What the **** has been going on since beginning September?? - I just looked at the number of directly connecting users, and it’s crazy! Was at about 2M for years and then suddenly increases to 19M, down to 12M, up to 16M … Are these real? Is a nation state DDoSing Tor? What is going on?
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Yeah I just noticed that as well, but I haven’t found any signs of attacks yet (including DDoS). A few interesting observations are: (1) The user count surged from 2.5M to 20M in less than three days, (2) according to the “Top-10 countries by relay users” data, these sudden users are globally distributed, and (3) the number of users fluctuates quite regularly, both in size and period.
Personally, I don’t think this suggests a nationwide DDoS attacks. Instead, it seems more likely that someone (perhaps researchers?) found a way to mess with Tor’s user-counting system and is testing their method. Yet if that’s the case, I don’t understand why they’ve experimenting (or attacking?) the live system for such an extended period.
As for the second point, here’s the raw data from some notable countries across key timestamps:
(Before surges → First peak → First valley (0904) → Second valley (0908) → Third peak (0911) → Third valley (0917))
USA: 374193 (18.81 %)→4699990 (27.49 %)→3739687 (27.47 %)→4359833 (28.88 %)→4586831 (27.61 %)→1290831 (24.26 %)
Germany: 232436 (11.69 %)→2612788 (15.28 %)→2231625 (16.39 %)→2427132 (16.08 %)→2550646 (15.35 %)→830815 (15.61 %)
India: 89689 (4.51 %)→296922 (1.74 %)→236979 (1.74 %)→??→??→114418 (2.15 %)
Finland: 86169 (4.33 %)→??→??→??→??→??
Netherlands: 76674 (3.85 %)→944390 (5.52 %)→600289 (4.41 %)→576978 (3.82 %)→1049013 (6.31 %)→187076 (3.52 %)
United Kingdom: 73720 (3.71 %)→410733 (2.40 %)→351205 (2.58 %)→356812 (2.36 %)→405965 (2.44 %)→145920 (2.74 %)
France: 62852 (3.16 %)→899401 (5.26 %)→696112 (5.11 %)→774350 (5.13 %)→817421 (4.92 %)→248855 (4.68 %)
Spain: 62627 (3.15 %)→335820 (1.96 %)→279457 (2.05 %)→328863 (2.18 %)→331633 (2.00 %)→116727 (2.19 %)
Canada: 52028 (2.62 %)→612032 (3.58 %)→519451 (3.82 %)→598300 (3.96 %)→611519 (3.68 %)→181841 (3.42 %)
Indonesia: 50131 (2.52 %)→??→??→??→??→??
Russia: ?? → 592742 (3.47 %)→472187 (3.47 %)→496504 (3.29 %)→438495 (2.64 %)→??
Italy: ?? → 411097 (2.40 %)→337883 (2.48 %)→368516 (2.44 %)→369481 (2.22 %)→118917 (2.23 %)
Japan: ??→??→??→269947 (1.79 %)→315351 (1.90 %)→??
Senegal (seriously?): ??→??→??→??→??→128832 (2.42 %)