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Is Tor a Honeypot?

posted by janrinok on Monday November 17 2014, @04:16PM   Printer-friendly
from the toss-a-coin dept.

shortscreen writes:

In July, Yasha Levine reported on a number of apparent conflicts of interest concerning the Tor project and those who promote it as a means of protecting one's anonymity online. In addition, evidence is presented that Tor users are actively being surveiled by the NSA, including a leaked NSA document noting the opportunity presented by this "critical mass" of targets. A follow up article reveals the hostile response from some Tor advocates.

Recently we saw law enforcement exercise their capability to identify and shutdown sites hidden via Tor.

 
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  • (Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 17 2014, @04:25PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 17 2014, @04:25PM (#116790)

    Is Tor a Honeypot?

    Yes. Always has been. Sorry the world is just now figuring this out.

    Thread over.

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  • (Score: 2) by Bot on Monday November 17 2014, @04:31PM

    by Bot (3902) on Monday November 17 2014, @04:31PM (#116793) Journal

    Well, but I find the evidence for the entire internet being a honeypot far more convincing. Look where arpanet came from.

    --
    Account abandoned.

  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 17 2014, @04:38PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 17 2014, @04:38PM (#116800)

    I think it is more of a problem of priorities in the agencies who promote it.

    They have two conflicting goals. One is good unbreakable encryption to protect communication. The other is to break the unbreakable and take out the enemy using it.

    The second goal has created poor opsec on the first.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 17 2014, @04:47PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 17 2014, @04:47PM (#116808)

    I don't live in the USA so it's better to use Tor than not to if I'm trying to protect myself from my own government.

    Too bad it won't work so well for you bunch in the USA.

    • (Score: 2) by Arik on Monday November 17 2014, @05:10PM

      by Arik (4543) on Monday November 17 2014, @05:10PM (#116819) Journal
      Unless your government gets the information from our government...

      --
      If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 18 2014, @03:07AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 18 2014, @03:07AM (#117085)
        An extra step is still better.

  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by tftp on Monday November 17 2014, @09:50PM

    by tftp (806) on Monday November 17 2014, @09:50PM (#116958) Homepage

    There are about 6,800 TOR routers [blutmagie.de]. It is not beyond belief to presume that plenty of them are operated by the government. How many routers one has to control to trace a packet? Routers may not know the contents, but they know the time, the packet size, and perhaps the likely topology of the network. Most routers do not resolve to a domain name, and perhaps they are on a dynamic IP of Comcast or some other consumer level ISP.

    • (Score: 2) by wantkitteh on Tuesday November 18 2014, @12:12AM

      by wantkitteh (3362) on Tuesday November 18 2014, @12:12AM (#117022) Homepage Journal

      Given that the CIA are happy to aim drone strikes at people based on metadata, I'm sure the NSA et al are having a field day with ours.