LWN: Comments on "When free-software communities unite for privacy" https://lwn.net/Articles/1029769/ This is a special feed containing comments posted to the individual LWN article titled "When free-software communities unite for privacy". en-us Sun, 19 Oct 2025 12:24:30 +0000 Sun, 19 Oct 2025 12:24:30 +0000 https://www.rssboard.org/rss-specification lwn@lwn.net Tor nodes are quite poorly monitored it seems https://lwn.net/Articles/1032204/ https://lwn.net/Articles/1032204/ hcrs <div class="FormattedComment"> I have impression these days almost nobody monitors - or bans - misbehaving tor nodes.<br> 1) Bunch of nodes clearly belong to adjacent subnets and used for en masse attacks similar to Sybil in spirit. Some even honestly (?) write things like "CozyBearDev" (RU gov-associated hackers) in node family. And obviously have many quite large IP blocks only few entities on globe could afford.<br> <p> 2) Some nodes doing outright malicious things, like <br> Jul XX XX:XX:XX.000 [warn] Detected possible compression bomb with input size = 18894 and output size = 604704<br> Jul XX XX:XX:XX.000 [warn] Possible compression bomb; abandoning stream.<br> <p> Then tor gets plenty of these - but not really bans offending sender or trying alternate sources. Seems this kind of activity not really monitored by project.<br> <p> 3) Clearly too many nodes on adjacent IPs. Some IP ranges look outright evil.<br> <p> So tor is quite centralized in terms of relays management - but it seems it brings not much benefits since overall network management got screwed over time to point it IMO became quite scary to use. At least in normal ways.<br> </div> Fri, 01 Aug 2025 19:25:01 +0000 Data backup https://lwn.net/Articles/1031165/ https://lwn.net/Articles/1031165/ david.a.wheeler <div class="FormattedComment"> I contributed to Tails a simple script to make it much easier to do a local backup onto another USB stick, which is partbof their current distribution.<br> <p> All media fails eventually. Having backups is key to having data survive this inevitable failure.<br> </div> Wed, 23 Jul 2025 21:40:09 +0000