Browsing by Subject "Tor"

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Port-scanning resistance in Tor anonymity network
(2009) Pope, Shane; Vitaly Shmatikov
The Onion Router (Tor) is an anonymity network that allows users to perform web browsing and other internet activities anonymously. A Tor user's traffic is routed securely through several other Tor relays before making its way to its destination. No one except the final Tor router in this circuit knows what the final destination of users traffic is and each router in the circuit only knows about the previous and next router. Tor users get the list of Tor IP addresses from a dedicated server which lists most of the Tor routers. With this list they can create random circuits through the internet to route their traffic. Governments that censor the internet with country-wide firewalls want to block Tor, because it allows users to circumvent the censorship. China has begun blocking Tor by downloading the list of all public Tor IP addresses and blocking them. [1] There are still options for internet users in China to access the Tor network. One option is unpublished Tor relays whose internet addresses are shared via email and instant messenger instead of in a public directory like normal Tor relays. Since these unpublished routers cannot be easily downloaded in bulk like the published Tor routers, detecting and blocking unpublished routers is the obvious next step for China and other censoring nations. Currently it is possible to detect these unpublished Tor relays by running Tor and attempting to connect to every internet address on ports Tor commonly runs. If a computer responds as Tor would, you know it is running Tor and can thus block the internet address. In this paper I present and implement a protocol which decreases the ease of detection of these unpublished relays, by hiding them behind a web server to prevent this type of scanning.
Technology And Child Sex Trafficking: A Comparative Study Of The United States, Venezuela, And The Philippines
(2019-05-01) Murray, Catherine; Kellison, Bruce
The global sex trafficking industry – with profits over $150 billion annually – will eventually become the number one crime in the world. It exists on a global, planetary scale and primarily affects the most marginalized populations of society. The numbers are staggering, and the statistics provide only a glimpse into the reality of the epidemic that is sex trafficking. Because sex trafficking touches the most vulnerable populations, it largely preys on children in every country and in every city. Modern day slavery far surpasses any of the past slavery in both number and scale, while most of the public remains seemingly unaware of its presence. However, as the paradigm of child sex trafficking gradually shifts towards greater uses of technology, it seems possible to leverage what appears as an enabler to also become an inhibitor. My thesis seeks to define technology’s role in both the perpetuation and the prevention of child sex trafficking globally. It aims to shed light on progress made in the developed world, specifically the United States, and apply that to countries in the developing world, specifically Venezuela and the Philippines. The thesis will compare the roles of technology in these places in order to identify any possible anti-trafficking solutions. It looks at the various degrees to which technology fuels trafficking in each of the three countries and seeks to pinpoint the places where it can serve to deteriorate the supply and demand industry of child sex trafficking.