaningful way, ...
- 11k
4
votes
Accepted
Is it safe to use Tor with Malwarebytes Anti-Exploit?
Alright this was going to be a comment but no one has really addressed this and it's a pet peeve of mine, so...
Generally speaking anti-virus protects you from known threats, they provide signature ...
- 11k
4
votes
Accepted
Has my Facebook Account been hacked when using Tor?
You probably logged into your Facebook account over Tor.
Facebook sees you exiting the Tor network in Portugal, or what it thinks is Portugal and so it flagged up your own login attempt as suspicious....
- 11k
3
votes
Serious TCP Bug in Linux Systems?
What we can do to protect ourselves as VPN/Tor users?
Note that the attack itself is targeted at the service, not the client (I.E. tor relay, not the tor client) so there isn't much you can do. If ...
- 11k
3
votes
Accepted
Tails and OnionShare
The threats are completely different.
Tor Browser has a much larger attack surface (it has far more features and functionality that could go wrong) and it's not written in an memory safe language (if ...
- 11k
3
votes
Extra security for private forum posts
No, Tor would not help.
What you are suggesting is 100% impossible.
- 11k
3
votes
Does facebook's hidden service url mean that collisions are feasible?
No, and yes.
Facebook, hidden services, and https certs had talked on this. Facebook in fact brute forced only the first 40 bits and then made a backronym.
Their hidden service name is "...
- 725
3
votes
Is Tor network traceable
Tor connections are in general secure.
However for a global adversary it would be possible to trace a Tor connection back to a user.
It is not known whether such a global adversary exists or if ...
- 446
3
votes
Accepted
How did the FBI find the IP address of the Freedom Hosting servers?
According to this FAQ from the EFF, Freedom Host had a publicly visible IP address that allowed the FBI to physically seize their server:
In December 2014, the FBI received a tip from a foreign law
...
- 146
3
votes
Accepted
Should I first stop all local servers running on localhost before starting Tor?
Unless you edit your tor configuration (your torrc file) to add an onion service, tor won't run any onion services and no one will be able to connect to any of your local servers, so you're safe. Even ...
- 3,142
3
votes
Accepted
Why doesn't Tor browser block HTTP by default?
It's not enabled by default because it would block a significant fraction of the Internet for users. Blocking HTTP-only traffic will likely come in the future once Tor Browser is using a version of ...
- 3,142
2
votes
Serious TCP Bug in Linux Systems?
Tor developer Isis Agora Lovecruft has published a blog post on this.
CVE-2016-5696 and its effects on Tor
tl;dr: This vulnerability is quite serious, but it doesn’t affect the Tor network any ...
- 153
2
votes
How to sandbox/harden tor browser bundle?
Alright, he's a hacky way I cobbled together (currently if I want a hardened environment, I use Subgraph OS which does all of this in a pretty transparent manner through Oz, it's still in beta testing ...
- 11k
2
votes
Can this anonymous email be traced back to me?
Okay I'm taking this account briefly out of retirement because Croll's answer is wrong and massively misleading.
Yes, they can (most likely) figure out that it was you, technologically at least.
So ...
- 11k
2
votes
Accepted
How to verify that my ISP is not running a fake tor subnetwork
The Tor binary contains fingerprints of keys for the directory authorities. These are used to then load the consensus, which contains key material for all other relays.
Unless your ISP has some new ...
- 11k
2
votes
Am I surfing the deep web right now?
So - step by step - to your questions:
How do I know Tor is working on my device? If it's in top and in log files you've seen line like Tor has successfully opened a circuit. Looks like client ...
- 6,265
2
votes
Accepted
Some sites seem to disable the protection by themselves, how can I prevent that?
What you're describing is "mixed content", this is where a website will be loaded over https but the pages code itself will then ask it to load resources into the page over an http connection.
Mixed-...
- 11k
2
votes
Why is the "administrator" password not saved in Tails?
Correct however anyone with access to the physical media need not set the administartor password to gain the equivalent of root access.
From that perspective disabling the ability to ever be root ...
- 11k
2
votes
Difference of Tor Browser and Firefox version
The Tor Browser uses a long-term supported version of Firefox, to be sure its vetted from the security bugs and to provide the most stable and expectable behavior possible.
- 101
2
votes
Hiding Tails on USB drive
If your USB stick is smart enough - yes. Make it a multipartitional one. If you are good with a soldering iron - make it yourself like this and you should add a button(with a pull resistor of course!) ...
- 6,265
2
votes
Accepted
How does the Tor Circuit Map works?
The relays do not know the full path through the network.
The client (your local instance of Tor) chooses the path. This means that the client (you) knows the full path, but any single relay in the ...
- 11k
2
votes
Accepted
Attacks from client-side, & server protections
I assume you're new to information security.
It's an exposed service, if there is a bug in the software then there's potential to exploit it.
Not in the way you describe, I'd be more concerned about ...
- 11k
2
votes
Does all bridge users have the same encryption key?
Whenever your client makes a connection to a bridge or any other Tor relay it negotiates an individual key. So this key if different from a key which another client uses and also from a key which your ...
- 8,570
2
votes
What is more secure: Tails or Subgraph?
Subgraph is definitely more secure, it uses grsec/pax to harden against memory corruption exploits and a sandboxing system called oz to isolate and restrict applications run under it, to reduce the ...
- 11k
2
votes
A server behind a physical Tor gateway to hide its location
Whonix is what you want.
The Workstation VM can "see" only IP addresses on the Internal LAN,
which are the same in every Whonix installation. User applications
therefore have no knowledge of ...
- 1,863
2
votes
Malware detection when installing tor browser
These are false positives. VirusTotal detects "Hello World" programs as malicious and often detects real malware as clean.
Anti-virus is not a good option if you have real anonymity or privacy ...
- 11k
2
votes
Is it save to use Bitcoin over Tor?
it is safe, exit nodes will not be able to steal your money or passwords.
when you install electrum, software can automatically connect to servers to sync, you can disable network on your PC/laptop ...
- 21
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible