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This problem is kind of stupid because you don't specify any restrictions on the attacker. Can they just keep guessing cards until they have determined the correct one? If so, they will always win. Can they only guess once? If they can only guess once you could just select a card in your mind without even opening the deck, in which case the attacker has only a 1/52 chance of winning, so the odds are in your favor.

What I've leaned is Tor is safe as long as you use the Tor browser to access .onion sites (aka "hidden services") within the Tor network and keep your private information private. Every published paper I've read on global network monitoring and such has to do with activity at the edges - traffic into and out of the Tor network, which happens when people use Tor to access clearnet sites. Clearnet browsing IS a big risk to anonymity because your IP's traffic can be correlated with traffic leaving Tor network (often unencrypted).The connection goes something like this:

Yes the direct deanonymizing attacks against Tor require edge surveillance. No, this is not only possible in the case of connections to clearnet sites.

   User <###> (entry node) <###> (relays) <###> (exit node) <---> website

"<###>" means encrypted connection
"<--->" means unencrypted connection
"(relays)" means at least one relay, maybe a chain of relays

Correct

You can see there is considerable vulnerability from the fact that the final connection to the website is completely unencrypted, which means that exit node can see exactly what you're doing on the website. This is why Tor browser comes with "HTTPS Everywhere" installed by default - this way the exit node doesn't see unencrypted communications (assuming the site's ssl is configured securely), although it can still see the exact website you're visiting. But to monitor all traffic within Tor network would require the adversary own all the nodes/relays.

Wrong on a few counts. First of all, although you seem to understand the difference between communications security and traffic analysis, you are still somewhat confusing the issues by continuing to talk about encryption. Traffic analysis works regardless of if the communications are encrypted or not, so as far as anonymity goes it is a good bet to just pretend that all the traffic is encrypted in any case. Of course if the traffic isn't encrypted at the entry, deanonymizing would be much easier, but an attacker can still do edge attacks, aka traffic confirmation, aka end point timing correlation, even if the packets are encrypted. Almost all attacks against anonymity solutions are concerned about packet metadata, such as time of arrival, not the actual payload data of individual packets. Additionally, you are correct to say that a purely active/internal attacker must own all Tor nodes in order to see all Tor traffic. However, it is possible to see all Tor traffic without owning a single node, by monitoring the traffic into and out of nodes at ISP or IX levels. Less sophisticated attackers, hopefully the FBI and DEA falling into this category, would attack Tor by adding nodes to the network. Powerful attackers such as the NSA would monitor Tor node traffic from ISP's / IX's, passively, without having to add any nodes to the network at all.

Hidden services are within the Tor network and follow the onion router protocol so there's no exit node and everything is 100% end-to-end encrypted). The protocol is designed to ensure anonymous communication between the hidden server and the user. The way it works is the hidden service (HS) publishes a list with a number of relays it designates as "Introduction Points" (IP) that it listens to for connection requests. When a User wants to connect to the HS, he must select a different relay as a "Rendevous"(R) and create a circuit to it, then build a circuit to one of the IP's to tell the HS the rendevous point relay, which the HS then builds a circuit to. Then the user can closes the IP circuit and communicate with the HS at the rendevous point. It looks like this:

Yes everything is 100% encrypted up to the hidden service, but this doesn't mean much in terms of anonymity. Well, to be fair it means a lot, because if the traffic is not encrypted en route then the attacker could just spy on it at your entry node to deanonymize you. But as I said before, when contemplating attacks on anonymity systems, more often than not it is safe to work from the assumption that all of the traffic is encrypted, because most anonymity attacks are concerned with packet metadata which is available regardless of if the traffic payload data is encrypted or plaintext. The difference is between communications privacy and communications anonymity; although anonymity massively benefits from encryption, a large majority of anonymity attacks remain viable even if the traffic is layer encrypted end to end. Hidden service connections being encrypted end to end provides you with communications privacy, an attacker at an exit node can no longer eavesdrop on your communications. Hidden service connections being encrypted end to end has virtually no impact on your anonymity, the packet arrival timing metadata is still available and this is what is required to do the most feared deanonymizing attack against Tor (traffic confirmation, end point timing attack).

(1) User selects some relay as a rendevous point (R) and creates circuit:

    User <###> (entry node) <###> (relays) <###> (R)

(2) User connects to information point (IP) to tell HS the rendevous relay:

    User <###> (entry node) <###> (relays) <###> (IP) <###> (relays) <###> HS

(3) User connects to the HS using the circuit to the rendevous:

    User <###> (entry node) <###> (relays) <###> (R) <###> (relays) <###> HS

Yes you are correct about this. In the case of a connection to a clearnet site, active/internal timing attacks look like this:

user <###> Adversary Owned Entry <###> Good Middle <###> Adversary Owned Exit <---> Destination Server

The adversary can link the stream through the entry to the stream through the exit with statistics, using the packet arrival metadata, which exists regardless of if the packet is plaintext or ciphertext.

In the case of a hidden service, the completed circuit and internal timing attack looks like this:

User <###> Adversary Owned Entry <###> Good Middle <###> Good Rendezvous <###> HS Good Final <###> HS Good middle <###> Adversary Owned Entry <###> Hidden Service server

The attack is carried out in the same way, but now instead of having to own the clients entry and exit nodes, the attacker needs to own the client and hidden services entry node. Of course they will only see a connection to an IP address, and they cannot by this alone determine that the IP address is the hidden service. However, as they own one of the hidden services entry nodes, they can do this:

Adversary <###> (Adversaries circuit to hidden service) <###> (Hidden Service Relays to adversaries circuit) <###> Adversary Owned Entry Node <###> Hidden Service

as the adversary is connecting to the hidden service with its .onion address, their timing attack can identify the hidden service once the packets from them as a client pass through their entry guard. Now they have identified the hidden services IP address, and know when they do their timing attack against regular users in the future, that the regular users are connecting to the hidden service instead of just some IP address that is not identified as being linked to any particular hidden service.

Also, an attacker can trace up to a hidden services good entry guards in the following way:


Adversary <###> (Adversaries circuit to hidden service) <###> (Hidden Service Relays to adversaries circuit) <###> Entry Node <###> Hidden Service

every time the adversary creates a connection to the hidden service, the nodes consisting of (Hidden Service Relays to adversaries circuit) change, selected from the current pool of available Tor nodes, as determined by the Tor circuit construction protocol. The hidden services entry node is selected from one of three nodes it has selected as guards, which currently rotate about once every month to two months. The attack is simply brute force: build a circuit to the hidden service, send a packet down it, close the circuit, rinse and repeat. The adversary can select to use a rendezvous point that they own, allowing them to identify the final node from the hidden service. Eventually, after forcing the hidden service to open enough new circuits, the adversary will have one of their Tor relays on the circuit to the hidden service. Now they do timing attacks on their nodes looking to see if one of the packets they send to the hidden service travels to it through one of their nodes.  If they have the final node, they will be able to identify the middle node. If they own the middle node, they will be able to identify the entry guard, and they will know it is the middle node as they can identify the final node from their rendezvous point, and if they send a packet to a node that is not a public Tor relay they will know it is the hidden service and that they are its entry guard (which will be easy to confirm as they will see a LOT of the packets they send to the hidden service). This attack allows for quick tracing of hidden services up to their entry guards.

Additionally, it is incorrect to say that you are required to own Tor relays to do these attacks. In reality you are only required to be able to observe traffic going into and out of Tor relays. Attackers who can not gain access to ISPs / IXs will have to resort to either running relays or hacking into operating relays. Powerful attackers such as the NSA can certainly spy on good Tor nodes (especially in the USA) to observe the traffic entering and exiting from them, and thus they do not have much motivation to add their own nodes to the network, especially as active surveillance is much easier to identify than passive surveillance.

This whole process in accomplished by the Vidalia client and requires no input from the user beyond entering the .onion address into the Tor browser. There's also a lot of rigorous PKI trust validation of relays, key-exchanges, asymmetric crypto, etc. happening at each step throughout the process (but I'm leaving that out because it's complicated enough to explain already). They can't 'crack' PGP (unless in individual cases when it's used incorrectly), so they cannot read the actual data being transmitted within the Tor network because it's all encrypted (and signed and verified).Communucations are completely anonymized once they leave your entry node.

Someone already corrected you on this, and indeed Tor is what manages everything, Vidalia is merely a graphical user interface that allows you to control some of what Tor does. You can access hidden services without using Vidalia at all. Also, the cryptography is all but entirely irrelevant to the counter traffic analysis properties of Tor; although unencrypted traffic being sent from entry to exit would be almost completely incompatible with anonymity, the direct attacks on anonymity protocols that are studied today pretty much all work with the assumption that the traffic is end to end encrypted.

tl:dr:
As long as the entry node is not comprimised, Tor is safe. If the entry node *is* comprimised, you are still safe unless:
 A. You're using Tor browser to connect to clearnet sites, or
 B. You connect to a hidden service who's entry node is also comprimised AND the adversary knows it is used by the hidden server
In order for B to be true, the hidden service itself has to already be de-anonymized and its IP address known. But that would be the hidden service that is comprimised, not Tor itself.

A is mostly true, although I would clarify that

1. The entry guard can be actively compromised, meaning that an attacker owns it
2. The entry guard can be passively compromised, meaning that it uses an ISP or IX that spies on it
3. The entry guard and its' ISP/IX can both be good, but you can still be deanonymized if YOU are being monitored by your ISP or IX

B is true, and I guess you actually have understood that risk from the get go . However, if you own a hidden services entry guard, it is trivial to determine that you do. Also I guess I should point out that you are less likely to use an entry guard owned by the same attacker who owns the hidden services entry guard than you are to use a malicious exit node owned by the same person who uses your entry node, because you use a new exit node roughly once every ten minutes where as the hidden services entry guard used is selected from three guards that change only once every month to two months. So you are afforded some extra protection in this case. However it is not that hard for an attacker to identify the entry guards used by a hidden service, and it is likely somewhat of a safe bet that a half decent attacker could put a hidden service under passive surveillance. Actual evidence points to the FBI not being such a skilled attacker, but this is likely due to incompetence on their part rather than the inherent security of Tor.

I'm with kmfkewm on this, quite frankly.  They have virtually unlimited resources

No, they don't. They have distinctly limited resources, in terms of money, manpower, intellectual capital, and internal and external political will.

They are limited, but they do have a shit ton of money. They also have some of the brightest computer and mathematics people in the world. They are limited by internal and to a lesser extent external policy to some extent, but it is pretty obvious that they mostly answer to themselves. On paper they are restricted, in practice they do whatever they want and good luck getting anyone to stop them. Just look at their illegal wiretapping to see that they, like many intelligence agencies, are not bound by the law. Although I believe the CIA is the only intelligence agency in USA that is officially allowed to violate the law.

An "infinitely" resourceful state adversary would have taken down SR by now. SR is still up because such an adversary doesn't exist.

The NSA is literally housed in a black box:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:National_Security_Agency_headquarters,_Fort_Meade,_Maryland.jpg

Yes the NSA has a headquarters, they are not some omniscient omnipresent spiritual being. They also have dozens of Narusinsight super computers hooked up to split fiber optic cables at major internet exchange points in the USA, and they sample a metric fuck ton of internet traffic for analysis. They also have powerful traditional super computers, and although nobody knows for sure it is likely that they are working towards quantum computers capable of breaking most currently used asymmetric crypto systems. I know smart mathematicians and physicists who are worried about this, it is no longer in the realm of tinfoil hats to be concerned about quantum computing attacks on cryptography. They also have teams of elite hackers who have most likely penetrated into foreign computer systems not even connected to the internet in order to destroy nuclear centrifuges. The US government spends millions of dollars a year buying up zero days from private actors, and the NSA makes their own as well.

Much of their operations are secret. It is the nature of human psychology that in the absence of evidence, wild speculations fly (you need only look at the explanations for weather phenomena in any pre-scientific society). That's basically what that blog post is about.

Yes that blog post is FUD, I never disagreed with that. But it is not FUD to think that the NSA can already pwn Tor. The leaked AT&T documents and testimony from Mark Klien I believe his name is, gives us evidence that the NSA has installed Narusinsight super computers at major IXs. There are publicly available specs for Narusinsight super computers showing they are capable of sampling traffic from millions of residential internet connections. We have seen the hacking against the Iranian centrifuges which demonstrates that intelligence agencies have extremely skilled hackers, world class hackers. The research and development into quantum computing is in the public sector, and it is likely a safe assumption that the NSA has secret research going on that is a decade ahead of anything we have seen so far.

I submit that if we knew about their internal operations, they would be a lot more mundane than most people assume.

We can extrapolate from what we know, to come to the conclusion that the NSA is a world class agency of hackers, cryptanalysts and traffic analysts, with a multi billion dollar a year budget and direct access to many of the most heavily used links on the global internet. 

Also, all the resources in the world can't beat logic. While it's possible to compromise the Tor network, it is extremely difficult to do so in a way that won't get you noticed. You can spin up 10,000 exit nodes, but you can't do it without getting noticed. Take a look at the Trotsky section of this page:

From an active perspective, actually adding nodes to the Tor network, you are mostly correct. But that is not how the NSA would attack Tor, as I said before. They already have the infrastructure in place to passively monitor a huge percentage of good Tor nodes, if they so wish. There are two types of attacker, the Tor folk tend to call them active and passive in regards to their positioning, however I personally prefer the alternatively used wording of internal and external as active and passive are imo different. An internal/active attacker adds nodes to the network to observe traffic on the network, an external/passive attacker monitors nodes that are already on the network by spying on their traffic at their ISP, or IX's. It is extraordinarily difficult bordering on impossible to detect a passive attacker, and the only reason we have more than speculation in regards to the NSA's passive internet surveillance is because of the leaked documents from AT&T showing that they installed fiber optic splitters and Narusinsight supercomputers at multiple IX's.

"Between 17-23:00 (UTC) 226 exiting relays, all with largely identical nicknames ("trotsky*") and exit policies were added to the tor network. No family or contact information was set, and the IPs came from several countries (mostly eastern European) making it look like a potential botnet. They disappeared roughly a week later.

On 10/2/10 between 21-20:00 (UTC) another 383 exit relays were added, this time more gradually. Others have periodically appeared outside these windows. These relays appear to be on residential connections, most having very poor connectivity (rransom reports that some are dialup)."

Adding a lot of nodes to the Tor network all at once will get them all blacklisted. adding them with the same name but without setting them as part of a family will get them all blacklisted or possibly set into the same family by the operators of the directory authority servers. If someone at an IX passively monitors the five hundred Tor nodes that send traffic through that IX, nobody is able to tell unless something leaks out about the operation. 

This is actually why it is so unbelievable that the NSA or other US intelligence agencies would run a front ISP and actively add nodes to the Tor network. They simply don't need to do this, they can passively monitor nodes from the traffic analysis super computers they already have installed at major exchange points.

There is zero evidence that Cogent is a front for American law enforcement or intelligence agencies, and there aren't even that many relays on Cogent autonomous systems. Frankly, I'd be more concerned about Torservers.

Indeed.

and then some guy with a gun runs into your opium lounge and steals all your money.  you go to the commons house but they have no electricity because their generators ran out of gas and the oil cartels are 10x worse than the mexican drug cartels we currently know so well.   and all the volunteer programmers are trying to figure out how to get their septic system running properly since there's no public sewage.  you go to the corner party to let loose a bit, but there's a bunch of junkies laid out on the street leaving you no room to dance.  so you go to a restaurant to get some food and a drink but the food is contaminated with rat feces and you get food poisoning.  too bad ur friends still haven't got the septic system functional, so you have to experience explosive diarrhea in an alley way.  but some gang/militia claims that alley as their own and doesn't take kindly to you shitting there so they kick your ass and sell you into slavery.

yay anarchy.

And then you are reimbursed for the lost money by your private defense agency. And then they hunt down the thief and recover the stolen money for themselves, and after negotiation with the thieves private defense agency they also fine him heavily, keeping the profit from the fine as well as their yearly subscription fee from the opiate den. The commons house gets electricity from a power grid, which is owned and operated by a private industry. Partially it is also solar powered though, and it used to be powered by gas. The oil cartels attempted to price fix high, but then one of them realized he could charge less than the others and instantly got all of the customers. Then the others lowered their prices to his, and then another one of them lowered the prices even more so that he could get all of the customers. At the end the price stayed at about the lowest it could go for the producers to feel like it was worth it for them, and although they made a fortune they didn't manage to charge more than the price of oil today. The septic system works fine and it is emptied out by a private industry every now and then. You decide to go to a privately owned party house and as you are not a junkie you decide to avoid the junkie friendly establishment. Everyone is high on MDMA and LSD and nobody is worried about the police coming and enslaving everybody, because the house is protected by a private defense agency that protects its clients from slavery. Then you go to a restaurant, but first you check to make sure that they are certified by the private health certification company of your choice. You know that for them to be certified they must meet certain standards and agree to be randomly audited, and the health certification agency you have went with has it in their best interests to be as thorough as possible in their inspections, because they are well respected and make their money by auditing restaurants who pay for a chance at certification, and nobody cares to be certified by an establishment that certifies unsanitary restaurants as the sick customers will throw a fit and the value of being certified by that company will drop and they will go out of business. You don't get diarrhea from eating at the restaurant, and on your way home you are confident that you will not be stopped and harassed by any gangs or police agencies, because you are just minding your own business and you live in a city that is patrolled by multiple cooperating libertarian defense agencies. Plus you have a big ass gun.

sounds good

Quote from: kmfkewm on February 16, 2013, 10:00 pm

Seriously anarcho-socialists have the most backwards ass logic I have ever heard. "If you own two cars you are a thief, because you are using force to deprive someone who has no car from having your extra car, and thus you have stolen a car from him!" I don't see how people can say that with a straight face. In their world it is righteous for violent criminals to use force to steal your extra car, because in their twisted minds you are the one who has stolen the car from society by having an extra of something while some people have none. They think that means you are a car thief, and they are collecting stolen property by using force to take your car from you and give it to someone who has no car. The best word to describe these people is completely mind fucked.

Wow,

To be fair, reading your last two posts, it would be very very evident to anyone who understands even the very fundamental types of politics out there, that you absolutely haven't a clue as to what socialism or communism is, seriously. Not a clue. Its laughable and the posts are emitting a fine example of the ignorant stereotype you people have on it too, it was funny enough to put me in good form even!

Im just glad im not so limited as that.

BTW, the "higher" classes and bourgeois are absolute fucking parasites, they depend on an entire class (the working class) to do literally 99% of all their work while they rack in profit. While the worker has no choice only to accept the pittance said parasite pays them every week to get by, in comparison to the wages of the parasite, so there is no chance of social mobility, get it?.

I / We believe in equality. Not watered down slavery. Is that simple enough?

First of all I know that there is social mobility. My grandparents and my parents were born poor, and now my grandparents are quite rich and my parents are well to do as well. I also know that this is a common theme, because I know a lot of people from upper middle class / lower upper class families and it is not at all uncommon  that their parents were born poor and became wealthy. A grandparent of one of my friends ran away from an abusive home when he was a teenager, and worked his way up to being a multimillionaire, and a job provider! His grandchildren have been quite wealthy for their entire lives, and all of them have high paying jobs and received excellent educations. Going from living on the street as a run away from a poor abusive family to having millions of dollars sure seems like quite a lot of social mobility to me, so I really have not got a clue where you get the idea that there is no social mobility from? In a socialist world he would not have been rewarded for his work as much, because he would be forced to fund other people with his money.

There is social mobility if you are a hard worker or if you are skilled / intelligent. If you are not willing to work hard or if you are not above average intelligence / skilled at some specialty, then there is not as much mobility. In a free market people are paid for their abilities, it is called a job market. Rewarding skilled people only makes sense, why should someone with rare and sought after abilities be paid the same amount as someone who hasn't got rare and sought after abilities? When the government forces this to happen it just takes motivation away from people who have skills that are in high demand and short supply. It is bad for society as a whole.

I am well aware of socialism and communism, although they do have many different forms. Basically socialism is a watered down version of communism. Socialism is a collectivist leaning ideology that puts 'the good of society' over the good of the individual, hence the name socialism. Socialists believe in wealth redistribution, they think that healthcare should be paid for by society for society rather than by individuals for individuals. This is accomplished with high tax rates, which essentially boils down to by shoving guns in peoples faces (particularly rich people) , taking their money, and using it to fund social programs. Communism is the epitome of collectivism, it is socialism taken to its most extreme. In a communist society there is not even money, rather goods are distributed by a central agency 'from each according to his abilities to each according to his needs'. There are no longer owners of shoe factories hiring people to make shoes which are sold to consumers, rather the armed communist gangs raid the shoe factory and kill the owner, then they force people to make shoes which are then distributed through out the society. That is communism in a nut shell. It is impossible to have communism without initiating force because nobody in their right mind wants to be a slave to the collective, it is also impossible to have communism without a strong centralized government to manage the redistribution of wealth, which makes anarcho-communism a complete misnomer.

Socialist ideology is based entirely on entitlement and thinking that it is morally acceptable to use violence to rob rich people of their money and distribute it to the poor. Nothing prevents poor people in a free market capitalist world from moving up in the socioeconomic hierarchy, lots of rich people today were born into poor families. Tons of people have the next generation of their family better off than they were, just look at any middle class neighborhood and see where the people came from. A lot of them were born into poor families and worked hard to become middle class. And their children have an even easier time to get even more rich than their parents, and the same for their children as well. There is no reason to work hard particularly in a communist world where working hard just means that you support more people who you don't really even give a shit about.

Not really because a long range drone would be quite expensive to build. With the FPV gear available today you can set gps co ords to return to home if you lose signal but i don't think it possible to set gps drop offs and returns plus you are limited to range if you are going to fly the thing fpv yourself. To build a fully autonomous drone would cost a fuckton and just wouldn't be practical not to mention if you lose it you're "payload" would be compromised if still onboard and you prints and DNA would also be all over the thing if you built it yourself like i would.

It is possible for GPS drop off and return, you could build it with gloves on, you will lose your payload if any shipment method is compromised.