[HN Gopher] Mullvad becomes highest level of Tor Member (Shallot)
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Mullvad becomes highest level of Tor Member (Shallot)
Author : mikece
Score : 251 points
Date : 2023-03-03 15:49 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (mullvad.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (mullvad.net)
| unixhero wrote:
| Mullvad er best
| eimrine wrote:
| Imagine using Mullvad VPN for entering Tor and realizing that
| your activity is transparent for Mullvad.
| SahAssar wrote:
| It's not transparent (or at least any more than any other means
| of accessing TOR). If you at all access the internet through
| somewhat normal means (without running your own ISP and
| connecting to an IXP physically) you are placing some level of
| trust in a service provider.
|
| What these sort of VPNs do is allowing you to move that point
| of trust to another party than the one that maintains your
| intrastructure (your normal ISP). You do not give them any more
| trust than your normal ISP, but since your normal ISP is
| usually more regulated it is a good idea to scrutinize the VPN
| provider more.
|
| I trust mullvad more than my normal ISP on privacy. mullvad is
| also one of the few VPN providers that has not sold its product
| as a end-all-be-all privacy solution while a lot of others have
| been spreading FUD (things like saying that your ISP can see in
| cleartext all your traffic even though 99% is over https,
| saying their products protect against hackers when there is no
| evidence for that, etc.).
| duxup wrote:
| Isn't that just how VPNs work / a typical risk with VPNs?
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| You gotta trust someone, somewhere.
|
| Mullvad at least only requires that you use a PIN number
| instead of an ID.
| danuker wrote:
| Indeed. Different tools for different use cases.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| Given that they have literally switched their nodes to be
| diskless and released lots of their work to strongly disable
| logging in systems, that may be acceptable for most users.
|
| The risk model determines your behavior.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Given that they have _SAID_ they are diskless, etc.
|
| I feel like there is no scenario where it should be allowed
| to forget that all the claims are always falsifiable. Not
| saying they are lying, just that no one ever truly knows.
| It's important to not be complacent with that.
| dymk wrote:
| It's true we can't know for 100% certain, but things like
| third party audits can give one sufficient confidence
| (depending on your risk tolerance, of course)
|
| https://www.assured.se/publications/Assured_Mullvad_relay_s
| e...
| Zetice wrote:
| Yeah I'm not trying to hide from the law, I'm trying to get
| the airline to stop giving me weird price quotes and bbc to
| let me stream their shows.
| seanw444 wrote:
| Well I am. I have a right to. If you want to have plausible
| deniability when you inevitably must do something legally
| wrong but morally right, then you must always be hiding.
| Zetice wrote:
| No? Also I do struggle to think of a situation, for me,
| that would require TOR access in order to do something
| morally right but illegal.
| seanw444 wrote:
| The most obvious example: whistleblowing.
| Zetice wrote:
| Fair enough, but I have no idea how that would require me
| to always use TOR, lest the insanely unlikely scenario
| arise that I need to expose some hidden information.
|
| Also wait, whistleblowing on the government? I'm not
| privy to anything like that.
| jfk13 wrote:
| > I'm trying to get the airline to stop giving me weird
| price quotes
|
| Seems understandable.
|
| > and bbc to let me stream their shows.
|
| Have you paid your license fee?
| Zetice wrote:
| I honestly have no idea how it works, I just know I can
| watch taskmaster when my vpn says I'm in London.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| So when you say
|
| > Yeah I'm not trying to hide from the law
|
| what you really mean is more like "I'm cool piracy and
| breaking British laws, but other than that I'm not hiding
| from the law"?
| bombcar wrote:
| It's a question if you'd rather your ISP see you using a VPN
| and Mullvad seeing you use Tor or your ISP knowing you're using
| Tor.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Tor bridges mask Tor use to your network and ISP
| beardog wrote:
| What do you mean by transparent? If you mean that a VPN can see
| you are using Tor and when, sure, but I'm not aware of
| circumstances where that would matter.
| infogulch wrote:
| Almost any proxy configuration could be useful in a specific
| scenario. It's almost always a tradeoff.
|
| For example, you could trade off your ISP knowing that you
| connected to Tor for your ISP knowing that you connected to
| mullvad and mullvad knowing that you connected to Tor.
|
| Who do you trust with that metadata more?
| ccooffee wrote:
| Shallot donor means annual donations in excess of $100k USD. From
| the Tor website[0], it appears Mullvad is the only donor in
| excess of $49k USD annually (and possibly the only donor above
| $10001 USD).
|
| [0] https://www.torproject.org/about/membership/
| sodality2 wrote:
| It looks like there are multiple "Green Onion Members", which
| is 10k-49k.
| WithinReason wrote:
| It's possible they only donate the minimum to get into the
| tier
| Mtinie wrote:
| And they should be applauded for that. The tiered naming
| system is working as intended.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Does that include donors supplying resources in kind though?
| I'd imagine running a high profile exit node could cost upwards
| of 10k$ yearly too
| jakear wrote:
| ...besides the US Government, TOR's largest benefactor by far.
| In case anyone needed reminding.
|
| https://www.torproject.org/static/findoc/2020-TorProject-For...
| winter_blue wrote:
| I'm not sure which page of the link above (the tax return)
| I'm supposed to look at... Where does it say the US govt is
| funding Tor, and if so, by what amount are they funding Tor?
| washmyelbows wrote:
| page 10 lists over 2 million in government grants
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| So about half of their revenue in 2020, according to that
| same page.
| blauditore wrote:
| I can totally imagine they're using Tor for some undercover
| (foreign) operations or similar. I don't think the US
| Government with all its branches is known to practise exactly
| what it preaches.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > I can totally imagine they're using Tor for some
| undercover (foreign) operations or similar. I don't think
| the US Government with all its branches is known to
| practise exactly what it preaches.
|
| The US government has different parts with different goals:
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-
| switch/wp/2013/10/05... (paywalled). IIRC, the NSA has
| interests in conducting surveillance, and the State
| Department has interests in allowing liberal foreign
| dissidents to defeat surveillance.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Of course, this is basically why they invented it in the
| first place.
| wongarsu wrote:
| And why they open sourced it. All the fancy onion routing
| would be useless if the fact that you use it already
| identified you as a CIA spy. They need other people to
| use it as well for TOR to be useful to them.
| ouid wrote:
| I think what you have identified is that the US government
| is not, in any sense of the word, an _it_.
| moremetadata wrote:
| https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/11093317/Guns-
| drug...
|
| Ten years ago the US Navy invented Tor, an anonymous web
| browser. Now the 'dark net' is used to trade guns, drugs
| and child pornography, do its creators have any regrets?
|
| I think the ethics of the US is on display for all!
| IntelMiner wrote:
| For what it's worth, the creators of Tor have stated
| their philosophy around that problem. Effectively that
| they shouldn't be the arbiter of what people can access
| huggingmouth wrote:
| > Ten years ago the US Navy invented Tor, an anonymous
| web browser. Now the 'dark net' is used to trade guns,
| drugs and child pornography, do its creators have any
| regrets?
|
| I hope they don't. I certainly wouldn't. Despite some of
| its glaring downsides, I firmly belive that Tor is a net
| positive for humanity.
| hasseldahoff wrote:
| [dead]
| ccooffee wrote:
| Well, parts of the US government engage in arms
| trafficking and drug trafficking (sometimes at the same
| time, as in Iran-Contra). I hope they don't do CSAM
| trafficking or human trafficking, but I wouldn't be
| surprised at the least.
| MSFT_Edging wrote:
| That's what the mercenaries... er contractors are for.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DynCorp#Sex_trafficking_of_
| chi...
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Its creators can't be blamed for this. Just like we don't
| blame the post office for circulating CSAM and drugs.
|
| Unfortunately you can't have near-absolute privacy
| without some people abusing it. This is just a given.
|
| And if the US hadn't supplied tor, the bad actors would
| have used i2p or invented their own. By supplying the
| tech at least they have some measure of visibility.
| notch898a wrote:
| People here are overwhelmingly against privacy when it
| enables criminals to hide. Almost every crypto thread is
| dominated by concerns about KYC and AML.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| I don't think so? For example signal's decision to leave
| the UK if they mandate a back door was very well received
| here.
| notch898a wrote:
| The dichotomy indicates that isn't the fundamental
| principle driving it.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| Or, possibly, that there is more than one person on HN,
| and some people might have slightly different opinions.
| rascul wrote:
| > Ten years ago the US Navy invented Tor, an anonymous
| web browser.
|
| First release of Tor was in 2002 but it was started in
| the mid '90s according to Wikipedia.
|
| The Tor Browser was initially released by the Tor
| project, not the US Navy, in 2008.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tor_(network)
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| The browser was a community project. The onion routing
| framework was a naval research lab thing.
| rascul wrote:
| > The browser was a community project.
|
| Yes, the Tor Project as I mentioned. Or, it's theirs now,
| anyway. I'm not sure if the original creator was
| affiliated with the Tor Project at the time. But it
| wasn't the Navy.
|
| > The onion routing framework was a naval research lab
| thing.
|
| I didn't mean to dispute that, but after reading my
| comment I wasn't clear. It was a few years after the Navy
| released it that the Tor Project became an official
| entity. I was mostly disputing the erroneous statement
| that the US Navy released the Tor Browser 10 years ago.
| gptgpp wrote:
| Fifty odd years ago, the Advanced Research Projects
| Agency of the US Department of Defense invented a major
| portion of the internet's foundation: ARPANET.
|
| Now, the internet is used to shitpost en masse, and serve
| porn and cat photos to billions across the globe, do its
| creators have any regrets?
|
| I think the ethics of the US is on display for all!!!
|
| lol.
| codetrotter wrote:
| You say that like drug trade was a bad thing.
| [deleted]
| djfobbz wrote:
| [flagged]
| IntelMiner wrote:
| Why?
| [deleted]
| brnt wrote:
| Because?
| DeathArrow wrote:
| For me, too.
| time_to_smile wrote:
| The US Government also funded and build the Internet (or at
| least ARPAnet). The government also benefits from Tor being
| actually anonymous.
|
| It is worth being aware of course, but to my knowledge we
| have no evidence that Federal law enforcement has used
| anything other than old fashioned detective work to solve any
| Tor related cases.
|
| There's always the possibility of parallel construction, but
| I would expect some reasonable evidence supporting this in
| some high profile busts.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| And I assume they have no means to spy on TOR traffic. :D
| jakear wrote:
| Au contraire:
| https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/02/08/349016/a-dark-
| we...
| temptemptemp111 wrote:
| [dead]
| pphysch wrote:
| > Those that understand privacy, actively work to improve anti-
| fingerprinting and to protect users against more advanced attacks
| - are even fewer.
|
| > We believe that the Tor Project is one such organisation. We
| share their values when it comes to human rights, freedom of
| expression, anti-censorship and online privacy.
|
| The Tor Project is primarily funded by the State Department and
| DARPA. Make of that as you will.
| godelski wrote:
| {The Internet,Linux,Boston Dynamics,Shockley Semiconductor,US
| Universities (especially MIT, Stanford, and R1
| universities)),Silicon Valley,Covid Vaccines,GPS,Scientific
| Research,<insert random subject>} is/are/was funded by the US
| Government. Make of that as you will.
| wunderland wrote:
| This is brought up sometimes as some clever gotcha but Tor gets
| funding from many sources, and DARPA and the other US agencies
| that give money to Tor (like OTF) give on the order of 10s of
| thousands of US dollars per year. OTF (Open Technology Fund) --
| recently severely diminished -- was funding tons of anti-
| censorship efforts like this with small grants to help get
| American propaganda into Iran, China, etc. Helping spread the
| message of the US Government is apparently a more valuable goal
| than surveillance of western citizens.
| pphysch wrote:
| Their tax documents unambiguously state that the US
| government is their primary funder.
|
| At any rate, the USG has enormous leverage over the
| governance of Tor and that should worry anyone that pretends
| to care about their online privacy re: Tor.
|
| Mullvad putting out PR about funding TP as a peer of the USG
| doesn't make TP look good, it makes Mullvad look seedy.
| godelski wrote:
| > Their tax documents unambiguously state that the US
| government is their primary funder.
|
| No one is objecting to this fact. We're all objecting to
| your conclusion that because the US Gov gives Tor money
| that it is not secure and/or has a nefarious purpose. This
| is quite literally the same logic people use to justify the
| anti-vaccination movement and many other dangerous
| conspiracies. You don't have to trust the US Gov (what
| American does?), but you need more than association to
| prove something nefarious.
| godelski wrote:
| I think people miss that the US government (as basically all
| governments) is not a singular entity with absolutely aligned
| objectives. Or even how tools don't have universal purposes.
| It's far from inconceivable that the US government wants to
| use use Tor to hide spies (CIA) as well as use Tor to help
| people communicate against their own governments (Department
| of Democracy). This isn't even opposing objectives, which we
| also see in any large entity (see encryption in general).
|
| Painting the US government with a broad brush as "absolute
| evil" is just as bad as painting it with a broad brush of
| "savior of the world." Neither allows us to actually improve
| our government because in the former you can't encourage good
| actions and the latter doesn't allow you to discourage bad
| actions. If everything is bad then there are no degrees of
| bad. If everything is good there's no degrees of good. If
| Democracy is an optimization problem (it is) then this is
| like trying to find the optima by going in a constant
| direction with a constant step size.
|
| I thought it was rather obvious that "shit is complicated and
| requires nuance" but I'm often impressed how common it is to
| pretend things are simple and obvious.
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| > The Tor Project is primarily funded by the State Department
| and DARPA. Make of that as you will.
|
| The Internet was funded by the US Gov and DARPA. Make of that
| as you will.
| pphysch wrote:
| "was" being the operative term.
|
| Tor Project _is_ currently on the USG payroll.
| piqi wrote:
| > The Tor Project is primarily funded by the State Department
| and DARPA. Make of that as you will.
|
| PBS is funded by the US government. Make of that as you will.
| pphysch wrote:
| What is your point? PBS indeed puts out blatant USG
| propaganda from time to time, including egregious instances
| like that al-Jolani hagiography from _FRONTLINE_. _FRONTLINE_
| in general is a total mess of misinformation when it comes to
| international issues.
| piqi wrote:
| > What is your point?
|
| I could ask the same of your original comment. Seems you
| like hand-waving at grants, and letting the reader come to
| a conclusion as a way of suggesting there's something
| nefarious happening. You don't like it when it's used
| elsewhere.
|
| Typical divisive comment to stir the pot. It could even
| suggest you are being paid by an enemy of the US to disrupt
| or discourage/encourage discussion on particular topics. Of
| course, I'll use your tactic, and not provide any further
| information on this. I'll leave it up to the reader to
| wonder.
|
| > blatant USG propaganda
|
| All in the eye of the beholder. Which was your goal of your
| ambiguous hand-waving.
|
| Roads and bridges were funded by the US government. Really
| makes you think, huh?!
| pphysch wrote:
| > You don't like it when it's used elsewhere.
|
| Where did I imply that? We agree that PBS is funded by
| the USG. I provided additional factual context.
|
| > Typical divisive comment to stir the pot.
|
| Pot, meet kettle. Your comment is clearly flame-bait,
| loaded with strawman fallacies. I will not engage
| further.
| piqi wrote:
| What's your point?
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| Nihilartikel wrote:
| TIL mullvad is not actually a SIMD opcode to multiply and add
| vectors.
| duskwuff wrote:
| MULtiply Long Vector And Decrement, surely.
| mikece wrote:
| I'm not a fan of this. Any chance Mullvad would offer a service
| plan where the money I'm paying them does NOT go to the support
| of Tor?
| karaterobot wrote:
| You're being downvoted presumably as a vote of support for
| either Mullvad or Tor, but you are allowed to have those
| opinions. I wish people didn't do that!
|
| The best answer I know of is that you cannot specify spending
| when you pay Mullvad. There is no place on the payment form to
| do it, and in the future (present?) you can only pay
| anonymously anyway, so there's no way to get in touch with
| someone who could do that, even if they allowed it. I imagine
| they wouldn't want to offer that option anyway, because it'd be
| way too complicated on their end.
| precommunicator wrote:
| Why you are not fun of it? And why those concerns don't apply
| to Mullvad?
| duxup wrote:
| I doubt it.
| huggingmouth wrote:
| I'm a big fan of this and I am already a paying Mullvad
| customer :D
| dymk wrote:
| Obviously not. Can you think of a single company that does
| something like that?
| shmde wrote:
| Why would you bother whom Mullvad pays if you get your dollars
| worth of service ?
| Cerium wrote:
| People commonly boycott companies over how they spend their
| money. Many people won't eat at Chick-fil-A because of their
| donation history.
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(page generated 2023-03-03 23:01 UTC)