International Business News reports that Russia is offering $111,000 to any citizen who can crack the popular encrypted Tor network.
FTFA:
The Russian federal government is concerned about the number of people using Tor to anonymously surf the web in the country and has set up a competition to find a technological solution to solve the problem.
The Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA) is offering 3.9 million roubles ($111,000, £65,370) to researchers who will "study the possibility of obtaining technical information about users and users equipment on the Tor anonymous network," according to a translated version of the proposal. In order to apply, entrants must pay 195,000 roubles, and foreigners are not allowed to enter the competition, in order to ensure the "defence and security" of the Russian Federation.
I imagine a lot of Russian crackers will be right on this.
(Score: 2) by elf on Sunday July 27 2014, @09:31AM
I'm not sure they have "cracked" TOR, the bit inside is still quite secure. But I get your point that the security agencies have probably compromised a chunk of the exit nodes to monitor traffic. The good news is the number of exit nodes is steadily increasing (doubled in last 2 years), assuming these aren't all compromised nodes it will be hard and hard to analyse the traffic.