11 ms·

To keep Tor hack source code secret, DOJ dismisses child porn case

307 points by awqrre 10y ago

ycmbntrthrwaway 10y ago
How comes they are charged with "accessing the website"? Is it illegal or what?
- nness 10y ago
  In many countries, even trying to access child pornography (even without necessarily having success in doing so), is a crime. I'd assume the US to be the same.
- sandworm101 10y ago
  Yes, but there are a few details that ars is not mentioning. They didnt just "access" the website. The website needed registration. These people had registered accounts. They did not stumble upon it by accident. Then the malware was limited to those accessing the "hardcore" section. Those accessing only legally grey-area material (ie nude but no sex acts, or images where age was questionable) were not caught up. Deliberately trying to access material you know is illegal, then actually doing so, is a crime. There were no doubt other steps taken to limit the field of people to charge. Shared computers and shared IP addresses (vpns, school networks etc) seem to have been deselected. The man living on his own, with his name attached to a non-proxied internet connection, makes for an easy prosecution. They must have a far longer list of suspects ... who may now be on some sort of watch list. I suggest they think twice about boarding an international flight with a laptop. Expect to be randomly searched.
endgame 10y ago
Won't someone think of the children?
- NuDinNou 10y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RybNI0KB1bg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RybNI0KB1bg
- ryan_j_naughton 10y ago
  Are you serious or being facetious? If you are being serious, I'd like to direct you to the wikipedia page on the topic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_of_the_children https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_of_the_children "In debate, however, as a plea for pity, used as an appeal to emotion, it is a logical fallacy"
  - endgame 10y ago
    Snarky, mostly. So often the people who want to ram through additional surveillance will do so using "think of the children" rhetoric, as though they were the most important thing in the world. And now we find that when it comes time to actually use these tools to protect the children, the secrecy of the tools is more important.
    - snailletters 10y ago
      From the Wikipedia article, "Community, Space and Online Censorship (2009) argued that classifying children in an infantile manner, as innocents in need of protection, is a form of obsession over the concept of purity." I believe I see what you mean, however in a case of child pornography do you not think that it's in a human's best interest to keep something from abuse of naivety?
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
    - Clubber 10y ago
      The general rule of thumb is if a politician is pushing a law to "protect the children," it's a tell that it's a bad law. That's the only way they can sell it. By bad law, I mean permanently lose your rights kind of law. There have been many, but the war on drugs is a big one. It led to the militarization of the police, no knock raids, out of proportion sentencing, stop and frisk, asset forfeiture with no evidence, aggressive prosecution, etc. These laws that were sold to protect children against drug dealers creep into other offenses as well, like RICO and of course the patriot act. Terrorism is another big seller. >And now we find that when it comes time to actually use these tools to protect the children, the secrecy of the tools is more important. I don't want to get into too shaky ground, but if you can de-emotionalize the issue, prosecuting the consumer of the material isn't directly protecting anybody. That picture was taken no matter how many people look at it. You wouldn't expect the government to prosecute everyone who looked at the stolen pictures of celebrities that came out a few years ago. The government is now using this to legitimize surveillance, actively attempt to circumvent security (which is illegal), and to hide the circumvention methods. That's bad for everybody. Child porn is horrible, and horrible things happen to children, but an authoritarian government with massive, legal surveillance power is worse. The road to hell was paved with good intentions.
teddyh 10y ago
Does this mean that one of the four horsemen of the infocalypse has been proven a fake?
sandworm101 10y ago
I think they want to to disclose. I think prosecutors expected that they would be allowed to do so by now. They probably assumed the exploit would have been patched away, or that some better tool would have come allong by this point in time. Id bet good money that this tool is still in active use by some three-letter agency. Should it be discovered or patched before the SOL, its intel value will drop and prosecutions will begin again.
- jlarocco 10y ago
  That was my thought as well. Especially since they dismissed the case in such a way that they can bring it back later. Might as well use it to collect evidence while they can, and then bring all the charges when the exploit is fixed and it's not useful any more. It sucks that the pervert in the case is going free (for now), but I would guess the experience scared him enough that he won't be doing it again any time soon.
  - sandworm101 10y ago
    Dont go too nutz about him not going to jail. An arrest on child porn charges destroys one's life. Guilt or innocence doesnt matter. Jobs are lots. Families are broken apart. Neighbours now hate you. This man's life will never be the same. And he hasnt had any day in court. We should not judge too harshly.
- wheelerwj 10y ago
  SOL?
  - sandworm101 10y ago
    Statute of limitations. The period of time during which charges can be brought.
moomin 10y ago
So, let's see now: a man is going free who should probably be going to jail for a long time, because the state doesn't want to disclose the methods of gathering evidence against him, which we can speculate are because they are illegal or sourced from non-law-enforcement agencies. A case with near-identical facts and the same judge _is_ going to trial and, not content with tapping your email, the state now wants to put viruses on your computer. It's hard to point to anything in this story that resembles "How the world should be".
- woolly 10y ago
  While the majority of it probably isn't 'how the world should be', a man is going free because (we speculate) that the evidence against him was gathered illegally. This bit probably is 'how the world should be'.
  - Huffers2 10y ago
    I've never understood this. If I gather evidence against somebody illegally, and it proves their guilt, shouldn't we both go to jail?
    - qeternity 10y ago
      Fruit of the forbidden tree. It's inadmissible in court.
      - sathackr 10y ago
        Unless the LEO acted in "good faith"
    - ChuckMcM 10y ago
      The structure is to keep police officers honest which is more important than a particular person going to jail. The operating principle is that a dishonest police force is more dangerous than a criminal who was caught using illegal evidence. Typically the criminal will commit another crime and if you get evidence against them legally, then you can prosecute them for the new crime.
caf 10y ago
I don't quite see why they can't use the same method they use in espionage cases in this situation - if there's classified evidence, the defence lawyers need to get security clearances and are under the same obligation not to further disclose the information as anyone else (even to their own client).
- angry_octet 10y ago
  It isn't a national security issue so there is no justification for those measures. In criminal cases there is a strong constitutional and natural justice basis for the accused being able to examine and attempt to rebut the evidence.
  - caf 10y ago
    As I understand it those issues are covered by the accused's lawyers being able to examine the evidence on behalf of the accused, which would extend to having it examined by an expert witness who can attempt to impeach it.
    - SomeStupidPoint 10y ago
      It reads straight out of Kafka you can't be present at your own trial, because the evidence against you is secret. I might be willing to grant that legitimate cases of national security warrant this, but routine criminal proceedings? Fuck no. That kind of exclusion of the accused is terrifying and delegitimizes the proceedings in my eyes. The state can't try you in secret just because they don't want to talk about the evidence, and we know the state routinely abuses secrecy laws to cover malfeasance.
    - Retra 10y ago
      Right. How is the accused supposed to provide an honest account to their lawyer if they can't even know what evidence exists against them? They'll have nothing to refute, and their lawyer can't ask them pertinent questions about their own defense.
      - 10y ago
elastic_church 10y ago
Best public defender ever?
MilnerRoute 10y ago
The prosecutors said they may file charges later (according to the article). They may just want to keep from revealing the details as long as possible -- but could re-file the same charges years later, right before the Statute of Limitations.
- bsder 10y ago
  This actually bothers me greatly. Not carrying through once charges are filed should be equivalent to "not guilty".
  - jemfinch 10y ago
    So, in a timeline this: * "We have an eyewitness! File the charges." * "Our eyewitness recanted, dismiss." * "We now have DNA evidence, refile the charges." You actually think the trial should not be allowed to go forward?
    - kuschku 10y ago
      Many countries solve that: You can't present the exact same case again after you filed to dismiss... ...unless a major change has happened, such as a massive amount of new incriminating evidence.
    - bsder 10y ago
      > You actually think the trial should not be allowed to go forward? Actually, yes. If you filed a case on something so flimsy and it collapses, the case should get dismissed. It would sure make prosecutors go the extra mile to make sure that there is concrete evidence before filing charges. Simply filing charges can destroy someone's life. The prosecution should have to put something at risk when they do so.
    - BearGoesChirp 10y ago
      Should've waited for the DNA evidence. The idea we convict with just eyewitness testimony alone is enough of a nightmare. Also, this is how it happens already if they go through the entire trial. * "We have an eyewitness. File the charges!" * "Jury finds the defendant not guilty because they didn't think the eyewitness' testimony was proof beyond a reasonable doubt." * "We found DNA evidence and even a video that someone recorded but didn't admit to just now." Double jeopardy means they can't go ahead, no matter what evidence they find. This is just extending that a little further, which I see as a good thing.
tribby 10y ago
- "tor hack," or tor browser user who didn't turn off javascript? - is this only an issue for the prosecution because it happened before the changes to rule 41?
- wheelerwj 10y ago
  i believe thise case was initiated prior to those changes.
gankedfrank 10y ago
Disgraceful that they'd rather this guy walk free than spill the beans on TOR. They really solidify the case that the govt is inherently anti-privacy.
hackuser 10y ago
Why is an exploit against a Tor user so valuable? Assuming the attackers can access the server, which for the FBI seems a reasonable assumption (they can seize the server, operate it as a honeypot, etc.), all they need is a browser vulnerability. Perhaps they did use a valuable exploit in this case, or they used something not legal (such as something not covered by their warrant or NSA surveillance).
- ENOTTY 10y ago
  They might be actively using it in other investigations that might be compromised if this exploit were fixed.
  - hackerboos 10y ago
    But can't those cases just be dismissed also? Unless they decide that case is worth the release of information.
    - AlexCoventry 10y ago
      They're probably using it for higher-priority investigations, like keeping track of terrorist communications.
- beardog 10y ago
  This is what that is.
throwawasiudy 10y ago
In case it isn't obvious to everyone, the government runs or has tapped most or all TOR exit nodes. This has been going on forever. Nobody knows exactly what the attack is...but if they're willing to drop cases to cover it up, its probably something that either: 1) completely breaks TOR permanently 2) is easy to bypass/block Since TOR has withstood a lot of scrutiny I'm betting on option #2. They found a total break but it's really brittle. Either an exploit in software, or more likely, some protocol hiccup that allows them to de-anonymize users running certain popular software or OS.
- daxelrod 10y ago
  I was under the impression from reporting on the sting that Playpen was an onion site, not a clearnet site. If that's the case, traffic wouldn't be going through an exit node to get there, right?
  - mirimir 10y ago
    Right, no exit involved. Both user and onion site build normal three-relay circuits to a rendezvous relay, picked by the onion site.
- dajohnson89 10y ago
  Do you have any evidence for the claim that TOR is so badly compromised? My understanding of the article is not that TOR was hacked, but rather that a tor user was tricked into opening a non-tor site and thus giving away his/her IP address. Also if just the exit node is compromised, encrypted connections are still safe (TTBOMK).
  - AlexCoventry 10y ago
    > Do you have any evidence for the claim that TOR is so badly compromised? Only that it would be incredibly cheap and valuable to do so.
  - tbrowbdidnso 10y ago
    https://www.google.com/amp/s/nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2015/06/25/can-you-trust-tors-exit-nodes/amp/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2015/0... Not the FBI per se, but it shows that someone is clearly attempting to compromise TOR users. Also there's been whispers about it forever. Much like the "black rooms" at datacentres before all the NSA leaks. The FBI has a long history of tracking down and compromising CC theft and CP rings, along with silk road and the hoards of clones. Most of these sites are primarily or only accessible over TOR. Running compromised TOR nodes would be an extremely cheap way to monitor a large portion of illicit Internet traffic. The frequent busts are usually attributed to other reasons to shift attention away from TOR, but this is classic parallel construction. The feds will nearly always get you on secondary evidence when the primary means is too sensitive... See stingrays. The sheer number of TOR based site busts however is telling. Anyone relying on TOR for security is a fool. It's more heavily monitored than the regular net.
oxide 10y ago
This is routine. The accused has money for a lawyer, otherwise this would have been a plea deal and a conviction with no reveal requested.
- saosebastiao 10y ago
  The lawyer is a public defender in Tacoma.
mirimir 10y ago
Questions about what methods investigators can legitimately use aside, the practical implications are clear. You can not count on Tor alone for real anonymity. So what might these NITs be doing? In the simplest case, they'd be dropping malware that reports ISP-assigned IP address, local IP address, network hardware MAC, and whatever to FBI servers. And it's probably Windows malware. To protect against that, you isolate userland and the Tor process in separate machines, or at least VMs. So adversaries that compromise browsers etc can't discover ISP-assigned IP addresses, and can't reach the Internet except through Tor. Also, you don't use Windows or OSX. Whonix does this, and you can run it in Qubes. It's possible that these NITs are exploiting a bug in Tor itself. Even if that were so, however, isolating the Tor process from userland would mitigate that risk. Perhaps the FBI has access to substantial numbers of malicious Tor relays, operated by the NSA etc. To mitigate that risk, you can hit Tor through nested chains of VPN services. Even if they identify the final VPN exit in your chain, they will probably need to track back through the chain to identify you. And by including unfriendly jurisdictions in your chain, you can make that harder. Finally, it's possible that the NSA has sufficient global intercepts and logs to deanonymize any network connection, no matter how complicated and indirect. It's impossible to say.
- zkms 10y ago
  > To protect against that, you isolate userland and the Tor process in separate machines, or at least VMs. This applies as well to people who run Tor hidden services that are doorkicker bait (like drug cryptomarkets). It should be impossible for a compromised browser or hidden service server or Tor process to know anything about your hardware or MAC address, your internal IP address (the RFC1918 one), or your globally routable IP address. also yeah the Feeb loves to exploit browsers (especially firefox :^) and make them execute the NIT (which just sends, unencrypted/unauthenticated data of the MAC address, ethernet interface's IP addresses, username, and stuff like that, to a computer run by the FBI) once one of their exploits got leaked, it was pretty fucking lulzy https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2016/11/30/fixing-an-svg-animation-vulnerability/ https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2016/11/30/fixing-an-svg-a... https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-talk/2016-November/042639.html https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-talk/2016-Novembe...
Esau 10y ago
This is what happens when the net is more important than the fish.
- wheelerwj 10y ago
  which is pretty crazy, because crimes involving CP are some of the biggest whales that exist in our society.
  - umanwizard 10y ago
    Not really. CP possession convictions happen routinely. They're treated as a serious crime but usually not as serious as, say, premeditated murder. Producing it is of course another matter.
jlebrech 10y ago
why not jail the guy and pay a fine too. they jail innocent people all the time a give huge payouts or put people away in guantanamo and then also pay huge amounts of compensation. how about the judge fines the law enforce and gives the fine to orphanages or to the victims.

307 points by awqrre 10y ago

ycmbntrthrwaway 10y ago

How comes they are charged with "accessing the website"? Is it illegal or what?

nness 10y ago
In many countries, even trying to access child pornography (even without necessarily having success in doing so), is a crime. I'd assume the US to be the same.
sandworm101 10y ago
Yes, but there are a few details that ars is not mentioning. They didnt just "access" the website. The website needed registration. These people had registered accounts. They did not stumble upon it by accident. Then the malware was limited to those accessing the "hardcore" section. Those accessing only legally grey-area material (ie nude but no sex acts, or images where age was questionable) were not caught up. Deliberately trying to access material you know is illegal, then actually doing so, is a crime. There were no doubt other steps taken to limit the field of people to charge. Shared computers and shared IP addresses (vpns, school networks etc) seem to have been deselected. The man living on his own, with his name attached to a non-proxied internet connection, makes for an easy prosecution. They must have a far longer list of suspects ... who may now be on some sort of watch list. I suggest they think twice about boarding an international flight with a laptop. Expect to be randomly searched.

endgame 10y ago

Won't someone think of the children?

NuDinNou 10y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RybNI0KB1bg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RybNI0KB1bg
ryan_j_naughton 10y ago
Are you serious or being facetious? If you are being serious, I'd like to direct you to the wikipedia page on the topic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_of_the_children https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_of_the_children "In debate, however, as a plea for pity, used as an appeal to emotion, it is a logical fallacy"
- endgame 10y ago
  Snarky, mostly. So often the people who want to ram through additional surveillance will do so using "think of the children" rhetoric, as though they were the most important thing in the world. And now we find that when it comes time to actually use these tools to protect the children, the secrecy of the tools is more important.
  - snailletters 10y ago
    From the Wikipedia article, "Community, Space and Online Censorship (2009) argued that classifying children in an infantile manner, as innocents in need of protection, is a form of obsession over the concept of purity." I believe I see what you mean, however in a case of child pornography do you not think that it's in a human's best interest to keep something from abuse of naivety?
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
  - Clubber 10y ago
    The general rule of thumb is if a politician is pushing a law to "protect the children," it's a tell that it's a bad law. That's the only way they can sell it. By bad law, I mean permanently lose your rights kind of law. There have been many, but the war on drugs is a big one. It led to the militarization of the police, no knock raids, out of proportion sentencing, stop and frisk, asset forfeiture with no evidence, aggressive prosecution, etc. These laws that were sold to protect children against drug dealers creep into other offenses as well, like RICO and of course the patriot act. Terrorism is another big seller. >And now we find that when it comes time to actually use these tools to protect the children, the secrecy of the tools is more important. I don't want to get into too shaky ground, but if you can de-emotionalize the issue, prosecuting the consumer of the material isn't directly protecting anybody. That picture was taken no matter how many people look at it. You wouldn't expect the government to prosecute everyone who looked at the stolen pictures of celebrities that came out a few years ago. The government is now using this to legitimize surveillance, actively attempt to circumvent security (which is illegal), and to hide the circumvention methods. That's bad for everybody. Child porn is horrible, and horrible things happen to children, but an authoritarian government with massive, legal surveillance power is worse. The road to hell was paved with good intentions.

teddyh 10y ago

Does this mean that one of the four horsemen of the infocalypse has been proven a fake?

sandworm101 10y ago

I think they want to to disclose. I think prosecutors expected that they would be allowed to do so by now. They probably assumed the exploit would have been patched away, or that some better tool would have come allong by this point in time. Id bet good money that this tool is still in active use by some three-letter agency. Should it be discovered or patched before the SOL, its intel value will drop and prosecutions will begin again.

jlarocco 10y ago
That was my thought as well. Especially since they dismissed the case in such a way that they can bring it back later. Might as well use it to collect evidence while they can, and then bring all the charges when the exploit is fixed and it's not useful any more. It sucks that the pervert in the case is going free (for now), but I would guess the experience scared him enough that he won't be doing it again any time soon.
- sandworm101 10y ago
  Dont go too nutz about him not going to jail. An arrest on child porn charges destroys one's life. Guilt or innocence doesnt matter. Jobs are lots. Families are broken apart. Neighbours now hate you. This man's life will never be the same. And he hasnt had any day in court. We should not judge too harshly.
wheelerwj 10y ago
SOL?
- sandworm101 10y ago
  Statute of limitations. The period of time during which charges can be brought.

moomin 10y ago

So, let's see now: a man is going free who should probably be going to jail for a long time, because the state doesn't want to disclose the methods of gathering evidence against him, which we can speculate are because they are illegal or sourced from non-law-enforcement agencies. A case with near-identical facts and the same judge _is_ going to trial and, not content with tapping your email, the state now wants to put viruses on your computer. It's hard to point to anything in this story that resembles "How the world should be".

woolly 10y ago
While the majority of it probably isn't 'how the world should be', a man is going free because (we speculate) that the evidence against him was gathered illegally. This bit probably is 'how the world should be'.
- Huffers2 10y ago
  I've never understood this. If I gather evidence against somebody illegally, and it proves their guilt, shouldn't we both go to jail?
  - qeternity 10y ago
    Fruit of the forbidden tree. It's inadmissible in court.
    - sathackr 10y ago
      Unless the LEO acted in "good faith"
  - ChuckMcM 10y ago
    The structure is to keep police officers honest which is more important than a particular person going to jail. The operating principle is that a dishonest police force is more dangerous than a criminal who was caught using illegal evidence. Typically the criminal will commit another crime and if you get evidence against them legally, then you can prosecute them for the new crime.

caf 10y ago

I don't quite see why they can't use the same method they use in espionage cases in this situation - if there's classified evidence, the defence lawyers need to get security clearances and are under the same obligation not to further disclose the information as anyone else (even to their own client).

angry_octet 10y ago
It isn't a national security issue so there is no justification for those measures. In criminal cases there is a strong constitutional and natural justice basis for the accused being able to examine and attempt to rebut the evidence.
- caf 10y ago
  As I understand it those issues are covered by the accused's lawyers being able to examine the evidence on behalf of the accused, which would extend to having it examined by an expert witness who can attempt to impeach it.
  - SomeStupidPoint 10y ago
    It reads straight out of Kafka you can't be present at your own trial, because the evidence against you is secret. I might be willing to grant that legitimate cases of national security warrant this, but routine criminal proceedings? Fuck no. That kind of exclusion of the accused is terrifying and delegitimizes the proceedings in my eyes. The state can't try you in secret just because they don't want to talk about the evidence, and we know the state routinely abuses secrecy laws to cover malfeasance.
  - Retra 10y ago
    Right. How is the accused supposed to provide an honest account to their lawyer if they can't even know what evidence exists against them? They'll have nothing to refute, and their lawyer can't ask them pertinent questions about their own defense.
    - 10y ago

elastic_church 10y ago

Best public defender ever?

MilnerRoute 10y ago

The prosecutors said they may file charges later (according to the article). They may just want to keep from revealing the details as long as possible -- but could re-file the same charges years later, right before the Statute of Limitations.

bsder 10y ago
This actually bothers me greatly. Not carrying through once charges are filed should be equivalent to "not guilty".
- jemfinch 10y ago
  So, in a timeline this: * "We have an eyewitness! File the charges." * "Our eyewitness recanted, dismiss." * "We now have DNA evidence, refile the charges." You actually think the trial should not be allowed to go forward?
  - kuschku 10y ago
    Many countries solve that: You can't present the exact same case again after you filed to dismiss... ...unless a major change has happened, such as a massive amount of new incriminating evidence.
  - bsder 10y ago
    > You actually think the trial should not be allowed to go forward? Actually, yes. If you filed a case on something so flimsy and it collapses, the case should get dismissed. It would sure make prosecutors go the extra mile to make sure that there is concrete evidence before filing charges. Simply filing charges can destroy someone's life. The prosecution should have to put something at risk when they do so.
  - BearGoesChirp 10y ago
    Should've waited for the DNA evidence. The idea we convict with just eyewitness testimony alone is enough of a nightmare. Also, this is how it happens already if they go through the entire trial. * "We have an eyewitness. File the charges!" * "Jury finds the defendant not guilty because they didn't think the eyewitness' testimony was proof beyond a reasonable doubt." * "We found DNA evidence and even a video that someone recorded but didn't admit to just now." Double jeopardy means they can't go ahead, no matter what evidence they find. This is just extending that a little further, which I see as a good thing.

tribby 10y ago

- "tor hack," or tor browser user who didn't turn off javascript? - is this only an issue for the prosecution because it happened before the changes to rule 41?

wheelerwj 10y ago
i believe thise case was initiated prior to those changes.

gankedfrank 10y ago

Disgraceful that they'd rather this guy walk free than spill the beans on TOR. They really solidify the case that the govt is inherently anti-privacy.

hackuser 10y ago

Why is an exploit against a Tor user so valuable? Assuming the attackers can access the server, which for the FBI seems a reasonable assumption (they can seize the server, operate it as a honeypot, etc.), all they need is a browser vulnerability. Perhaps they did use a valuable exploit in this case, or they used something not legal (such as something not covered by their warrant or NSA surveillance).

ENOTTY 10y ago
They might be actively using it in other investigations that might be compromised if this exploit were fixed.
- hackerboos 10y ago
  But can't those cases just be dismissed also? Unless they decide that case is worth the release of information.
  - AlexCoventry 10y ago
    They're probably using it for higher-priority investigations, like keeping track of terrorist communications.
beardog 10y ago
This is what that is.

throwawasiudy 10y ago

In case it isn't obvious to everyone, the government runs or has tapped most or all TOR exit nodes. This has been going on forever. Nobody knows exactly what the attack is...but if they're willing to drop cases to cover it up, its probably something that either: 1) completely breaks TOR permanently 2) is easy to bypass/block Since TOR has withstood a lot of scrutiny I'm betting on option #2. They found a total break but it's really brittle. Either an exploit in software, or more likely, some protocol hiccup that allows them to de-anonymize users running certain popular software or OS.

daxelrod 10y ago
I was under the impression from reporting on the sting that Playpen was an onion site, not a clearnet site. If that's the case, traffic wouldn't be going through an exit node to get there, right?
- mirimir 10y ago
  Right, no exit involved. Both user and onion site build normal three-relay circuits to a rendezvous relay, picked by the onion site.
dajohnson89 10y ago
Do you have any evidence for the claim that TOR is so badly compromised? My understanding of the article is not that TOR was hacked, but rather that a tor user was tricked into opening a non-tor site and thus giving away his/her IP address. Also if just the exit node is compromised, encrypted connections are still safe (TTBOMK).
- AlexCoventry 10y ago
  > Do you have any evidence for the claim that TOR is so badly compromised? Only that it would be incredibly cheap and valuable to do so.
- tbrowbdidnso 10y ago
  https://www.google.com/amp/s/nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2015/06/25/can-you-trust-tors-exit-nodes/amp/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2015/0... Not the FBI per se, but it shows that someone is clearly attempting to compromise TOR users. Also there's been whispers about it forever. Much like the "black rooms" at datacentres before all the NSA leaks. The FBI has a long history of tracking down and compromising CC theft and CP rings, along with silk road and the hoards of clones. Most of these sites are primarily or only accessible over TOR. Running compromised TOR nodes would be an extremely cheap way to monitor a large portion of illicit Internet traffic. The frequent busts are usually attributed to other reasons to shift attention away from TOR, but this is classic parallel construction. The feds will nearly always get you on secondary evidence when the primary means is too sensitive... See stingrays. The sheer number of TOR based site busts however is telling. Anyone relying on TOR for security is a fool. It's more heavily monitored than the regular net.

oxide 10y ago

This is routine. The accused has money for a lawyer, otherwise this would have been a plea deal and a conviction with no reveal requested.

saosebastiao 10y ago
The lawyer is a public defender in Tacoma.

mirimir 10y ago

Questions about what methods investigators can legitimately use aside, the practical implications are clear. You can not count on Tor alone for real anonymity. So what might these NITs be doing? In the simplest case, they'd be dropping malware that reports ISP-assigned IP address, local IP address, network hardware MAC, and whatever to FBI servers. And it's probably Windows malware. To protect against that, you isolate userland and the Tor process in separate machines, or at least VMs. So adversaries that compromise browsers etc can't discover ISP-assigned IP addresses, and can't reach the Internet except through Tor. Also, you don't use Windows or OSX. Whonix does this, and you can run it in Qubes. It's possible that these NITs are exploiting a bug in Tor itself. Even if that were so, however, isolating the Tor process from userland would mitigate that risk. Perhaps the FBI has access to substantial numbers of malicious Tor relays, operated by the NSA etc. To mitigate that risk, you can hit Tor through nested chains of VPN services. Even if they identify the final VPN exit in your chain, they will probably need to track back through the chain to identify you. And by including unfriendly jurisdictions in your chain, you can make that harder. Finally, it's possible that the NSA has sufficient global intercepts and logs to deanonymize any network connection, no matter how complicated and indirect. It's impossible to say.

zkms 10y ago
> To protect against that, you isolate userland and the Tor process in separate machines, or at least VMs. This applies as well to people who run Tor hidden services that are doorkicker bait (like drug cryptomarkets). It should be impossible for a compromised browser or hidden service server or Tor process to know anything about your hardware or MAC address, your internal IP address (the RFC1918 one), or your globally routable IP address. also yeah the Feeb loves to exploit browsers (especially firefox :^) and make them execute the NIT (which just sends, unencrypted/unauthenticated data of the MAC address, ethernet interface's IP addresses, username, and stuff like that, to a computer run by the FBI) once one of their exploits got leaked, it was pretty fucking lulzy https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2016/11/30/fixing-an-svg-animation-vulnerability/ https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2016/11/30/fixing-an-svg-a... https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-talk/2016-November/042639.html https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-talk/2016-Novembe...

Esau 10y ago

This is what happens when the net is more important than the fish.

wheelerwj 10y ago
which is pretty crazy, because crimes involving CP are some of the biggest whales that exist in our society.
- umanwizard 10y ago
  Not really. CP possession convictions happen routinely. They're treated as a serious crime but usually not as serious as, say, premeditated murder. Producing it is of course another matter.

jlebrech 10y ago

why not jail the guy and pay a fine too. they jail innocent people all the time a give huge payouts or put people away in guantanamo and then also pay huge amounts of compensation. how about the judge fines the law enforce and gives the fine to orphanages or to the victims.