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A comment on The Tor Project: Building the Next Generation of Onion Services. Parent comment

Re:The Tor Project: Building the Next Generation of Onion Se... by openasocket on Tuesday May 24, 2016 @09:39AM (#11761388)
Current evidence suggests it's doing OK for now. The slides from the Snowden leaks showed the NSA was unable to compromise the core infrastructure by controlling relay and exit nodes, excepting a few cases. However, there are attacks a government-level entity can mount that Tor explicitly does not protect against, such as large scale passive scanning for traffic confirmation. It is not believed to be possible to beat such monitoring without compromising latency.
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Re:The Tor Project: Building the Next Generation of Onion Se... by fredley on Tuesday May 24, 2016 @11:11AM (#11762216)
That evidence is a few years old now, how far they've come in that time is a complete unknown.
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Re:The Tor Project: Building the Next Generation of Onion Se... by neerdowell on Tuesday May 24, 2016 @11:29AM (#11762345)
This is a textbook example of FUD.
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Re:The Tor Project: Building the Next Generation of Onion Se... by venomsnake on Tuesday May 24, 2016 @11:39AM (#11762430)
Since NSA core mission is being ahead of everyone else, a claim that capabilities have increased a lot in the last few years is not FUD.
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Re:The Tor Project: Building the Next Generation of Onion Se... by dimino on Tuesday May 24, 2016 @01:31PM (#11763604)
Without any specific evidence, it's still FUD.
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Re:The Tor Project: Building the Next Generation of Onion Se... by detaro on Tuesday May 24, 2016 @05:52PM (#11765838)
What would specific evidence for "we don't know how much progress they have made since the last time we had concrete data about them" look like?
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Re:The Tor Project: Building the Next Generation of Onion Se... by dimino on Tuesday May 24, 2016 @06:13PM (#11765961)
The FUD is implying they've made significant progress. You're right, "we don't know" isn't really a falsifiable statement, in this context.
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Re:The Tor Project: Building the Next Generation of Onion Se... by Trill-I-Am on Tuesday May 24, 2016 @04:54PM (#11765383)
Is there a certain time period after which we can say it's not FUD? Like if we go 10 years without any additional clarification after the Snowden slides, is it still automatically FUD?
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Re:The Tor Project: Building the Next Generation of Onion Se... by dimino on Tuesday May 24, 2016 @05:28PM (#11765637)
I'm confused -- are you asking when an unsubstantiated claim is not FUD?
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Re:The Tor Project: Building the Next Generation of Onion Se... by Trill-I-Am on Tuesday May 24, 2016 @10:57PM (#11767386)
Not all educated guesses and reasoned estimations are FUD
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Re:The Tor Project: Building the Next Generation of Onion Se... by dimino on Wednesday May 25, 2016 @02:42PM (#11772082)
None are, actually.
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Re:The Tor Project: Building the Next Generation of Onion Se... by alsetmusic on Tuesday May 24, 2016 @02:26PM (#11764217)
No claim of present NSA ability was stated. Noting the age of the data in question is a fact. Stating that an absence of new data creates a state of unknowing is a fact.
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Re:The Tor Project: Building the Next Generation of Onion Se... by digler999 on Tuesday May 24, 2016 @06:51PM (#11766209)
Fear of an oppressive government hacking the connection and arrest you. Uncertainty of agencies' capabilities given that they operate under top-secret levels with unlimited budgets. Doubt that they would stop working on or advancing the state of the art at defeating the security.
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Re:The Tor Project: Building the Next Generation of Onion Se... by placeybordeaux on Tuesday May 24, 2016 @07:03PM (#11766287)
It seems a little unreasonable how much you are being downvoted, the parent comment uses uncertainty to cast doubt on the idea that TOR is safe from the NSA. That can easily invoke fear.

Unfortunately that is largely what we have to go off with the NSA.

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Re:The Tor Project: Building the Next Generation of Onion Se... by RaleyField on Tuesday May 24, 2016 @02:42PM (#11764371)
And you just provided a textbook example of how the term FUD is usually applied.
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Re:The Tor Project: Building the Next Generation of Onion Se... by zatkin on Tuesday May 24, 2016 @11:35AM (#11762401)
Maybe the NSA was unable to compromise the core infrastructure, but the FBI was able to compromise enough to hack into a web forum and log the location data for its users, followed by subsequently impersonating the administration of said forum for two weeks or so, then arresting nearly 1,000 individuals.
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Re:The Tor Project: Building the Next Generation of Onion Se... by duozerk on Tuesday May 24, 2016 @11:45AM (#11762490)
They did that by attacking the forum software/the server itself, not tor and the underlying transport layer in general.

It's another layer entirely and does not give information about their capabilities in attacking tor itself (except maybe through the fact that if they had to do that, then yeah, tor is probably still relatively secure if used properly).

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Re:The Tor Project: Building the Next Generation of Onion Se... by y4mi on Tuesday May 24, 2016 @12:06PM (#11762687)
can TOR be considered to be on the transport layer though? i thought it worked with TCP, so it would need to be at least OSI level 5 iirc?
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Re:The Tor Project: Building the Next Generation of Onion Se... by duozerk on Tuesday May 24, 2016 @12:25PM (#11762874)
> so it would need to be at least OSI level 5 iirc

You're right; actually tor reside in the application layer I think (above TLS).

Although conceptually speaking it is itself a transport layer I guess.

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Re:The Tor Project: Building the Next Generation of Onion Se... by lrem on Tuesday May 24, 2016 @12:23PM (#11762858)
OSI level is cute, especially once you start to interpret ip over https ;)
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Re:The Tor Project: Building the Next Generation of Onion Se... by brobinson on Tuesday May 24, 2016 @08:14PM (#11766683)
Tor is a layer 4 overlay network.

Layer 5 would be HTTP, layer 6 would be the content (JPEG, MP4, etc.), and layer 7 would be the application serving or sending the HTTP requests/content.

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