faq-abuse.html (ec2cd3608) - tor-webwml.git

ec2cd36089f89c5c0f12fdb56be6f895b93b9bdb

First draft of an abuse page. Andrew Lewman authored 19 years ago	`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>`
Updated faq-abuse.html to m... Andrew Lewman authored 19 years ago	`faq-abuse.html 6) <title>Abuse FAQ for Tor Server Operators</title> faq-abuse.html 7) <meta name="Author" content="Roger Dingledine" />`
Renamed to faq-abuse, set i... Andrew Lewman authored 19 years ago	`faq-abuse.html 8) <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1" />`
Updated faq-abuse.html to m... Andrew Lewman authored 19 years ago	`faq-abuse.html 9) <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="stylesheet.css" />`
Renamed to faq-abuse, set i... Andrew Lewman authored 19 years ago	`faq-abuse.html 10) <link rel="shortcut icon" type="image/x-icon" href="/favicon.ico" />`
First draft of an abuse page. Andrew Lewman authored 19 years ago	`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">`
Updated faq-abuse.html to m... Andrew Lewman authored 19 years ago	`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>`
clean up faq-abuse page; ad... Roger Dingledine authored 19 years ago	`faq-abuse.html 25) \| <a href="faq.html">FAQs</a>`
Updated faq-abuse.html to m... Andrew Lewman authored 19 years ago	`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>`
First draft of an abuse page. Andrew Lewman authored 19 years ago	`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)`
Removed all invalid classes... Andrew Lewman authored 19 years ago	`faq-abuse.html 37) <div class="center"> faq-abuse.html 38)`
First draft of an abuse page. Andrew Lewman authored 19 years ago	`abuse.html 39) <div class="main-column"> abuse.html 40)`
Renamed to faq-abuse, set i... Andrew Lewman authored 19 years ago	`faq-abuse.html 41) <!-- PUT CONTENT AFTER THIS TAG --> faq-abuse.html 42) faq-abuse.html 43) <h2>Abuse FAQ for Tor Server Operators</h2> faq-abuse.html 44) <hr /> faq-abuse.html 45)`
clean up faq-abuse page; ad... Roger Dingledine authored 19 years ago	`faq-abuse.html 46) <a name="WhatAboutCriminals"></a>`
First draft of an abuse page. Andrew Lewman authored 19 years ago	`abuse.html 47) <h3>Doesn't Tor enable criminals to do bad things?</h3> abuse.html 48)`
clean up faq-abuse page; ad... Roger Dingledine authored 19 years ago	faq-abuse.html 49) <p>Criminals can already do bad things. Since they're willing to faq-abuse.html 50) break laws, they already have lots of options available that provide faq-abuse.html 51) <em>better</em> privacy than Tor provides. They can steal cell phones, faq-abuse.html 52) use them, and throw them in a ditch; they can crack into computers faq-abuse.html 53) in Korea or Brazil and use them to launch abusive activities; they faq-abuse.html 54) can spread viruses that take control of literally millions of Windows faq-abuse.html 55) machines around the world. </p>
First draft of an abuse page. Andrew Lewman authored 19 years ago	`abuse.html 56)`
clean up faq-abuse page; ad... Roger Dingledine authored 19 years ago	`faq-abuse.html 57) <p>Tor aims to provide protection for ordinary people who want to follow faq-abuse.html 58) the law. Only criminals have privacy right now; we need to fix that. </p> faq-abuse.html 59) faq-abuse.html 60) <a name="Tradeoff"></a>`
First draft of an abuse page. Andrew Lewman authored 19 years ago	`abuse.html 61) <h3>Isn't it just a tradeoff: accepting the bad uses for the good ones?</h3> abuse.html 62) abuse.html 63) <p>No, we don't think that's how it works in the case of Tor. </p> abuse.html 64)`
clean up faq-abuse page; ad... Roger Dingledine authored 19 years ago	faq-abuse.html 65) <p>There are lots of ways to get anonymity on the net, some legal and faq-abuse.html 66) some illegal. As we explained above, many of the illegal approaches faq-abuse.html 67) can provide stronger anonymity than Tor can provide, because they can faq-abuse.html 68) control literally millions of computers via spyware, viruses, and other faq-abuse.html 69) techniques. </p> faq-abuse.html 70) faq-abuse.html 71) <p>Criminals and other bad people have the motivation to learn how to faq-abuse.html 72) get good anonymity, and many have the motivation to pay well to achieve faq-abuse.html 73) it. Being able to steal and reuse the identities of innocent victims faq-abuse.html 74) (identify theft) makes it even easier. Normal people, on the other hand, faq-abuse.html 75) don't typically have the time or money to spend figuring out how to get faq-abuse.html 76) privacy online. This is the worst of all possible worlds. </p> faq-abuse.html 77) faq-abuse.html 78) <p>So yes, criminals could in theory use Tor, but they already have faq-abuse.html 79) better options, and it seems unlikely that taking Tor away from the faq-abuse.html 80) world will stop them from doing their bad things. At the same time, Tor faq-abuse.html 81) and other privacy measures can <em>fight</em> identity theft, physical faq-abuse.html 82) crimes like stalking, and so on. </p> faq-abuse.html 83) faq-abuse.html 84) <a name="DDoS"></a>
First draft of an abuse page. Andrew Lewman authored 19 years ago	`abuse.html 85) <h3>What about distributed denial of service attacks?</h3> abuse.html 86)`
clean up faq-abuse page; ad... Roger Dingledine authored 19 years ago	faq-abuse.html 87) <p>Distributed denial of service attacks typically rely on having a group faq-abuse.html 88) of thousands of computers all sending floods of traffic to a victim. Since faq-abuse.html 89) the goal is to overpower the bandwidth of the victim, they typically send faq-abuse.html 90) UDP packets since those don't require handshakes or coordination. </p> faq-abuse.html 91) faq-abuse.html 92) <p>But because Tor only transports correctly-formed TCP streams, not faq-abuse.html 93) all IP packets, you cannot send UDP packets over Tor. (You can't do faq-abuse.html 94) specialized forms of this attack like SYN flooding either.) So ordinary faq-abuse.html 95) DDoS attacks are not possible over Tor. Tor also doesn't allow bandwidth faq-abuse.html 96) amplification attacks against external sites: you need to send in a byte faq-abuse.html 97) for every byte which the Tor network will send to your destination. So faq-abuse.html 98) in general, attackers who control enough bandwidth to launch an effective faq-abuse.html 99) DDoS attack can do it just fine without Tor. </p> faq-abuse.html 100) faq-abuse.html 101) <p>And if this argument doesn't convince you, go try Tor and see how faq-abuse.html 102) much aggregate throughput you can eke out of it, then come back to us faq-abuse.html 103) if you're still worried. </p> faq-abuse.html 104) faq-abuse.html 105) <a name="WhatAboutSpammers"></a>
First draft of an abuse page. Andrew Lewman authored 19 years ago	`abuse.html 106) <h3>What about spammers?</h3> abuse.html 107)`
clean up the spammer section Roger Dingledine authored 19 years ago	faq-abuse.html 108) <p>The simple answer: The default Tor exit policy rejects all outgoing faq-abuse.html 109) port 25 (SMTP) traffic. So sending spam mail through Tor isn't going to faq-abuse.html 110) work. It's possible that some server operators will enable port 25 on faq-abuse.html 111) their particular exit node, in which case only that computer will allow faq-abuse.html 112) outgoing mails; but that individual could just set up an open mail relay faq-abuse.html 113) too, independent of Tor. In short, Tor isn't useful for spammers, because faq-abuse.html 114) nearly all Tor servers refuse to deliver it. </p> faq-abuse.html 115) faq-abuse.html 116) <p>The complex answer: Spammers are already doing great without Tor. They faq-abuse.html 117) have armies of compromised computers that do their spamming. The added faq-abuse.html 118) complexity of getting new software installed and configured, and doing faq-abuse.html 119) Tor's public key operations, etc, makes it not economically worthwhile faq-abuse.html 120) for them to use Tor. </p>
First draft of an abuse page. Andrew Lewman authored 19 years ago	`abuse.html 121)`
clean up faq-abuse page; ad... Roger Dingledine authored 19 years ago	`faq-abuse.html 122) <a name="ExitPolicies"></a>`
First draft of an abuse page. Andrew Lewman authored 19 years ago	`abuse.html 123) <h3>How do Tor exit policies work?</h3> abuse.html 124)`
clean up faq-abuse page; ad... Roger Dingledine authored 19 years ago	faq-abuse.html 125) <p>Each Tor server has an exit policy that specifies what sort of faq-abuse.html 126) outbound connections are allowed or refused from that server. The exit faq-abuse.html 127) policies are propagated to the client via the directory, so clients faq-abuse.html 128) will automatically avoid picking exit nodes that would refuse to exit faq-abuse.html 129) to their intended destination. </p> faq-abuse.html 130) faq-abuse.html 131) <p>This way each server can decide the services he wants to allow faq-abuse.html 132) connections to, based on abuse potential and his own situation. </p>
First draft of an abuse page. Andrew Lewman authored 19 years ago	`abuse.html 133)`
clean up faq-abuse page; ad... Roger Dingledine authored 19 years ago	`faq-abuse.html 134) <a name="HowMuchAbuse"></a>`
First draft of an abuse page. Andrew Lewman authored 19 years ago	`abuse.html 135) <h3>Does Tor get much abuse?</h3> abuse.html 136)`
clean up faq-abuse page; ad... Roger Dingledine authored 19 years ago	faq-abuse.html 137) <p>Not much, in the grand scheme of things. We've been running the network faq-abuse.html 138) since October 2003, and it's only generated a handful of complaints. Of faq-abuse.html 139) course, like all privacy-oriented networks on the net, we attract our faq-abuse.html 140) share of jerks. Tor's exit policies help separate the role of "willing faq-abuse.html 141) to donate resources to the network" from the role of "willing to deal faq-abuse.html 142) with exit abuse complaints", so we hope our network is more sustainable faq-abuse.html 143) than past attempts at anonymity networks. </p>
First draft of an abuse page. Andrew Lewman authored 19 years ago	`abuse.html 144)`
clean up faq-abuse page; ad... Roger Dingledine authored 19 years ago	`faq-abuse.html 145) <p>Since Tor has <a faq-abuse.html 146) href="http://tor.eff.org/cvs/tor/doc/tor-doc.html">many good uses as faq-abuse.html 147) well</a>, we feel that we're doing pretty well at striking a balance faq-abuse.html 148) currently. </p> faq-abuse.html 149) faq-abuse.html 150) <a name="TypicalAbuses"></a>`
First draft of an abuse page. Andrew Lewman authored 19 years ago	`abuse.html 151) <h3>So what should I expect if I run a server?</h3> abuse.html 152)`
clean up faq-abuse page; ad... Roger Dingledine authored 19 years ago	`faq-abuse.html 153) <p>If you run a Tor server that allows exit connections (such as the faq-abuse.html 154) default exit policy), it's probably safe to say that you will eventually faq-abuse.html 155) hear from somebody. Abuse complaints can come in a variety of forms. The faq-abuse.html 156) main ones so far have taken the following form: </p>`
First draft of an abuse page. Andrew Lewman authored 19 years ago	`abuse.html 157) <ul>`
clean up faq-abuse page; ad... Roger Dingledine authored 19 years ago	faq-abuse.html 158) <li>Somebody connects to hotmail, and sends a criminal mail somewhere. The faq-abuse.html 159) FBI sends you a polite email, you explain that you run a Tor server, faq-abuse.html 160) and they say 'oh well' and leave you alone. [Port 80]</li> faq-abuse.html 161) <li>Somebody tries to get you shut down by using Tor to connect to google faq-abuse.html 162) groups and posting spam to usenet, and then sending an angry mail to faq-abuse.html 163) your ISP about how you're destroying the world. [Port 80]</li> faq-abuse.html 164) <li>Somebody connects to an irc network and makes a nuisance of faq-abuse.html 165) himself. Your ISP gets polite mail about how your computer has been faq-abuse.html 166) compromised; and/or your computer gets ddosed. [Port 6667]</li> faq-abuse.html 167) <li>Somebody uses Tor to download a Vin Diesel movie, and faq-abuse.html 168) your ISP gets a DMCA takedown notice. According to our lawyers faq-abuse.html 169) (and this convinced the Harvard general counsel), your ISP can faq-abuse.html 170) totally ignore this notice with no liability problems. See EFF's <a faq-abuse.html 171) href="http://tor.eff.org/eff/tor-dmca-response.html">Tor DMCA faq-abuse.html 172) Response Template</a>. [Arbitrary ports]</li>
First draft of an abuse page. Andrew Lewman authored 19 years ago	`abuse.html 173) </ul>`
clean up faq-abuse page; ad... Roger Dingledine authored 19 years ago	`faq-abuse.html 174) faq-abuse.html 175) <p>You might also find that your Tor server's IP is blocked from accessing faq-abuse.html 176) some Internet sites/services. This might happen regardless of your exit faq-abuse.html 177) policy, because some groups don't seem to know or care that Tor has faq-abuse.html 178) exit policies. (If you have a spare IP not used for other activities, faq-abuse.html 179) you might consider running your Tor server on it.) For example, </p> faq-abuse.html 180)`
First draft of an abuse page. Andrew Lewman authored 19 years ago	`abuse.html 181) <ul>`
clean up faq-abuse page; ad... Roger Dingledine authored 19 years ago	faq-abuse.html 182) <li>Wikipedia is currently blocking many Tor server IPs from writing faq-abuse.html 183) (reading still works), because they haven't figured out internally how faq-abuse.html 184) to deal with the fact that they want to provide open access but they faq-abuse.html 185) also have no ways to control abuse to their website. We're working with faq-abuse.html 186) them to resolve this.</li> faq-abuse.html 187) <li>It seems that SORBS is putting some Tor server IPs on their email faq-abuse.html 188) blacklist as well. They do this because they passively detect whether your faq-abuse.html 189) server connects to certain IRC networks, and they conclude from this that faq-abuse.html 190) your server is capable of spamming. We're working with them to teach them faq-abuse.html 191) that not all software works this way. Until then, we recommend you avoid faq-abuse.html 192) them, and teach your friends (if they use them) to avoid them too.</li>
First draft of an abuse page. Andrew Lewman authored 19 years ago	`abuse.html 193) </ul> abuse.html 194)`
clean up faq-abuse page; ad... Roger Dingledine authored 19 years ago	`faq-abuse.html 195) <a name="IrcBans"></a>`
First draft of an abuse page. Andrew Lewman authored 19 years ago	`abuse.html 196) <h3>Tor is banned from the IRC network I want to use.</h3> abuse.html 197)`
clean up faq-abuse page; ad... Roger Dingledine authored 19 years ago	faq-abuse.html 198) <p>Sometimes jerks make use of Tor to troll IRC channels. This abuse faq-abuse.html 199) results in IP-specific temporary bans ("klines" in IRC lingo), as the faq-abuse.html 200) network operators try to keep the troll off of their network. </p> faq-abuse.html 201) faq-abuse.html 202) <p>This response underscores a fundamental flaw in IRC's security model: faq-abuse.html 203) they assume that IP addresses equate to humans, and by banning the faq-abuse.html 204) IP address they can ban the human. In reality this is not the case -- faq-abuse.html 205) many such trolls routinely make use of the literally millions of open faq-abuse.html 206) proxies and compromised computers around the Internet. The IRC networks faq-abuse.html 207) are fighting a losing battle of trying to block all these nodes, faq-abuse.html 208) and an entire cottage industry of blacklists and counter-trolls has faq-abuse.html 209) sprung up based on this flawed security model (not unlike the antivirus faq-abuse.html 210) industry). The Tor network is just a drop in the bucket here. </p> faq-abuse.html 211) faq-abuse.html 212) <p>On the other hand, from the viewpoint of IRC server operators, security faq-abuse.html 213) is not an all-or-nothing thing. By responding quickly to trolls or faq-abuse.html 214) any other social attack, it may be possible to make the attack scenario faq-abuse.html 215) less attractive to the attacker. And most individual IP addresses do faq-abuse.html 216) equate to individual humans, on any given IRC network at any given time. faq-abuse.html 217) The exceptions include NAT gateways which may be allocated access as faq-abuse.html 218) special cases. While it's a losing battle to try to stop the use of open faq-abuse.html 219) proxies, it's not generally a losing battle to keep klining a single faq-abuse.html 220) ill-behaved IRC user until that user gets bored and goes away. </p> faq-abuse.html 221) faq-abuse.html 222) <p>But the real answer is to implement application-level auth systems, faq-abuse.html 223) to let in well-behaving users and keep out badly-behaving users. This faq-abuse.html 224) needs to be based on some property of the human (such as a password he faq-abuse.html 225) knows), not some property of the way his packets are transported. </p> faq-abuse.html 226) faq-abuse.html 227) <p>Of course, not all IRC networks are trying to ban Tor nodes. After faq-abuse.html 228) all, quite a few people use Tor to IRC in privacy in order to carry faq-abuse.html 229) on legitimate communications without tying them to their real-world faq-abuse.html 230) identity. Each IRC network needs to decide for itself if blocking a few faq-abuse.html 231) more of the millions of IPs that bad people can use is worth losing the faq-abuse.html 232) contributions from the well-behaved Tor users. </p> faq-abuse.html 233) faq-abuse.html 234) <p>If you're being blocked, have a discussion with the network operators faq-abuse.html 235) and explain the issues to them. They may not be aware of the existence of faq-abuse.html 236) Tor at all, or they may not be aware that the hostnames they're klining faq-abuse.html 237) are Tor exit nodes. If you explain the problem, and they conclude that faq-abuse.html 238) Tor ought to be blocked, you may want to consider moving to a network that faq-abuse.html 239) is more open to free speech. Maybe inviting them to #tor on irc.oftc.net faq-abuse.html 240) helps them show that we are not all evil people. </p> faq-abuse.html 241)
Updated faq-abuse.html to m... Andrew Lewman authored 19 years ago	`faq-abuse.html 242) <p>Finally, if you become aware of an IRC network which seems to be`
clean up faq-abuse page; ad... Roger Dingledine authored 19 years ago	`faq-abuse.html 243) blocking Tor, or a single Tor exit node, please put that information on <a faq-abuse.html 244) href="http://wiki.noreply.org/wiki/TheOnionRouter/BlockingIrc">BlockingIrc</a> faq-abuse.html 245) so that others can share. At least one IRC network consults that page faq-abuse.html 246) to unblock exit nodes which have been blocked inadvertently. </p>`
First draft of an abuse page. Andrew Lewman authored 19 years ago	`abuse.html 247)`
clean up faq-abuse page; ad... Roger Dingledine authored 19 years ago	`faq-abuse.html 248) <a name="SMTPBans"></a>`
First draft of an abuse page. Andrew Lewman authored 19 years ago	`abuse.html 249) <h3>Your nodes are banned from the mail server I want to use.</h3> abuse.html 250)`
clean up faq-abuse page; ad... Roger Dingledine authored 19 years ago	faq-abuse.html 251) <p>Even though <a href="#WhatAboutSpammers">Tor isn't useful for faq-abuse.html 252) spamming</a>, some over-zealous blacklisters seem to think that all faq-abuse.html 253) open networks like Tor should be boycotted. They don't understand how faq-abuse.html 254) Tor works (e.g. that it has exit policies), and don't seem to care to faq-abuse.html 255) understand it. If your server administrators decide to make use of these faq-abuse.html 256) blacklists to refuse incoming mail, you should have a conversation with faq-abuse.html 257) them and explain how Tor works. </p>
First draft of an abuse page. Andrew Lewman authored 19 years ago	`abuse.html 258)`
clean up faq-abuse page; ad... Roger Dingledine authored 19 years ago	`faq-abuse.html 259) <a name="Bans"></a>`
First draft of an abuse page. Andrew Lewman authored 19 years ago	`abuse.html 260) <h3>I want to ban the Tor network from my service.</h3> abuse.html 261)`
clean up faq-abuse page; ad... Roger Dingledine authored 19 years ago	faq-abuse.html 262) <p>First, ask yourself if there's a way to do application-level decisions faq-abuse.html 263) to separate the legitimate users from the jerks. For example, you might faq-abuse.html 264) have certain areas of the site, or certain privileges like posting, faq-abuse.html 265) available only to people who are registered. You could set up this faq-abuse.html 266) distinction only for certain IP addresses such as Tor exit nodes. This faq-abuse.html 267) way you can have multi-tiered access and not have to ban everything. </p> faq-abuse.html 268) faq-abuse.html 269) <p>Second, consider that thousands of people use Tor every day to protect faq-abuse.html 270) against data-gathering corporations like Doubleclick while going about faq-abuse.html 271) their normal activities. Some Tor users may be legitimately connecting faq-abuse.html 272) to your service right now to carry on normal activities. You need to faq-abuse.html 273) decide whether banning the Tor network is worth losing the contributions faq-abuse.html 274) of these users, as well as potential future such users. </p> faq-abuse.html 275) faq-abuse.html 276) <p>Lastly, please remember that Tor servers have individual exit faq-abuse.html 277) policies. Many Tor servers do not allow exiting connections at faq-abuse.html 278) all. Many of those that do, probably already disallow connections to faq-abuse.html 279) your service. When you go about banning nodes, you should parse the faq-abuse.html 280) exit policies and only block the ones that allow these connections; faq-abuse.html 281) and you should keep in mind that exit policies can change (as well as faq-abuse.html 282) the overall list of nodes in the network). </p> faq-abuse.html 283) faq-abuse.html 284) <p>If you really want to do this, there is a faq-abuse.html 285) python script to parse the Tor directory <a faq-abuse.html 286) href="http://tor.eff.org/cvs/tor/contrib/exitlist">here</a>. </p> faq-abuse.html 287) faq-abuse.html 288) <a name="LegalQuestions"></a>
First draft of an abuse page. Andrew Lewman authored 19 years ago	`abuse.html 289) <h3>I have legal questions about Tor abuse.</h3> abuse.html 290)`
clean up faq-abuse page; ad... Roger Dingledine authored 19 years ago	`faq-abuse.html 291) <p>We're only the developers. We can answer technical questions, but faq-abuse.html 292) we're not the ones to talk to about legal questions or concerns. </p> faq-abuse.html 293) faq-abuse.html 294) <p>Please take a look at the <a faq-abuse.html 295) href="http://tor.eff.org//eff/tor-legal-faq.html">Tor Legal FAQ</a>, faq-abuse.html 296) and contact EFF directly if you have any further questions. </p>`
First draft of an abuse page. Andrew Lewman authored 19 years ago	`abuse.html 297)`
Updated faq-abuse.html to m... Andrew Lewman authored 19 years ago	`faq-abuse.html 298) </div><!-- #main --> faq-abuse.html 299) </div> faq-abuse.html 300) <div class="bottom" id="bottom">`
clean up faq-abuse page; ad... Roger Dingledine authored 19 years ago	`faq-abuse.html 301) <i><a href="mailto:tor-webmaster@freehaven.net" class="smalllink">Webmaster</a></i> - $Id$`
Updated faq-abuse.html to m... Andrew Lewman authored 19 years ago	`faq-abuse.html 302) </div>`