![]() ![]() This means that if someone emails a death threat, or sends a barrage of spam, it is the exit node's IP that appears when the authorities start investigating the digital fingerprints of the crime. When someone uses Tor, his IP address is that of the exit node he has been randomly assigned. "A child porn ring had been busted? Or a hacking attack? Or a bomb threat called in? I had no idea what it was," Richard later told me over the phone. ![]() Richard's exit could have been implicated in just about anythingĪlthough Richard, 57, assumed the call was related to his exit, he still didn't know what specifically the FBI was investigating as he started the drive home. Rather than being run by one company, most of these exits are set up by volunteers, or "operators." A few organizations maintain the larger exits, a number of universities have their own, and individual activists run some too. The final set of servers that Tor uses in this process are called "exit nodes," because they are the points at which a user's traffic exits the Tor network and joins the normal web that we use everyday. These allow the owners of websites and their users to remain largely anonymous. Tor also facilitates special sites called "hidden services," part of the so-called dark web. It allows dissidents to communicate anonymously, citizens to bypass government censorship, and criminals to sell drugs or distribute child pornography. When a user connects to the network, her internet traffic is randomly pinged between at least three of these servers, all the while covered in layers of encryption, making it near impossible for anyone monitoring the traffic to determine who is sending it or where it is going to. The Tor network-originally a project funded by the US Navy-is a collection of servers, some big, some smaller, spread across the world. The only thing Richard thought may be linked to that was his Tor exit node. It was something to do with computers, Lisa had said. TOR PROJECT OPERATORS SERVER NUMBERS WILL SOFTWAREThe interstate drive from Milwaukee, where he was working as a software engineer, back to his home in Indianapolis would take a good five hours, more than enough time to figure out what this was all about. He threw on some clothes, grabbed his laptop and phone as requested by the FBI, and stepped out into the night. ![]()
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