Re: Reducing relays = reducing anonymity ? Tortunnel.

[Damian Johnson <atagar1@xxxxxxxxx>]

> Does anybody use tortunnel ?

Never heard of it before, so doubt it.

> Is tortunnel evil since it maybe hacks Tor-cirucits to reduce the number
> of relays ?

We discourage people from reducing the circuit length since it cripples the anonymity tor provides, makes exit nodes more tasty targets since they can correlate users to exit traffic, etc. There's been several discussion of this in the archives.

> Where is the security/anonymity reduction since tortunnel also uses
> Tor ?

It's equivalent to using a single hop proxy.

> Can Tor itself reduce the number of relays (like tortunnel) ?

No, nor do we want it to.

Cheers! -Damian

On Wed, May 19, 2010 at 9:06 AM, Attac Heidenheim <heidenheim@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

Hi everybody,
I just tried a little tool called "Tortunnel" which allows a user to
"tunnel" Tor via Privoxy/Polipo to any selected exitnode. Just one hop
instead of three relays.
Of course, if the exitnode ist evil, you're lost, but it really speeds
up the whole thing on the other hand.
Website: http://www.thoughtcrime.org/software/tortunnel/

My questions:
Does anybody use tortunnel ?
Is tortunnel evil since it maybe hacks Tor-cirucits to reduce the number
of relays ?
Where is the security/anonymity reduction since tortunnel also uses
Tor ?
Can Tor itself reduce the number of relays (like tortunnel) ?

Greetings,
Niklas