First draft of an abuse page.
Andrew Lewman authored 19 years ago
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abuse.html 1) <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN"
abuse.html 2) "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd">
abuse.html 3)
abuse.html 4) <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en">
abuse.html 5) <head>
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Andrew Lewman authored 19 years ago
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faq-abuse.html 6) <title>Legal FAQ for Tor Server Operators</title>
faq-abuse.html 7) <meta name="Author" content="EFF" />
faq-abuse.html 8) <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1" />
faq-abuse.html 9) <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="../stylesheet.css" />
faq-abuse.html 10) <link rel="shortcut icon" type="image/x-icon" href="/favicon.ico" />
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First draft of an abuse page.
Andrew Lewman authored 19 years ago
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abuse.html 11) </head>
abuse.html 12) <body>
abuse.html 13)
abuse.html 14) <!-- TITLE BAR & NAVIGATION -->
abuse.html 15)
abuse.html 16) <table class="banner" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
abuse.html 17) <tr>
abuse.html 18) <td class="banner-left"></td>
abuse.html 19) <td class="banner-middle">
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Andrew Lewman authored 19 years ago
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faq-abuse.html 20) <a href="../index.html">Home</a>
faq-abuse.html 21) | <a href="../howitworks.html">How It Works</a>
faq-abuse.html 22) | <a href="../download.html">Download</a>
faq-abuse.html 23) | <a href="../documentation.html">Docs</a>
faq-abuse.html 24) | <a href="../users.html">Users</a>
faq-abuse.html 25) | <a href="../faq.html">FAQs</a>
faq-abuse.html 26) | <a href="../contribute.html">Contribute</a>
faq-abuse.html 27) | <a href="../developers.html">Developers</a>
faq-abuse.html 28) | <a href="../research.html">Research</a>
faq-abuse.html 29) | <a href="../people.html">People</a>
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First draft of an abuse page.
Andrew Lewman authored 19 years ago
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abuse.html 30) </td>
abuse.html 31) <td class="banner-right"></td>
abuse.html 32) </tr>
abuse.html 33) </table>
abuse.html 34)
abuse.html 35) <!-- END TITLE BAR & NAVIGATION -->
abuse.html 36)
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Andrew Lewman authored 19 years ago
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faq-abuse.html 37) <div class="center">
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First draft of an abuse page.
Andrew Lewman authored 19 years ago
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abuse.html 38) <div class="main-column">
abuse.html 39)
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Andrew Lewman authored 19 years ago
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faq-abuse.html 40) <!-- PUT CONTENT AFTER THIS TAG -->
faq-abuse.html 41)
faq-abuse.html 42) <h2>Abuse FAQ for Tor Server Operators</h2>
faq-abuse.html 43) <hr />
faq-abuse.html 44)
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First draft of an abuse page.
Andrew Lewman authored 19 years ago
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abuse.html 45)
abuse.html 46) <p> </p>
abuse.html 47)
abuse.html 48) <h3>Doesn't Tor enable criminals to do bad things?</h3>
abuse.html 49)
abuse.html 50) <p>Criminals can already do bad things. Since they're willing to break laws, they already have lots of options available that provide _better_ privacy than Tor provides. They can steal cell phones, use them, and throw them in a ditch; they can crack into computers in Korea or Brazil and use them to launch abusive activities; they can spread viruses that take control of literally millions of Windows machines around the world. </p>
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Andrew Lewman authored 19 years ago
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faq-abuse.html 51) <p>Tor aims to provide protection for ordinary people who want to follow the law. Only criminals have privacy right now; we need to fix that. </p>
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First draft of an abuse page.
Andrew Lewman authored 19 years ago
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abuse.html 52) <p> </p>
abuse.html 53)
abuse.html 54) <h3>Isn't it just a tradeoff: accepting the bad uses for the good ones?</h3>
abuse.html 55)
abuse.html 56) <p>No, we don't think that's how it works in the case of Tor. </p>
abuse.html 57) <p>There are lots of ways to get anonymity on the net, some legal and some illegal. As we explained <a href="#WhatAboutCriminals">above</a>, many of the illegal approaches can provide stronger anonymity than Tor can provide, because they can control literally millions of computers via spyware, viruses, and other techniques. </p>
abuse.html 58) <p>Criminals and other bad people have the motivation to learn how to get good anonymity, and many have the motivation to pay well to achieve it. Being able to steal and reuse the identities of innocent victims (identify theft) makes it even easier. Normal people, on the other hand, don't typically have the time or money to spend figuring out how to get privacy online. This is the worst of all possible worlds. </p>
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Andrew Lewman authored 19 years ago
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faq-abuse.html 59) <p>So yes, criminals could in theory use Tor, but they already have better options, and it seems unlikely that taking Tor away from the world will stop them from doing their bad things. At the same time, Tor and other privacy measures can *fight* identity theft, physical crimes like stalking, and so on. </p>
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First draft of an abuse page.
Andrew Lewman authored 19 years ago
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abuse.html 60) <p> </p>
abuse.html 61)
abuse.html 62) <h3>What about distributed denial of service attacks?</h3>
abuse.html 63)
abuse.html 64) <p>Distributed denial of service attacks typically rely on having a group of thousands of computers all sending floods of traffic to a victim. Since the goal is to overpower the bandwidth of the victim, they typically send UDP packets since those don't require handshakes or coordination. </p>
abuse.html 65) <p>But because Tor only transports correctly-formed TCP streams, not all IP packets, you cannot send UDP packets over Tor. (You can't do specialized forms of this attack like SYN flooding either.) So ordinary DDoS attacks are not possible over Tor. Tor also doesn't allow bandwidth amplification attacks against external sites: you need to send in a byte for every byte which the Tor network will send to your destination. So in general, attackers who control enough bandwidth to launch an effective DDoS attack can do it just fine without Tor. </p>
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Andrew Lewman authored 19 years ago
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faq-abuse.html 66) <p>And if this argument doesn't convince you, go try Tor and see how much aggregate throughput you can eke out of it, then come back to us if you're still worried. <img src="/wiki/classic/img/smile.png" width="15" alt=":)" height="15" > </p>
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First draft of an abuse page.
Andrew Lewman authored 19 years ago
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abuse.html 67) <p> </p>
abuse.html 68)
abuse.html 69) <h3>What about spammers?</h3>
abuse.html 70)
abuse.html 71) <p>The default Tor exit policy rejects all outgoing port 25 (SMTP) traffic. So sending spam mail through Tor isn't going to work. It's possible that some server operators will enable port 25 on their particular exit node, in which case only that computer will allow outgoing mails; but that individual could just set up an open mail relay too, independent of Tor. </p>
abuse.html 72) <p>So far, no Tor server has enabled outgoing port 25 in his exit policy. </p>
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Andrew Lewman authored 19 years ago
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faq-abuse.html 73) <p>In short, Tor isn't useful for spammers. </p>
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First draft of an abuse page.
Andrew Lewman authored 19 years ago
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abuse.html 74) <p> </p>
abuse.html 75)
abuse.html 76) <h3>How do Tor exit policies work?</h3>
abuse.html 77)
abuse.html 78) <p>Each Tor server has an exit policy that specifies what sort of outbound connections are allowed or refused from that server. The exit policies are propagated to the client via the directory, so clients will automatically avoid picking exit nodes that would refuse to exit to their intended destination. </p>
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Andrew Lewman authored 19 years ago
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faq-abuse.html 79) <p>This way each server can decide the services he wants to allow connections to, based on abuse potential and his own situation. </p>
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First draft of an abuse page.
Andrew Lewman authored 19 years ago
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abuse.html 80) <p> </p>
abuse.html 81)
abuse.html 82) <h3>Does Tor get much abuse?</h3>
abuse.html 83)
abuse.html 84) <p>Not much, in the grand scheme of things. We've been running the network since October 2003, and it's only generated a handful of complaints. Of course, like all privacy-oriented networks on the net, we attract our share of jerks. Tor's exit policies help separate the role of "willing to donate resources to the network" from the role of "willing to deal with exit abuse complaints", so we hope our network is more sustainable than past attempts at anonymity networks. </p>
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Andrew Lewman authored 19 years ago
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faq-abuse.html 85) <p>Since Tor has <a class="external" href="http://tor.eff.org/cvs/tor/doc/tor-doc.html"><img src="/wiki/classic/img/moin-www.png" width="11" alt="[WWW]" height="11" > many good uses as well</a>, we feel that we're doing pretty well at striking a balance currently. </p>
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First draft of an abuse page.
Andrew Lewman authored 19 years ago
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abuse.html 86) <p> </p>
abuse.html 87)
abuse.html 88) <h3>So what should I expect if I run a server?</h3>
abuse.html 89)
abuse.html 90) <p>If you run a Tor server that allows exit connections (such as the default exit policy), it's probably safe to say that you will eventually hear from somebody. Abuse complaints can come in a variety of forms. The main ones so far have taken the following form: </p>
abuse.html 91) <ul>
abuse.html 92) <li><p> Somebody connects to hotmail, and sends a criminal mail somewhere. The FBI sends you a polite email, you explain that you run a Tor server, and they say 'oh well' and leave you alone. [Port 80] </p>
abuse.html 93) </li>
abuse.html 94) <li class="gap"><p> Somebody tries to get you shut down by using Tor to connect to google groups and posting spam to usenet, and then sending an angry mail to your ISP about how you're destroying the world. [Port 80] </p>
abuse.html 95) </li>
abuse.html 96) <li class="gap"><p> Somebody connects to an irc network and makes a nuisance of himself. Your ISP gets polite mail about how your computer has been compromised; and/or your computer gets ddosed. [Port 6667] </p>
abuse.html 97) </li>
abuse.html 98) <li class="gap"><p> Somebody uses Tor to download a Vin Diesel movie, and your ISP gets a DMCA takedown notice. According to our lawyers (and this convinced the Harvard general counsel), your ISP can totally ignore this notice with no liability problems. See <a class="external" href="http://tor.eff.org/eff/tor-dmca-response.html"><img src="/wiki/classic/img/moin-www.png" width="11" alt="[WWW]" height="11" > http://tor.eff.org/eff/tor-dmca-response.html</a>. [Arbitrary ports] </p>
abuse.html 99) </li>
abuse.html 100) </ul>
abuse.html 101) <p>You might also find that your Tor server's IP is blocked from accessing some Internet sites/services. This might happen regardless of your exit policy, because some groups don't seem to know or care that Tor has exit policies. (If you have a spare IP not used for other activities, you might consider running your Tor server on it.) For example, </p>
abuse.html 102) <ul>
abuse.html 103) <li><p> Wikipedia is currently blocking many Tor server IPs from writing (reading still works), because they haven't figured out internally how to deal with the fact that they want to provide open access but they also have no ways to control abuse to their website. We're working with them to resolve this. </p>
abuse.html 104) </li>
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faq-abuse.html 105) <li class="gap"><p> It seems that SORBS is putting some Tor server IPs on their email blacklist as well. They do this because they passively detect whether your server connects to certain IRC networks, and they conclude from this that your server is capable of spamming. We're working with them to teach them that not all software works this way. Until then, we recommend you avoid them, and teach your friends (if they use them) to avoid them too. </p>
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First draft of an abuse page.
Andrew Lewman authored 19 years ago
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abuse.html 106) </li>
abuse.html 107) </ul>
abuse.html 108) <p> </p>
abuse.html 109)
abuse.html 110) <h3>Tor is banned from the IRC network I want to use.</h3>
abuse.html 111)
abuse.html 112) <p>Sometimes jerks make use of Tor to troll IRC channels. This abuse results in IP-specific temporary bans ("klines" in IRC lingo), as the network operators try to keep the troll off of their network. </p>
abuse.html 113) <p>This response underscores a fundamental flaw in IRC's security model: they assume that IP addresses equate to humans, and by banning the IP address they can ban the human. In reality this is not the case -- many such trolls routinely make use of the literally millions of open proxies and compromised computers around the Internet. The IRC networks are fighting a losing battle of trying to block all these nodes, and an entire cottage industry of blacklists and counter-trolls has sprung up based on this flawed security model (not unlike the antivirus industry). The Tor network is just a drop in the bucket here. </p>
abuse.html 114) <p>On the other hand, from the viewpoint of IRC server operators, security is not an all-or-nothing thing. By responding quickly to trolls or any other social attack, it may be possible to make the attack scenario less attractive to the attacker. And most individual IP addresses do equate to individual humans, on any given IRC network at any given time. The exceptions include NAT gateways which may be allocated access as special cases. While it's a losing battle to try to stop the use of open proxies, it's not generally a losing battle to keep klining a single ill-behaved IRC user until that user gets bored and goes away. </p>
abuse.html 115) <p>But the real answer is to implement application-level auth systems, to let in well-behaving users and keep out badly-behaving users. This needs to be based on some property of the human (such as a password he knows), not some property of the way his packets are transported. </p>
abuse.html 116) <p>Of course, not all IRC networks are trying to ban Tor nodes. After all, quite a few people use Tor to IRC in privacy in order to carry on legitimate communications without tying them to their real-world identity. Each IRC network needs to decide for itself if blocking a few more of the millions of IPs that bad people can use is worth losing the contributions from the well-behaved Tor users. </p>
abuse.html 117) <p>If you're being blocked, have a discussion with the network operators and explain the issues to them. They may not be aware of the existence of Tor at all, or they may not be aware that the hostnames they're klining are Tor exit nodes. If you explain the problem, and they conclude that Tor ought to be blocked, you may want to consider moving to a network that is more open to free speech. Maybe inviting them to #tor on irc.oftc.net helps them show that we are not all evil people. </p>
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faq-abuse.html 118) <p>Finally, if you become aware of an IRC network which seems to be blocking Tor, or a single Tor exit node, please put that information on <a href="/noreply/TheOnionRouter/BlockingIrc">../BlockingIrc</a> so that others can share. At least one IRC network consults that page to unblock exit nodes which have been blocked inadvertently. </p>
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First draft of an abuse page.
Andrew Lewman authored 19 years ago
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abuse.html 119) <p> </p>
abuse.html 120)
abuse.html 121) <h3>Your nodes are banned from the mail server I want to use.</h3>
abuse.html 122)
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faq-abuse.html 123) <p>Even though <a class="external" href="http://wiki.noreply.org/wiki/TheOnionRouter/TorFAQ#WhatAboutSpammers"><img src="/wiki/classic/img/moin-www.png" width="11" alt="[WWW]" height="11" > Tor isn't useful for spamming</a>, some over-zealous blacklisters seem to think that all open networks like Tor should be boycotted. They don't understand how Tor works (e.g. that it has exit policies), and don't seem to care to understand it. If your server administrators decide to make use of these blacklists to refuse incoming mail, you should have a conversation with them and explain how Tor works. </p>
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First draft of an abuse page.
Andrew Lewman authored 19 years ago
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abuse.html 124) <p> </p>
abuse.html 125)
abuse.html 126) <h3>I want to ban the Tor network from my service.</h3>
abuse.html 127)
abuse.html 128) <p>First, ask yourself if there's a way to do application-level decisions to separate the legitimate users from the jerks. For example, you might have certain areas of the site, or certain privileges like posting, available only to people who are registered. You could set up this distinction only for certain IP addresses such as Tor exit nodes. This way you can have multi-tiered access and not have to ban everything. </p>
abuse.html 129) <p>Second, consider that thousands of people use Tor every day to protect against data-gathering corporations like Doubleclick while going about their normal activities. Some Tor users may be legitimately connecting to your service right now to carry on normal activities. You need to decide whether banning the Tor network is worth losing the contributions of these users, as well as potential future such users. </p>
abuse.html 130) <p>Lastly, please remember that Tor servers have individual exit policies. Many Tor servers do not allow exiting connections at all. Many of those that do, probably already disallow connections to your service. When you go about banning nodes, you should parse the exit policies and only block the ones that allow these connections; and you should keep in mind that exit policies can change (as well as the overall list of nodes in the network). </p>
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faq-abuse.html 131) <p>If you really want to do this, there is a python script to parse the Tor directory <a class="external" href="http://tor.eff.org/cvs/tor/contrib/exitlist"><img src="/wiki/classic/img/moin-www.png" width="11" alt="[WWW]" height="11" > here</a>. </p>
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First draft of an abuse page.
Andrew Lewman authored 19 years ago
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abuse.html 132) <p> </p>
abuse.html 133)
abuse.html 134) <h3>I have legal questions about Tor abuse.</h3>
abuse.html 135)
abuse.html 136) <p>We're only the developers. We can answer technical questions, but we're not the ones to talk to about legal questions or concerns. </p>
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faq-abuse.html 137) <p>Please take a look at the <a class="external" href="http://tor.eff.org//eff/tor-legal-faq.html"><img src="/wiki/classic/img/moin-www.png" width="11" alt="[WWW]" height="11" > Tor Legal FAQ</a>, and contact EFF directly if you have any further questions. </p>
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First draft of an abuse page.
Andrew Lewman authored 19 years ago
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abuse.html 138) <p> </p>
abuse.html 139)
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Andrew Lewman authored 19 years ago
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faq-abuse.html 140) </div><!-- #main -->
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First draft of an abuse page.