I've found similar situations with sites that share logins for forum/comment postings as well as disposable email services. While there were a handful that just didn't want to share their email to register, the majority were using it to harass, spam, etc.
One statistic missing from the post: what percentage of malicious traffic on the internet actually comes through Tor?
Akamai says[1] that Tor exit nodes were "far more likely to contain malicious requests", but it was still only ~1.26% of the total.
edit: they say the "far more likely to contain malicious requests" statistic is 1:380 for Tor exit node IPs vs. 1:11,500 for non-Tor IPs, but I wonder is that simply a result of more traffic being concentrated to those few exit node IPs?
At FotoForensics (before I blocked TOR uploads): TOR was about 3% of traffic, but accounted for >50% of porn uploads and about 80% of child porn uploads.
Today, TOR is about 1% of overall traffic to the site. (I block uploads, but TOR users can still access and view the site.) However, it accounts for about 20% of network attacks.
The possibility to use it to attack clearnet systems is actually what sets apart Tor from Freenet. That’s why any secret service needs Tor to work, but Freenet is mostly uninteresting to them. You can only communicate with it.
You might want to re-read the criticisms about the Broken Windows theory. They didn't disprove it. They only showed that it is not necessarily the only cause of crime in cities.
On the Internet, the theory holds up really well. If you run a site that doesn't ban child porn, then you quickly get lots of child porn. If you don't stop porn, then you quickly get porn. Same with drugs, human trafficking, etc.
If you put an unmoderated public proxy on the web, it will quickly be used for spam, network attacks, and other malicious activities. And if you monitor the rate it is used for malicious purposes, you'll see it start slowly and then quickly ramp up to being mostly used for malicious causes.
If you put up an unmoderated public FTP site, it might be a while before the bad guys find it. But then they will start using it. For storing porn, child porn, warez, distributing malware, coordinating phishing attacks, etc.
Similarly, the reason you don't see many escort services offered on Google Hangouts or Facebook or eBay isn't because the escort services haven't tried being there. They are not there because Google and Facebook and eBay actively kick them out. Craigslist is not as proactive, so it has more escort offerings. And TOR? Not only is it not proactively stopping it, it has entire forums dedicated to supporting it. There's even forums where you can rate your escort! (Escort services are typically associated with prostitution, human trafficking, pornography, drugs, and money laundering.)
6 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 22.6 ms ] threadI'm conceptually a supporter of TOR, but these real-world accounts of the problems that exist with it are hard to ignore.
The pragmatic side of me agrees with pretty much everything in this article.
Akamai says[1] that Tor exit nodes were "far more likely to contain malicious requests", but it was still only ~1.26% of the total.
edit: they say the "far more likely to contain malicious requests" statistic is 1:380 for Tor exit node IPs vs. 1:11,500 for non-Tor IPs, but I wonder is that simply a result of more traffic being concentrated to those few exit node IPs?
[1] https://www.stateoftheinternet.com/downloads/pdfs/state-of-t...
Today, TOR is about 1% of overall traffic to the site. (I block uploads, but TOR users can still access and view the site.) However, it accounts for about 20% of network attacks.
The broken window theory was shown to be a fallacy, by the way: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Broken_windows_th...
On the Internet, the theory holds up really well. If you run a site that doesn't ban child porn, then you quickly get lots of child porn. If you don't stop porn, then you quickly get porn. Same with drugs, human trafficking, etc.
If you put an unmoderated public proxy on the web, it will quickly be used for spam, network attacks, and other malicious activities. And if you monitor the rate it is used for malicious purposes, you'll see it start slowly and then quickly ramp up to being mostly used for malicious causes.
If you put up an unmoderated public FTP site, it might be a while before the bad guys find it. But then they will start using it. For storing porn, child porn, warez, distributing malware, coordinating phishing attacks, etc.
Similarly, the reason you don't see many escort services offered on Google Hangouts or Facebook or eBay isn't because the escort services haven't tried being there. They are not there because Google and Facebook and eBay actively kick them out. Craigslist is not as proactive, so it has more escort offerings. And TOR? Not only is it not proactively stopping it, it has entire forums dedicated to supporting it. There's even forums where you can rate your escort! (Escort services are typically associated with prostitution, human trafficking, pornography, drugs, and money laundering.)