Tor’s Growing Anonymous Network
Freelance coder Luke Millanta has recently launched OnionView, which introduces a map of Tor’s continuously growing network. “Tor” may be just a name for some, but for others, it is the anonymous online software originating in the US Navy that notably housed the Silk Road. The Silk Road was an online drug marketplace buried in the deep web that allowed thousands of dealers to interact with users looking to buy any drug they desired. Multiple government agencies were stumped on tracking down Silk Road’s leadership, thanks to Tor’s decade-old software. With Tor, users can anonymously visit and host internet networks. This “invisibility cloak” is allowed by encryption of the originating user’s data, which then gets sent through four to five proxy servers, leaving anyone trying to find you lost without a starting point.
One could question who would use such potentially dangerous software, and assume that Tor’s network is simply a small number of people around the world who don’t much to do with their time. However, Millanta’s map shows that there are approximately 6,000 nodes worldwide based off of the geographic location of Tor nodes. About five years ago, the number of nodes was 2,000.
What is important to look at is the increase of number of bridges in the network. From five years to now, users have been expanding their connections and spreading the word about Tor. As this happens, there is growth between nodes and stronger relationship bridges between certain nodes. In this case, it would be interesting to extend the network definition by labeling strong and weak ties by how many interactions there are between nodes. Looking closer, we see that each country has a number of nodes, which most likely have strong ties, along with strong ties to the nodes of physically close and like-minded countries. Weak ties could connect those with not as much in common. In this case, the map of Tor nodes acts as a social network for anonymous users between areas, with Germany seeing the most number of nodes and the United States coming in second. As time passes, we see more nodes and bridges forming on the network of Tor users.
Sources:
http://www.wired.com/2015/09/mapping-tors-anonymity-network-spread-around-world/
https://metrics.torproject.org/networksize.html?graph=networksize&start=2010-06-16&end=2015-09-14