TOR Exit Node

[HostRail]

I'm curious what kind of people operate TOR exit nodes and why.

[ssmithisme]

Not costing anything also includes having enough bandwidth to run it without interfering with anything else.

But I wouldnt want the damn FBI or something sitting in front of me looking for people using tor for malicious purposes.

[L337G33K]

I think TOR is mostly run by non-profit organizations but many individuals also operate as TOR exit node to steal your password and other sensitive data by sniffing the data going through them.

[zemsten]

Not costing anything also includes having enough bandwidth to run it without interfering with anything else.

But I wouldnt want the damn FBI or something sitting in front of me looking for people using tor for malicious purposes.

Running a tor exit node is actually another way to have probable deniability. If you're operating a Tor exit node, you can claim that the traffic participating in illegal activity was not yours. Because the tor "hops" are encrypted, the authorities would have to do some work to find out where it originated. If you have enough bandwidth, it's actually not a bad idea to run an exit node.

Cheers. :)

[HostRail]

good point. TOR wasn't developed for illegal activities, not that it isn't used for it.

I would like to know if there is a private exit node pool anywhere. Or if that's even possible. A group that could be trusted with anonymity.

Perhaps that would defeat the purpose. But at least it would increase the speed I think.

Is it possible to send an encrypted request through tor's relay nodes then to an exit node and then from there on to a trusted proxy server? So it would be encrypted the whole way though. That way tor would only act as a middle man.

PS I have this setup running right now on a vps.

http://howtoforge.com/ultimate-security-proxy-with-tor

and it is really cool. I'm adding a webmin front end and monitoring system for tor squid and privoxy.

[zemsten]

I think that having a private exit node pool would defeat the purpose. To make this pool private, it would have to have some sort of security -- such as a password, or security by obscurity. Either way, the user would have to know something about the node(s) and would therefore reduce the amount of anonymity.

In reply to the other idea, I think that may be possible, but it'd probably have to be a https request on port 443, and because TOR is a tunnel, I'm not sure if it would get to the right port at the end. Each packet sent through TOR has a header with instructions to take it through the hops in the tunnel. Any single node can only read its own part of the header, so that particular node can't tell where the packet came from or where it is going. If you knew about the private exit node, then the hops in the middle would be pointless, because where the traffic was exiting would be known. At least, that is my theory.