Traffic Statistics of a High-Bandwidth Tor Exit Node

Michael Sonntag, René Mayrhofer

2017

Abstract

The Tor anonymization network supports (and is widely used for) circumventing censorship, evading intrusive mass-surveillance, and generally protecting privacy of Internet users. However, it also carries traffic that is illegal in various jurisdictions. It is still an open question how to deal with such illegal traffic in the Tor network, balancing the fundamental human right for privacy with the need for assisting executive forces. By operating and monitoring a high-bandwidth Tor exit node as both a technical and legal experiment, we statistically analyse where popular servers are located and how they are used based on connection metadata of actual exit node usage. Through this we identify inter alia that cooperation only in comparatively few countries would be needed – or any illegal use would be very small. In this paper, we provide more in-depth statistical insight into Tor exit node traffic than previously publicly available.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Sonntag M. and Mayrhofer R. (2017). Traffic Statistics of a High-Bandwidth Tor Exit Node . In Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Information Systems Security and Privacy - Volume 1: ICISSP, ISBN 978-989-758-209-7, pages 270-277. DOI: 10.5220/0006124202700277

in Bibtex Style

@conference{icissp17,
author={Michael Sonntag and René Mayrhofer},
title={Traffic Statistics of a High-Bandwidth Tor Exit Node},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Information Systems Security and Privacy - Volume 1: ICISSP,},
year={2017},
pages={270-277},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0006124202700277},
isbn={978-989-758-209-7},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF
JO - Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Information Systems Security and Privacy - Volume 1: ICISSP,
TI - Traffic Statistics of a High-Bandwidth Tor Exit Node
SN - 978-989-758-209-7
AU - Sonntag M.
AU - Mayrhofer R.
PY - 2017
SP - 270
EP - 277
DO - 10.5220/0006124202700277