[HN Gopher] Network DDoS
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Network DDoS
        
       Author : jerheinze
       Score  : 88 points
       Date   : 2022-06-11 07:07 UTC (15 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (status.torproject.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (status.torproject.org)
        
       | Atlas667 wrote:
       | I wonder what or who could be behind this? What's to gain
       | exactly?
        
         | prvit wrote:
         | It's DNM related drama, as always.
        
           | jwilk wrote:
           | What's DNM?
        
             | prvit wrote:
             | Darknet markets, where all the $$$ on Tor is.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | hackinthebochs wrote:
         | Maybe a new attack vector to unmask hidden services? E.g. flood
         | the network with data and see which nodes do and don't slow
         | down.
        
         | Nextgrid wrote:
         | I'd say Russia given the current events happening with the war
         | and their in-house censorship efforts which Tor allows to
         | bypass.
        
           | mburee wrote:
           | And what you Russia gain from that?
        
             | sophacles wrote:
             | Keeping russians from reading unapproved media. You know,
             | the kind that tells something closer to the truth than
             | "ukraine loves russia for saving them from their jewish
             | nazi leader".
        
               | [deleted]
        
               | Tenoke wrote:
               | I doubt that. The majority are using plain old proxies
               | and VPNs. A very temporary attack on Tor would hardly
               | make a dent.
               | 
               | There's near-constant ddosing on Tor of darknet markets,
               | some if it might've spilled over. Even more likely a
               | random group is doing it because they can. Russia is
               | definitely not the only or main choice even if they are
               | on everyone's minds currently.
        
               | bozhark wrote:
               | Watch the big wallets
        
           | prvit wrote:
           | Actually, it's Hillary Clinton DDoSing Tor to cover up
           | recently released evidence linking her and the DNC to a
           | child-trafficking organisation that worked with Jeffrey
           | Epstein.
           | 
           | On a more serious note, Tor DDoS attacks are always DNM
           | related.
           | 
           | It doesn't make any sense for Russia to DDoS Tor, they
           | haven't even blocked it domestically.
        
           | quyleanh wrote:
        
           | 0des wrote:
           | or, also, it's just plain fun to do bad things.
        
             | rickreynoldssf wrote:
             | Initiating a DDoS is costly in many cases. It exposes
             | infected bot net nodes that will most likely be pulled off
             | the botnet by their owners or ISPs. Botnet owners don't
             | randomly let their botnet be used for anything unless
             | they're paid well for it. Something this massive isn't for
             | shits and giggles.
        
               | 0des wrote:
               | > Initiating a DDoS is costly in many cases.
               | 
               | It's not.
               | 
               | > It exposes infected bot net nodes
               | 
               | so?
               | 
               | > pulled off the botnet by their owners or ISPs
               | 
               | in maybe <0.1% of cases, unless you're trying to abuse
               | port 25, which is not being discussed here.
               | 
               | > Botnet owners don't randomly let their botnet be used
               | for anything unless they're paid well for it
               | 
               | That's just not true. Botnets have never been cheaper,
               | and despite all of the pageantry by Microsoft et al, the
               | reality is that organized distributed-origin attacks
               | expand far beyond just being general rabblerousers, and
               | are on the rise. Our abilities to detect, thwart, and
               | report on them are far outnumbered.
               | 
               | Without any previous established reputation you can log
               | on today and command a large swarm to do your bidding on
               | almost any target for less than the cost of a tank of
               | gas. Botnets large and small, and for all purposes are
               | available, to anybody, for meager first world sums.
               | 
               | Botnets are not always 1 bot 1 stone thrown. People often
               | mistakenly equate large attacks with large bot swarms. As
               | we learned with amplification attacks, or even the
               | primitive malformed packet attacks, big things quite
               | often come in very small packages.
        
       | tentacleuno wrote:
       | Hmph. A postmortem would be nice; I like keeping up-to-date with
       | the Tor Project, they do very good work.
        
         | ur-whale wrote:
         | > A postmortem would be nice
         | 
         | Aren't those supposed to come about after the incident is over?
        
       | throwoutway wrote:
       | I have a smal knowledge of Tor, but could this be an attack to
       | uncover sources?
       | 
       | For example, let's say a nation state controlled a large number
       | of exit nodes (10%), and then DDOSed the other legitimate 90%.
       | Would this force all traffic to the 10% they controlled?
        
         | noident wrote:
         | Yes! Targeted DoS is one way to force traffic to your evil exit
         | node, and also to attack onion service anonymity (by forcing
         | the service to choose a new guard).
         | 
         | The 10/90 attack you're describing is probably not feasible due
         | to monitoring by the network team. Those remaining unaffected
         | nodes would be easy to spot as malicious relays and get removed
         | from the netwotk.
        
         | xorcist wrote:
         | It would not surprise me if nation states _did_ control 10% of
         | exit nodes. Onion routing however, means that exit nodes alone
         | can not deduce sources. An attacker would need to control a
         | whole chain to know both traffic source and destination, and
         | the most important aspect of Tor architecture is to make that
         | as difficult as possible.
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2022-06-11 23:01 UTC)