Detailing the CMU Tor Hidden Services Attack and Tor's Response

http://fusion.net/story/238742/tor-carnegie-mellon-attack/

by zmanian • 11 years ago

91 16 11 years ago

fusion.net

zmanian3• 11 years ago

Support Tor's first donation campaign.

Become a crowdfunder.

https://blog.torproject.org/blog/our-first-real-donations-ca...

yeukhon2• 11 years ago

Why does Tor need a director? If it is truly a decentralized network, why should the project require centralized project administrators? Because of funding and donation? Let's put the whole spread the initiative PR stuff away (of course that cost money), plus the hosting cost, what else do they use the donation for?

zmanian3• 11 years ago

They use the funding to pay the developer who develop the Tor software/daemon and the engineering effort there is extraordinary.

Thousands of volunteers provide the network capacity that makes the daemon useful.

tacojuan• 11 years ago

I can't believe they're using PayPal of all things...

zmanian3• 11 years ago

Agree, lutz.

But EFF and Freedom of Press also use Paypal and they have a nice interface for monitoring recurring contributions.

middleclick• 11 years ago

I agree but I think the problem is the lack of an alternative in the space. PayPal works across countries.

You can even send in cash...

EthanHeilman• 11 years ago

You can play via bitcoins if that is your thing:

https://www.torproject.org/donate/donate-options.html.en

tonyedgecombe• 11 years ago

Some of us like PayPal.

kbart• 11 years ago

What are the alternatives that work well internationally? Only Bitcoin comes to my mind, but it's a mess to buy, conversation rates fluctuate wildly and is far from easy to use.

anonymous4• 11 years ago

Useless web site. Can anybody please post the text of the article so that it is readable??

Estragon• 11 years ago

Yes, it's absolutely horrendous on mobile. On my laptop it's fine.

j_s• 11 years ago

http://pastebin.com/6938UxS0

TL;DR (2014):

Feb: Understaffed Tor minimized security warning. "Activity in the past has looked suspicious at the time, but ultimately did stuff that helped advance our art."

May: CMU researchers announce breaking Tor, ignoring potential ethical violations. Blackhat talk cancelled; CMU & FBI begin 'not the droids you're looking for' responses.

Jul: Emergency fix to Tor to block CMU vulnerability. CMU researchers stop corresponding with Tor project.

Nov: FBI crackdown

zaroth• 11 years ago

So who is going to get the billing record for all those hosts they spun up? Hard proof should not be that hard to come by, so I'm just waiting to see that. I am more likely to believe Tor than CMU because of the way the research was pulled, and it would be nice to pin them to it.

rasz_pl• 11 years ago

TLDR: CIA funded people angry at FBI funded people for breaking their toys. CIA funded people react only after being deanonymized __personally__.

iamsohungry• 11 years ago

Do you have a source on Tor being funded by the CIA?

It's disingenuous to say that Tor reacted only after being deanonymized personally:

1. It was well known that Nick Mathewson worked for Tor long before this attack.

2. Tor added code that allowed them to detect the attack before they knew their IPs were deanonymized: that's the only way they found out their IPs were deanonymized.

Detailing the CMU Tor Hidden Services Attack and Tor's Response

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