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posted by takyon on Thursday November 12 2015, @11:30PM   Printer-friendly
from the white-hat dept.

Wired and others are reporting on a Tor blog post claiming that Carnegie Mellon University researchers were paid by the Federal Bureau of Investigation to help attack Tor hidden services:

"Apparently these researchers were paid by the FBI to attack hidden services users in a broad sweep, and then sift through their data to find people whom they could accuse of crimes," Dingledine writes. "Such action is a violation of our trust and basic guidelines for ethical research. We strongly support independent research on our software and network, but this attack crosses the crucial line between research and endangering innocent users."

Tor's statement all but confirms that Carnegie Mellon's attack was used in the late 2014 law enforcement operation known as Operation Onymous, carried out by the FBI and Europol. That dark web purge took down dozens of Tor hidden services, including several of the most popular Tor-based black markets for drugs including the Silk Road 2, and led to at least 17 arrests. Tor, for its part, has made efforts to subsequently block the attack, which it says it first detected in July of 2014.

When WIRED contacted Carnegie Mellon, it didn't deny the Tor Project's accusations, but pointed to a lack of evidence. "I'd like to see the substantiation for their claim," said Ed Desautels, a staffer in the public relations department of the university's Software Engineering Institute. "I'm not aware of any payment," he added, declining to comment further.

Tor's Dingledine responded to that call for evidence by telling WIRED that it identified Carnegie Mellon as the origin of the attack by pinpointing servers running on Tor's network that were used in the de-anonymization technique. When it asked Carnegie Mellon if the servers were being run by its researchers—a suspicion based on the canceled Black Hat conference presentation—the anomalous servers disappeared from the network and the university offered no response. The $1 million payment, Dingledine says, was revealed to Tor by "friends in the security community."

Previously:

July 26, 2014: Russia Offers $111,000 to Break TOR Anonymity Network
September 30, 2014: Tor Executive Hints at Firefox Integration
November 8, 2014: Huge Raid to Shut Down 400-plus DarkNet Sites
November 10, 2014: Tor Project Mulls How Feds Took Down Hidden Websites
November 17, 2014: Is Tor a Honeypot?
December 22, 2014: Servers Seized After Tor Developers Warn of Potential Government Attempt To Take Down Network


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by TheGratefulNet on Friday November 13 2015, @04:37AM

    by TheGratefulNet (659) on Friday November 13 2015, @04:37AM (#262503)

    sounds like you are in favor of a nanny state.

    I could not disagree with you more. people should be free to do whateve they want as long as it does not hurt others, and doing drugs does NOT hurt others. if you think it 'harms society' you have been listening too much to nancy reagan et al.

    the war on drugs is the dumbest waste of money this country (and the ROW) has ever engaged in. stupid beyond belief, for those who actually have experience in this area.

    I could care less if someone shows up 'at work' drug or stoned; that is not the issue. if they are unable to function or are a danger, that's quite another thing; but if someone is able to manage it (many are), then I see nothing wrong with it.

    people drive distracted all the time. any parent with brats in the back seat is more of a danger on the road than most 'stoners' are. they are far more distracted and a risk to those around them. someone who is sleep deprived is a danger. someone who is emotionally upset is a danger. and yet, we seem to want to demonize the 'drug users' even though they are a small percentage of the problem people in the world.

    I wish people would stop looking for 'easy boogeymen' to blame. its not helping.

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  • (Score: 2) by n1 on Friday November 13 2015, @10:34AM

    by n1 (993) on Friday November 13 2015, @10:34AM (#262578) Journal

    I think my point got lost in there. I am not advocating a nanny state at all, my argument it against it. Maybe your reply to me was by accident?

    If you drive drunk, walk the streets intoxicated, go to work drunk etc, you don't get the "oh it's legal, i drank the 40oz before i left home this morning, totally not drinking on the job" excuse, dangerous behavior with criminal or social penalty exists for such cases. We need 'drug zones' as much as we need 'free speech zones'.

    I didn't say there should be criminal penalty for everything, just pointing out that criminal and social consequences already existt. I am not endorsing 'freedom zones' because where do you draw the line, thats why i used fast-food junkies and workaholics as examples of other types of people who would need special zones to protect society if we go down that route.