Tor experiment: request for assistance from operators of UK nodes

[Steven Murdoch]

I'm a researcher at the University of Cambridge, and I'm studying
anonymous communication systems (e.g. Tor). I also operate a Tor node
(ephemer) myself.

Currently, I'm working on a study to discover how diverse the location
of Tor nodes is on the Internet, to see how secure it is against
someone who controls a few ISPs. As a case study, I'm using the UK as
an example.

To do this I need assistance from the operators of Tor nodes in the
UK. It doesn't matter where you are located, I care about the Tor
server itself. I'd like to find out the path between UK Tor nodes and
a sample of others and a few websites too. 

I've written a script for doing this, which is simple enough for
anyone to check that it does what it says. Would you be able run this
on the same computer as your Tor node, or another which shares the
same Internet connection?

There are two scripts, one for Linux/BSD systems and one for Windows.
You only need to run one, and if possible please use the Linux one
(it's faster and produces more useful data).

The Linux script can be found here (use this if possible):
 http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~sjm217/projects/anon/traceroute.sh
After downloading, at a command prompt, type "chmod 755
traceroute.sh" to make it executable and "./traceroute.sh" to run it.

The Windows one is here:
 http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~sjm217/projects/anon/traceroute.bat
To run it, just double click on it

There are PGP signatures here:
 http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~sjm217/projects/anon/traceroute.sh.asc
 http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~sjm217/projects/anon/traceroute.bat.asc

The Linux one takes about 2-3 to run and the Windows one will take
about 3-4 hours. It doesn't need any attention once started, so you
can just leave it in the background. 

When it is finished, it will say "Completed". It will produce a file
called traceroute.log -- this contains the data I need, please send it
via email.

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask, either on or
off-list. I am also sjmurdoch on the Tor IRC channel.

Thanks in advance,
Steven.

-- 
w: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/sjm217/
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