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from the the-user-is-the-weakest-link dept.
From the Wired article, "Instead of going for the easy bust, the FBI spent a solid year surveilling McGrath, while working with Justice Department lawyers on the legal framework for what would become Operation Torpedo. Finally, on November 2012, the feds swooped in on McGrath, seized his servers and spirited them away to an FBI office in Omaha.
A federal magistrate signed three separate search warrants: one for each of the three hidden services. The warrants authorized the FBI to modify the code on the servers to deliver the NIT to any computers that accessed the sites. The judge also allowed the FBI to delay notification to the targets for 30 days."
The FBI modified the .onion sites to serve a malicious script which was used to de-anonymize users. It's worth noting that only those using Tor improperly would be vulnerable. The FBI tracking payload required scripting to be enabled in the browser--a common blunder among inexperienced Tor users.
(Score: 1) by Freeman on Wednesday August 06 2014, @06:48PM
Good that they are catching those people who are dispersing and partaking in child pornography. Bad that they are abusing the tools to catch said people. Tools that deliberately infect machines with malware, if used improperly could be a Major invasion of privacy. We don't arrest a soldier carrying an automatic weapon, if he is using the tool as required by his profession. We Do arrest anyone who shouldn't be carrying an automatic weapon. Why? Because, the use of such a tool is extremely dangerous in the wrong hands. Same goes for the tools that they are using to catch these criminals. We can't tie the hands of the police. That said, we Definitely need to know how they use their tools and who they aim them at. Spying on thousands, hundreds of thousands, or possibly millions of innocent people is not an acceptable practice. The problem is that it's so easy to do that.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"