Tor Taken down by Government-Sponsored Hackers

[AsAp]

Hacker agencies hired by the US government managed to take down one of the last refuges of dissidents in oppressive regimes. The Tor system has long been recognized the only way that dissidents could communicate in repressive regimes. It is also known for being used by whistleblowers to leak their information. Now Tor is warning that many of its users could be identified by government-funded researchers.

According to Roger Dingledine, Tor Project leader, the service had identified machines on its network that had been altering the traffic of the system for 5 months, trying to unmask users connecting to the so-called “hidden servicesâ€. He also said it was likely the attacking machines were operated on behalf of the researchers at the Software Engineering Institute of Carnegie-Mellon University, funded by the Department of Defence of the United States. The machines have been removed from the network after they were discovered, but as you can understand, the damage has already been done. The researchers are going to speak on identifying Tor users at the Black Hat security conference in August. When Tor developers complained to the university, the local officials claimed the research had not been cleared and cancelled the talk.

Roger Dingledine admitted that people who operated or accessed hidden services from February through July might have been affected. As for those who navigated to ordinary websites, they should be good.

If you don’t know, hidden services include various underground drug websites like the shuttered Silk Road and privacy-conscious outfits like SecureDrop, especially designed to connect whistleblowers with media outlets. The Tor Project leader explained that the physical locations where the hidden services were housed could also have been exposed, but he was not sure about the content the visitors viewed.

But what really matters now is whether the spooks will just pop around to the researchers with a warrant and demand they hand over all the details they obtained during their experiments. As for the FBI, the agency didn’t comment on the questions about whether it would seek the information, while the Defence Department wasn’t quite sure if it even had the right to get research from the Institute.

Finally, Roger Dingledine recommended all Tor users to upgrade to the latest version of the software, because it addresses the vulnerability in question. He also warned that attempts to break Tor may continue.

 

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