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The FBI is not eager to reveal (more) details about methods it used to identify Tor users as part of a child pornography case. FBI's Operation Torpedo previously unmasked Tor users by serving them malicious scripts from secretly seized .onion sites.
The FBI is resisting calls to reveal how it identified people who used a child pornography site on the Tor anonymising network. The agency was ordered to share details by a Judge presiding over a case involving one alleged user of the site. Defence lawyers said they need the information to see if the FBI exceeded its authority when indentifying users. But the Department of Justice (DoJ), acting for the FBI, said the details were irrelevant to the case. "Knowing how someone unlocked the front door provides no information about what that person did after entering the house," wrote FBI agent Daniel Alfin in court papers filed by the DoJ which were excerpted on the Vice news site.
The Judge ordered the FBI to hand over details during a court hearing in late February. The court case revolves around a "sting" the FBI carried out in early 2015 when it seized a Tor-based site called Playpen that traded in images and videos of child sexual abuse. The agency kept the site going for 13 days and used it to grab information about visitors who took part in discussion threads about images of child abuse.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by digitalaudiorock on Thursday March 31 2016, @07:13PM
This reminds me a bit of this whole "We don't need Apple, we got into the phone anyway" stuff. In that case, assuming they're even telling the truth, they're admitting that they are aware of an exploit...and that rather than doing what everyone else is expected to do, and bring it to the public's attention to protect everyone...they're choosing instead to save it in their own personal arsenal. So I guess that's the approach exclusive to either truly evil black hat hackers, and our own government...interesting.
This sounds very similar...that possibly they're guarding some Tor exploit. Again...must be nice not to have to follow the rules like the rest of us.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 31 2016, @10:55PM
It's not unique to the U.S. government. Other governments do it too.
I suspect that most of the exploits they're sitting on only affect computers connected to a network, or computers with removable storage—not that standalone computers are totally safe.