{"id":183328,"date":"2014-12-24T20:59:00","date_gmt":"2014-12-25T01:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2014\/12\/24\/the-tor-anonymity-network-just-got-hacked-by-law-enforcement\/"},"modified":"2014-12-24T20:59:00","modified_gmt":"2014-12-25T01:59:00","slug":"the-tor-anonymity-network-just-got-hacked-by-law-enforcement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2014\/12\/24\/the-tor-anonymity-network-just-got-hacked-by-law-enforcement\/","title":{"rendered":"The Tor Anonymity Network Just Got Hacked by Law Enforcement"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Paul Carr at <i>Pando<\/i> has been writing a lot about potential security issues with TOR, both issues with the ties between the founders and the US state security apparatus, and possible technical issues.<\/p>\n<p>One of the ones that he has mentioned is the compromise of their exit nodes or their directory authorities.<\/p>\n<p>It now appears that <a href=\"http:\/\/pando.com\/2014\/12\/21\/so-it-begins-operator-of-large-tor-exit-node-cluster-reports-he-has-lost-control-of-his-servers\/\">a large cluster of exit nodes has been seized by the authorities<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">Earlier this week, we <a href=\"http:\/\/pando.com\/2014\/12\/19\/tor-founder-warns-that-threatened-attack-on-network-could-be-really-bad-allowing-traffic-to-be-hijacked\/\">reported<\/a> on an apparent threat by an unnamed agency to disable&nbsp;the Tor anonymity network.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: blue;\">According to founder Roger Dingledine:<\/span> <\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">The Tor Project has learned that there may be an attempt  to incapacitate our network in the next few days through the seizure of  specialized servers in the network called directory authorities.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>This is not the current problem though,&nbsp; it appears that some of the exit nodes have been seized by the authorities: <\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">Today, Thomas White who operates \u201ca large exit node&nbsp;cluster for the Tor network and [a] collection of mirrors,\u201d&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/article.gmane.org\/gmane.network.tor.user\/34619\">reports<\/a> that his servers have apparently been compromised.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">Tonight there has been some unusual activity taking place  and I have now lost control of all servers under the ISP and my account  has been suspended. Having reviewed the last available information of  the sensors, the chassis of the servers was opened and an unknown USB  device was plugged in only 30-60 seconds before the connection was  broken. From experience I know this trend of activity is similar to the  protocol of sophisticated law enforcement who carry out a search and  seizure of running servers.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"color: blue;\"><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">White warns \u201cDo NOT use my mirrors\/services until I have reviewed the situation,\u201d adding:<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">At this moment in time I am under no gagging orders or  influence from external parties\/agencies. If no update is provided  within 48 hours you may draw your own conclusions.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Needless to say if you rely on TOR for some sort of crucial secure communications, I would suggest that you find some other method, or go dark, over the short term.<\/p>\n<p>I know a guy with a carrier pigeon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Paul Carr at Pando has been writing a lot about potential security issues with TOR, both issues with the ties between the founders and the US state security apparatus, and possible technical issues. One of the ones that he has mentioned is the compromise of their exit nodes or their directory authorities. It now appears &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1060,972,1061],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-183328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computer","category-justice","category-security"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183328"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=183328"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183328\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}