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I was wondering what is more secure: using tor or ssh tunneling.

Tor uses "Onion Routing", which means that each node except that exit node can't see the data that is being due to encryption layer.

SSH tunneling uses strong encryption to the remote server, and encapsulates the specific protocol underneath, but what if the protocol that is being encapsulated is not secure, like http ?

If I put a sniffer on the ssh server, it can sniff the data that is being forwarded through an unsecure protocol (e.g http) that was encapsulated through the connection to it ? If I understand correctly, this is impossible with tor because the data is being encrypted.

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  • They address very different things - sometimes one is more secure than the other. BTW if anyone needs an explanation of what a technology does then they are not likely to be able to provide an informed opinion on it.
    – symcbean
    Sep 10, 2013 at 9:13
  • I am sorry but I didn't understand you.
    – guest
    Sep 10, 2013 at 9:31

1 Answer 1

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The person running the tor exit node could sniff the traffic in the same way you would with the SSH server. On the plus side with SSH tunnelling you know where the exit point is and if you have control of that server you know if it's likely to be sniffed or not.
With tor you have no idea where the exit point and what they maybe doing with the traffic you are sending them

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  • but what if the sniffer isn't set on an exit node ?
    – guest
    Sep 10, 2013 at 10:47
  • The exit node isn't any different to the SSH server doing the tunnelling, so it's no more or less secure. Only real difference is that the exit node might be closer to the site you are going to so would have less hops without encryption but then you have the insecurity of not knowing what the person running exit node is doing and they could be sniffing the traffic.
    – Epaphus
    Sep 10, 2013 at 10:55
  • I understand, but it's not iam asking for. I'll give you an example: we have a 'b' server in a-b-c routing nodes through tor and server b in ssh tunneling nodes a-b-c. I put a sniffer in each of them (in the server itself), can I see the http traffic ? or it's encrypted ?
    – guest
    Sep 10, 2013 at 11:07
  • Is 'B' a tor relay node or a tor exit node?
    – Epaphus
    Sep 10, 2013 at 18:29
  • B is a tor relay node in tor chain (a-b-c).
    – guest
    Sep 10, 2013 at 19:14

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