Re:Comcast Is Threatening to Cut Off Customers Who Use Tor
by sailfast on Monday September 15, 2014 @11:32AM
(#8319460)
Thank you for this. This may be a stupid question, but how would your ISP know you were actively running a Tor (non-node) connection?
Obviously I need to read up on all the back-end tech but I would assume that if it was easy to identify someone using Tor, it would no longer provide the anonymity / security because it would clearly identify outliers.
It makes sense to ban someone running a node off their Comcast connection (not because it's logical but because of their high traffic / server banning track record) but for Comcast to detect a browsing session? Seems odd.
Re:Comcast Is Threatening to Cut Off Customers Who Use Tor
by nitrogen on Monday September 15, 2014 @11:48AM
(#8319542)
Using DPI or even just flow analysis (sizes, port numbers, destination addresses, protocol (TCP/UDP) bits, and timings of packets), it should be possible to distinguish between encrypted TOR and other encrypted protocols with ease.
The actual source article seems to be confusing running a connection to Tor and the Tor browser with running a Tor relay node or exit node. Prohibiting the Tor browser would be a bad move on the part of any ISP who isn't part of a police state, but none of their document suggest that they're doing that. I can understand them prohibiting running a Tor node on your residential internet connection though. Almost all residential ISPs officially prohibit running servers, though it usually isn't enforced as long as you aren't pushing too much traffic. A Tor node can easily fall on those lines. I think even the Tor project doesn't recommend running nodes on your home connection rather than actual servers with server-class connections.