Silk Road forums

Discussion => Security => Topic started by: rmsher on February 03, 2013, 06:49 pm

Title: browsing at a university
Post by: rmsher on February 03, 2013, 06:49 pm
I'm currently running TOR on an encrypted USB drive

I recently started attending a university and was forced to accept their internet policy where i had to give them an E-signature in order to us their wifi.

My question: would it be safe to use TOR on their wifi? I know their strict on things like piracy but would they have any way of knowing I was using TOR from MY computer?
Title: Re: browsing at a university
Post by: gingerballs on February 03, 2013, 06:55 pm
what OS are you using? if you're already running tor on an encrypted USB drive, you might as well install tails.. which has TOR and a PGP program built-in. i don't think you'd leave much of a trail for them in that case.
Title: Re: browsing at a university
Post by: acider on February 03, 2013, 07:01 pm
They can see that you re using tor, if they re looking for it. But they can't see what you do with it.
You can use a bridge to hide that you are on tor, if you think it's necessary.
Title: Re: browsing at a university
Post by: rmsher on February 03, 2013, 07:07 pm
@gingerballs - windows 7

@acider - could you give me a basic breakdown on what a bridge does? sounds useful since i move alot of weight out of my room, i dont want them suspicious in ANY way
Title: Re: browsing at a university
Post by: acider on February 03, 2013, 07:14 pm
You should read that
clearnet warning:  https://www.torproject.org/docs/bridges
Title: Re: browsing at a university
Post by: astor on February 03, 2013, 07:18 pm
could you give me a basic breakdown on what a bridge does? sounds useful since i move alot of weight out of my room, i dont want them suspicious in ANY way

Bridges are non-public relays. Go to https://bridges.torproject.org and solve the captcha. You'll be given 2 <ip address>:<port> combos.

Go to onion icon -> Settings -> Network.

Click "My ISP blocks connections to the Tor network". This has the effect of putting UseBridges 1 in your torrc config file.

Then copy the first <ip address>:<port> (without the word "bridge") into the field below Add Bridge. Click the plus sign and it will be added to the list. Copy the second <ip address>:<port> into the field and click plus again.

Congrats, you're using bridges.
Title: Re: browsing at a university
Post by: gingerballs on February 03, 2013, 07:26 pm
@gingerballs - windows 7

@acider - could you give me a basic breakdown on what a bridge does? sounds useful since i move alot of weight out of my room, i dont want them suspicious in ANY way

i'm no pro with any of this, but using tor with windows 7... your o/s is going to be a weak link.

since you already have a USB drive, you should check out tails https://tails.boum.org/
Title: Re: browsing at a university
Post by: sourman on February 04, 2013, 01:58 am
It depends on how their network is configured.

If they are looking for people connecting to public tor relays, using a bridge will hide your tor activity. I doubt this is the case though. It's far more likely that a university will use traffic shaping appliances that detect various protocols via DPI. In that case, you would need something like obfusproxy to really hide your tor usage.

In any case, it seems unlikely that a university will actually care that you use tor, especially since it takes up less bandwidth than regular internet use and they can't tell what you're using it for anyway.
Title: Re: browsing at a university
Post by: raynardine on February 05, 2013, 03:02 am
They can see that you re using tor, if they re looking for it. But they can't see what you do with it.
You can use a bridge to hide that you are on tor, if you think it's necessary.

I love bridge relays, especially with protocol obfuscation. Once the bridge community feature set is released with the ability to run your own bridge directory authorities, I'm running, like, a hundred relays.

Catch this fox if you can!