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Re: Security concerning Tor, BitTorrent and Firewall

Um, as I said, I am not really interested in BitTorrent specifically (although using BT (or any other application) behind a firewall without having to port forward and creating security exposure is something to wish for, but apparently not possible without bad exploitation). About the P2P, what I gathered from the HOWTO-torify it was only the "tracking" which was torified, not the bits themselves?

But again, how could it be that this allow others to connect to me more effectively?

Anyways, due to my father being rather convinced that Tor/Privoxy has somehow infected the computer in question, I'll probably be moving it out of our LAN to the DMZ, and thus having a firewall which I can configure as I se fit. So BitT (and perhaps Tor, although I doubt it) will probably be running with standard Port forwarding anyway.

- Arand

Enigma wrote:
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I can't give you a technical answer to that but rest assured you would
not like the result if all worked the way you want it to be. That's
because using P2P with anonymous networks such as Tor will be much too
slow, it will heavily decrease your P2P performance. I recommend using
some anonymous network that is specifically designed for P2P, I2P is
one of them. However, it might take years until most private
connections have enough bandwidth to ensure fast and
anonymous/encrypted P2P (and only if enough people dedicate their
bandwidth to these networks). But as said, you would want to prefer a
network that is intended for P2P usage.

Sincerely,
Enigma


a a schrieb: 
Oh, excuses. I do not (at least not after the distinct replies)
intend to use this either to leech torrents or to leech Tor.
Anyways, after testing this for approximately three minutes, my ol'
pa went totally nutters on the realisation that this might
circumvent the firewall (and yes, he's usually nutters for a reason).

A more accurate question on my behalf would therefore be: Can Tor
(if you use it without (or with, for that matter) port forwarding
the firewall, create "holes" in the firewall by allowing incoming
connections through the Tor proxy. The µTorrent case kinda implies
this (riiight...?) as the other peers seemed to be able to connect
to me at a higher rate...

Or am I completely off the rails?
Or should this be put to rest because it is simply exploration of
exploitation ?

Anyways, thanks for your replies so far, I am not particulary
experienced in this so I'm sorry for any treaded toes.

Arrakis wrote: 
Arand,

I doubt you will find anyone who wants to help you steal bandwidth
from tor so you can abuse it by downloading torrents. You would be
better to stick to a commercial service.

Regards,
Arrakis

USING:
Tor & Privoxy & Vidalia bundle 0.1.1.26
Windows XP Home
µTorrent
3com firewall
HAPPENINGS:
I am using Tor behind a 3com firewall, in connection with µTorrent.
Before using Tor I -naturally, having not opened any ports on the
firewall- experienced low connection (up&down) rates in µTorrent.
However,
after installing the Tor bundle and configuring µTorrent for use
with the
Tor proxy server (as described at

http://wiki.noreply.org/noreply/TheOnionRouter/TorifyHOWTO#head-0d047b05e9b 
93c23cec9198550816a114012bde0), I suddenly experienced connection
speeds
which would equal those, had I used a normal port forward on my
firewall.
QUESTIONS:
Firstly, how does this work?
Secondly -on account of a port forward always being a security
risk- Is
this a similar security risk?
And lastly, if it is indeed a security risk (no matter how small),
does
this apply to other programs than BitTorrent clients, using the
Tor proxy
server?
__________
I first inquired with the Privoxy about this issue (presuming that
it was related to Privoxy) and I recieved the following response:

--- Date: 2007-02-19 13:17 Sender: fabiankeil
</users/fabiankeil/> --- Are you sure that your provider doesn't
throttle BitTorrent traffic? By using Tor you prevent your ISP
from knowing which services (other than Tor itself) you're using
and this could explain why using Tor speeds up your BitTorrent
traffic (it's no longer rate limited by your ISP). Privoxy itself
is unlikely to have anything to do with it and I don't think port
forwarding has anything to do with it either, but I'm not
familiar with BitTorrent. The short answer to your last questions
is "No", but as it has nothing to do with Privoxy you should
checkout the Tor documentation for details and ask again on the
or-talk mailing list if you have further questions.

I am fairly certain that my ISP is not the issue here, so I remain
puzzled... And I've so far not found any answers in the Tor
documentation.
Anybody got something on this?
- Arand




- --
German Tor mailing list / surveillance and anonymity:
http://www.anti1984.com

New GPG key ID: 4096R/87FF3BA2, old key is revoked.
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