[Cryptography] Are Tor hidden services really hidden?

[Jerry Leichter]

On Feb 14, 2014, at 11:50 AM, Tom Ritter wrote:
>> It could be that they are all being found because they are making stupid
>> mistakes like sending email which has to go outside the Tor system becauseof
>> the spam controls. But it wouldn't surprise me if we later find that there
>> are tens of thousands of NSA/GCHQ run nodes.
> 
> I'll nit and say we only have 5K nodes, including 1K exits and 2K
> guards but it's possible.  I proposed (and intended to do before I got
> sidetracked) that we just go through the exit probability percents and
> tick off which nodes we believe are run by trustworthy people, and
> just see what percentage we get to.  I think it will be less than 50%,
> but greater than 25%.
Going off on a side track, but are you seeing any effect from SafePlug (https://pogoplug.com/safeplug)?  This is a little box made by the guys who build PogoPlug, which lets you make your disks available over the Internet.  SafePlug acts as a proxy that sends your browser request through Tor.  If can also be configured to offer itself as a full Tor node.  Hard to beat at $49.

                                                        -- Jerry