5 ms·

Law Enforcement Undermines Tor

105 points by pantalaimon 2y ago

jagged-chisel 2y ago
Is there something new here? I’m under the impression that we knew this kind of thing was possible with enough resources.
- SamuelAdams 2y ago
  Plenty of people still believe that using a VPN + Tor means they are “private”. What we need to teach others is that this is no longer the case - privacy is not a one size fits all solution. You may be private from other users on your network, but not nation state actors.
  - upofadown 2y ago
    VPN/Tor provide something else anyway: anonymity. Privacy is a different thing. You can lead an entirely private life in an environment where everyone knows who you are and who you interact with. They just don't know how you are interacting with those people. Most people don't need anonymity most of the time...
    - mdhb 2y ago
      Really curious on your definition of private here because I have a buttload of evidence that says that is entirely untrue and you can as a private citizen buy detailed demographic and location data at an easily identifiable level for people without even needing to talk to another person.
- noirscape 2y ago
  Nothing new, and I'm pretty sure these sorts of attacks have been possible and used ever since it's founding. TOR ultimately works like any old relay system; if you control enough nodes, you can effectively decloak people if they happen to connect to only your nodes. Nodes are assigned for connection based on a trust value so all a Nation state would have to do is host enough nodes (relay+exit) and they'd be able to decloak a connection. This kinda inherently gives TOR decloaking abilities to entities with the most infrastructure, which at that scale basically will only be nation states. TOR works well enough for privacy when your adversaries aren't well-funded state actors. (ie. It's probably enough to mask your traffic if you use TOR to access resources to get out of an abusive relationship or need to circumvent cult-level inspection of your personal interests by religious schools. Most dictatorships also don't really have the resources to mount this sort of attack - it's probably just the US and some European countries.) That rule kinda also goes for VPNs in general however.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - shavanerad 2y ago
    There are thousands of relays run by altruistic volunteers. Unless your opsec sucks (i.e. you configure Tor to favor performance and not swap circuits every ten minutes) the opportunity to correlate by malicious nodes is small. Also, these nodes operated by bad actors are constantly identified and excluded.
- rmarq10 2y ago
  The articled confirms that the authorities are conducting a dragnet operation. Everyone who connected to a certain entry relay was tracked and reported. Does the tor daemon connect automatically? If so, even people who installed tor for fun and forget about may be on the list. Did the lucky ones have the "Bundestrojaner" (gov surveillance app) installed on their machines?
  - potato3732842 2y ago
    >If so, even people who installed tor for fun and forget about may be on the list. Good. That reduces the quality of the list.
  - immibis 2y ago
    They selected that relay after they determined it was the one used by the person they were trying to go after. That isn't a dragnet. There probably is a dragnet too.
- immibis 2y ago
  I think the surprising element is that the German government actually deployed enough resources.
  - Smurfix 2y ago
    They knew that the target had nearly half a million [child ab]users. That's sufficient motivation right there. The problem is that once you have the infrastructure you can go after, well, any other random Tor onion service you damn well please, all with a minimum of judical oversight (if any).
sandworm101 2y ago
Time for nodes to inject some random traffic. It sounds like if even 0.1% was random fluff they would not be able to track packets between nodes.
- Jerrrrrrry 2y ago
  That time happened 10 years ago. .1% fluff? May as well call em up yourself.
j-bos 2y ago
One advantage of imperfect privacy solutions like Tor is they force authorities to invest if they want to snoop. In the before times if soneone wanted to read your mail they'd need to at least convince a judge and then spend manpower interecepting the envelopes, today they can just ping google for a bcc.
- Cthulhu_ 2y ago
  Is that true? IIRC they still need to do the legal paperwork to get an email from google et al (FISA request?).
  - c0wb0yc0d3r 2y ago
    Yes paper work is required. I think OP is pointing out that that it doesn’t require the same amount of work it used to. Especially from law enforcement.
    - mdhb 2y ago
      LE are mostly avoiding this by just buying from the same public ad network sources that everyone else does and using that as a way to avoid the paperwork, I know people get very pissy about EUs GDPR sometimes but if you want to put an end to that kind of thing you need to tackle the private sector collection problem which almost anyone can access and is comparable with mid tier nation state capabilities.
  - mdhb 2y ago
    Yes mostly true, exceptions apply mostly based on jurisdictions and capabilities. The safeguards are actually much much better than what the opinions would lead you to believe on here. People really seem to get off on the idea that they are on the targeting list of an intel service but you actually have to put in some real work to meet that criteria. If you’re buying drugs for example even the relevant LE authorities will at most knock on your door to scare you assuming you live in an English speaking jurisdiction.
rustcleaner 2y ago
The dark network of the future will be an onion-routed Hyphanet/Freenet, with monthly "bandwidth quotas" that make links communicate uniformly at X GB/hr regardless of traffic (padding when there is none) until the monthly quota is hit right at the end of the month. If internodal links don't vary in externally measurable ways when utilized, netflow is diminished.
- Jerrrrrrry 2y ago
  I2P with more steps and crypto-enforced minimum quotes to deter timing/correlative attacks. Minimally-enforced "random" timeouts to prevent DDoS->outage correlation. Also mirrors. Lots of mirrors. Have mirrors tied to reputation tied to invites. Then the border to entry is time + money + reputation(which is time + money) Throw in some 0-KPz, and you are 100% chillin in Belize or 100% in Colorado-ADX (in minecraft, hypothetically, to sell beets, i ♥ us)
- orbisvicis 2y ago
  Doesn't i2p also use this model?
  - immibis 2y ago
    i2p is a bit harder because the circuits aren't end-to-end. Your traffic goes through typically 3 relays, then an all-to-all mixing where it goes directly to the start of the recipient's relay chain, then 3 of their chosen relays. A new connection is NOT set up through the whole network for each overlay connection - it uses your same outgoing relay chain, and your last relay sends the packet to the first relay in the recipient's incoming relay chain. It also uses a separate chain in each direction which makes any attack based on observing timing both ways more difficult. It's also not Sybil resistant at all.
cedws 2y ago
I have suspected Tor has been busted for quite a long time. LE is only using this power selectively for now - the last thing that they want is to scare users away lest they go and build something more secure. The Nym mixnet[0] seems promising but it's still new and unproven. I had an idea a while back to make traffic analysis more difficult by building circuits distributed across adversarial countries. Would like to hear thoughts on it.[1] [0]: https://nymtech.net/about/mixnet https://nymtech.net/about/mixnet [1]: https://cedwards.xyz/adversarial-routing/ https://cedwards.xyz/adversarial-routing/
- Jerrrrrrry 2y ago
  [flagged]
- mdhb 2y ago
  The public tends to have a very strange idea as to a lot of things on this topic while forgetting that TOR itself was actually a department of defence project or NSW I forget originally. If you’re interested in seeing what the next generation of this stuff looks like (although AFAIK is not really known outside of defence contracting circles) take a look at this https://github.com/tst-race/race-docs/blob/main/what-is-race.md https://github.com/tst-race/race-docs/blob/main/what-is-race...
  - GTP 2y ago
    > The public tends to have a very strange idea as to a lot of things on this topic while forgetting that TOR itself was actually a department of defence project or NSW I forget originally. IIRC it was a US Navy project. But I didn't understand your point.
    - mdhb 2y ago
      NSW = Naval Special Warfare but yes somewhere within the alphabet soup that is US natsec
      - GTP 2y ago
ryandv 2y ago
[flagged]
- notpushkin 2y ago
  It’s 2024 and I can’t tell if this is sarcasm or not.
  - ryandv 2y ago
    Feel free to debate the statement on its merits, at face value.
    - WillAdams 2y ago
      The problem is, just the mere fact of communication is sufficient to determine relationships, which can make any sort of organized action simple to identify, root out and quash: https://kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2013/06/09/using-metadata-to-find-paul-revere/ https://kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2013/06/09/using-metad... >The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. If the 2nd Amendment applies to a modern firearm (and it should), then the 4th amendment has to apply to e-mails and text messages.
    - amiga386 2y ago
      Your proposal is too modest. Why should only law enforcement see our messages? All messages should be treated like the banns of marriage and read aloud by the local priest or posted on the church walls, so that all interested parties can learn their contents and raise any relevant legal objection.
      - Attrecomet 2y ago
        In actual fact, your proposal is too modest. Why should only electronic messages be so publicized? After all, relevant communication, either for our protectors in law enforcement (and secret services, don't forget their hard work for our prosperity) or for us members of society, happens via all kinds of mediums. Privacy of correspondence might have had some relevance in the past, but today, with LLMs helping us work through the huge amount of data, every letter should automatically be scanned and added to a database for further consumption. Every telephone conversation. Actually, we should force phone manufacturers to turn their devices into permanent microphones and record everything they hear, gathered in public databases. The best results from last week's search can then be read aloud in church or at community meetups.
bananamango 2y ago
Split EntryGuard should help, means you connect to multiple of them instead of one, and your data is split between them then it gets to Exit through multiple paths (Middle Nodes) and there it is reconstructed to one data stream. How about that?
bananamango 2y ago
Connecting through multiple EntryGuards should help in this situation, Tor should split data transfer to many smaller ones travelling through different paths (Entry+Midddle) and then get it reconstructed to one stream at ExitNode.
ementally 2y ago
Are there any projects that generates random traffic? Like a website where you have it open it keeps sending random traffic. It will make traffic analysis very hard.
- Cthulhu_ 2y ago
  It probably doesn't; think about it, most websites already have a load of random stuff, plus all users combined is also heaps of randomness. No self-respecting analyist would go through logs manually, it's all fed into search / analysis software, filtering through noise.
  - ementally 2y ago
    Depends, it is a very well-known attack vector https://www.whonix.org/wiki/Speculative_Tor_Attacks#Website_Oracles https://www.whonix.org/wiki/Speculative_Tor_Attacks#Website_...
- BonusPlay 2y ago
  Yes, loopix. https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity17/technical-sessions/presentation/piotrowska https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity17/technical...
- mdhb 2y ago
  As I mentioned elsewhere in this thread if you’re looking for proper state of the art it’s coming out of DARPA projects and you can see what I mean here https://github.com/tst-race/race-docs/blob/main/what-is-race.md https://github.com/tst-race/race-docs/blob/main/what-is-race...
- boltzmann64 2y ago
  It is already hard with bots drowning any legit traffic, and you want to add random traffic too.
- Brian_K_White 2y ago
  Decades ago when first hearing about timing attacks I thought every network switch and nic should generate essentially white noise at all times on the wire, with the actual traffic just mixed in. Random amounts of random data going to random destinations, completely filling the pipe 100% at all times like how a carrier wave is on at all times, just as a feature of lighting up the port. If the electricity is on, the noise is on. Or at least in the switches and maybe not needed at the end points. A fantasy.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
radku 2y ago
Would using VPN prevent prying eyes from detecting the IP address? This issue seems to be related only to Tor users who do not use VPN?
- immibis 2y ago
  Yes, the German monitoring would point to the VPN provider, instead of directly at the user. However, they would then install a monitoring device at your VPN node.
dialup_sounds 2y ago
It's not directly mentioned in this article, but the four deanonymized users were admins of a CSAM site with hundreds of thousands of users. If you're concerned about being targeted by law enforcement, step one is probably: don't be that. https://www.dw.com/de/darknet-missbrauchsplattform-boystown-zerschlagen/a-57416124 https://www.dw.com/de/darknet-missbrauchsplattform-boystown-... https://www.sueddeutsche.de/panorama/kindesmissbrauch-boystown-darknet-frankfurt-prozess-1.5710224 https://www.sueddeutsche.de/panorama/kindesmissbrauch-boysto...
- mingus88 2y ago
  Cool, we got the “if you don’t have anything to hide” argument out of the way early. Now we can discuss the actual privacy implications of this news
  - dialup_sounds 2y ago
    Are you discussing the privacy implications? It looks like your only comment is this asinine middlebrow dismissal. Meanwhile, I've given actionable advice.
    - Brian_K_White 2y ago
      I don't think you get to charge anyone else with assinine. If a tool does not perform as designed, all users of the tool have an interest in knowing that, and working towards correcting that. It doesn't matter that there are both good and bad users.
      - dialup_sounds 2y ago
        The tool performed as designed. This took a months-long international investigation using social engineering and monitoring of hundreds of nodes to to identify four users that were being specifically targeted. It wasn't some novel attack, it's literally something that has always been possible with enough resources. Ergo, users: don't warrant the resources. Your threat model should not be the same as CSAM site operators. Also, you misspelled asinine.
dang 2y ago
Recent, related, and cited: Is Tor still safe to use? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41583847 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41583847 - Sept 2024 (562 comments)
0x_null 2y ago
[flagged]

105 points by pantalaimon 2y ago

Is there something new here? I’m under the impression that we knew this kind of thing was possible with enough resources.

SamuelAdams 2y ago
Plenty of people still believe that using a VPN + Tor means they are “private”. What we need to teach others is that this is no longer the case - privacy is not a one size fits all solution. You may be private from other users on your network, but not nation state actors.
- upofadown 2y ago
  VPN/Tor provide something else anyway: anonymity. Privacy is a different thing. You can lead an entirely private life in an environment where everyone knows who you are and who you interact with. They just don't know how you are interacting with those people. Most people don't need anonymity most of the time...
  - mdhb 2y ago
    Really curious on your definition of private here because I have a buttload of evidence that says that is entirely untrue and you can as a private citizen buy detailed demographic and location data at an easily identifiable level for people without even needing to talk to another person.
noirscape 2y ago
Nothing new, and I'm pretty sure these sorts of attacks have been possible and used ever since it's founding. TOR ultimately works like any old relay system; if you control enough nodes, you can effectively decloak people if they happen to connect to only your nodes. Nodes are assigned for connection based on a trust value so all a Nation state would have to do is host enough nodes (relay+exit) and they'd be able to decloak a connection. This kinda inherently gives TOR decloaking abilities to entities with the most infrastructure, which at that scale basically will only be nation states. TOR works well enough for privacy when your adversaries aren't well-funded state actors. (ie. It's probably enough to mask your traffic if you use TOR to access resources to get out of an abusive relationship or need to circumvent cult-level inspection of your personal interests by religious schools. Most dictatorships also don't really have the resources to mount this sort of attack - it's probably just the US and some European countries.) That rule kinda also goes for VPNs in general however.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- shavanerad 2y ago
  There are thousands of relays run by altruistic volunteers. Unless your opsec sucks (i.e. you configure Tor to favor performance and not swap circuits every ten minutes) the opportunity to correlate by malicious nodes is small. Also, these nodes operated by bad actors are constantly identified and excluded.
rmarq10 2y ago
The articled confirms that the authorities are conducting a dragnet operation. Everyone who connected to a certain entry relay was tracked and reported. Does the tor daemon connect automatically? If so, even people who installed tor for fun and forget about may be on the list. Did the lucky ones have the "Bundestrojaner" (gov surveillance app) installed on their machines?
- potato3732842 2y ago
  >If so, even people who installed tor for fun and forget about may be on the list. Good. That reduces the quality of the list.
- immibis 2y ago
  They selected that relay after they determined it was the one used by the person they were trying to go after. That isn't a dragnet. There probably is a dragnet too.
immibis 2y ago
I think the surprising element is that the German government actually deployed enough resources.
- Smurfix 2y ago
  They knew that the target had nearly half a million [child ab]users. That's sufficient motivation right there. The problem is that once you have the infrastructure you can go after, well, any other random Tor onion service you damn well please, all with a minimum of judical oversight (if any).

sandworm101 2y ago

Time for nodes to inject some random traffic. It sounds like if even 0.1% was random fluff they would not be able to track packets between nodes.

Jerrrrrrry 2y ago
That time happened 10 years ago. .1% fluff? May as well call em up yourself.

j-bos 2y ago

One advantage of imperfect privacy solutions like Tor is they force authorities to invest if they want to snoop. In the before times if soneone wanted to read your mail they'd need to at least convince a judge and then spend manpower interecepting the envelopes, today they can just ping google for a bcc.

Cthulhu_ 2y ago
Is that true? IIRC they still need to do the legal paperwork to get an email from google et al (FISA request?).
- c0wb0yc0d3r 2y ago
  Yes paper work is required. I think OP is pointing out that that it doesn’t require the same amount of work it used to. Especially from law enforcement.
  - mdhb 2y ago
    LE are mostly avoiding this by just buying from the same public ad network sources that everyone else does and using that as a way to avoid the paperwork, I know people get very pissy about EUs GDPR sometimes but if you want to put an end to that kind of thing you need to tackle the private sector collection problem which almost anyone can access and is comparable with mid tier nation state capabilities.
- mdhb 2y ago
  Yes mostly true, exceptions apply mostly based on jurisdictions and capabilities. The safeguards are actually much much better than what the opinions would lead you to believe on here. People really seem to get off on the idea that they are on the targeting list of an intel service but you actually have to put in some real work to meet that criteria. If you’re buying drugs for example even the relevant LE authorities will at most knock on your door to scare you assuming you live in an English speaking jurisdiction.

rustcleaner 2y ago

The dark network of the future will be an onion-routed Hyphanet/Freenet, with monthly "bandwidth quotas" that make links communicate uniformly at X GB/hr regardless of traffic (padding when there is none) until the monthly quota is hit right at the end of the month. If internodal links don't vary in externally measurable ways when utilized, netflow is diminished.

Jerrrrrrry 2y ago
I2P with more steps and crypto-enforced minimum quotes to deter timing/correlative attacks. Minimally-enforced "random" timeouts to prevent DDoS->outage correlation. Also mirrors. Lots of mirrors. Have mirrors tied to reputation tied to invites. Then the border to entry is time + money + reputation(which is time + money) Throw in some 0-KPz, and you are 100% chillin in Belize or 100% in Colorado-ADX (in minecraft, hypothetically, to sell beets, i ♥ us)
orbisvicis 2y ago
Doesn't i2p also use this model?
- immibis 2y ago
  i2p is a bit harder because the circuits aren't end-to-end. Your traffic goes through typically 3 relays, then an all-to-all mixing where it goes directly to the start of the recipient's relay chain, then 3 of their chosen relays. A new connection is NOT set up through the whole network for each overlay connection - it uses your same outgoing relay chain, and your last relay sends the packet to the first relay in the recipient's incoming relay chain. It also uses a separate chain in each direction which makes any attack based on observing timing both ways more difficult. It's also not Sybil resistant at all.

cedws 2y ago

I have suspected Tor has been busted for quite a long time. LE is only using this power selectively for now - the last thing that they want is to scare users away lest they go and build something more secure. The Nym mixnet[0] seems promising but it's still new and unproven. I had an idea a while back to make traffic analysis more difficult by building circuits distributed across adversarial countries. Would like to hear thoughts on it.[1] [0]: https://nymtech.net/about/mixnet https://nymtech.net/about/mixnet [1]: https://cedwards.xyz/adversarial-routing/ https://cedwards.xyz/adversarial-routing/

Jerrrrrrry 2y ago
[flagged]
mdhb 2y ago
The public tends to have a very strange idea as to a lot of things on this topic while forgetting that TOR itself was actually a department of defence project or NSW I forget originally. If you’re interested in seeing what the next generation of this stuff looks like (although AFAIK is not really known outside of defence contracting circles) take a look at this https://github.com/tst-race/race-docs/blob/main/what-is-race.md https://github.com/tst-race/race-docs/blob/main/what-is-race...
- GTP 2y ago
  > The public tends to have a very strange idea as to a lot of things on this topic while forgetting that TOR itself was actually a department of defence project or NSW I forget originally. IIRC it was a US Navy project. But I didn't understand your point.
  - mdhb 2y ago
    NSW = Naval Special Warfare but yes somewhere within the alphabet soup that is US natsec
    - GTP 2y ago

ryandv 2y ago

[flagged]

notpushkin 2y ago
It’s 2024 and I can’t tell if this is sarcasm or not.
- ryandv 2y ago
  Feel free to debate the statement on its merits, at face value.
  - WillAdams 2y ago
    The problem is, just the mere fact of communication is sufficient to determine relationships, which can make any sort of organized action simple to identify, root out and quash: https://kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2013/06/09/using-metadata-to-find-paul-revere/ https://kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2013/06/09/using-metad... >The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. If the 2nd Amendment applies to a modern firearm (and it should), then the 4th amendment has to apply to e-mails and text messages.
  - amiga386 2y ago
    Your proposal is too modest. Why should only law enforcement see our messages? All messages should be treated like the banns of marriage and read aloud by the local priest or posted on the church walls, so that all interested parties can learn their contents and raise any relevant legal objection.
    - Attrecomet 2y ago
      In actual fact, your proposal is too modest. Why should only electronic messages be so publicized? After all, relevant communication, either for our protectors in law enforcement (and secret services, don't forget their hard work for our prosperity) or for us members of society, happens via all kinds of mediums. Privacy of correspondence might have had some relevance in the past, but today, with LLMs helping us work through the huge amount of data, every letter should automatically be scanned and added to a database for further consumption. Every telephone conversation. Actually, we should force phone manufacturers to turn their devices into permanent microphones and record everything they hear, gathered in public databases. The best results from last week's search can then be read aloud in church or at community meetups.

bananamango 2y ago

Split EntryGuard should help, means you connect to multiple of them instead of one, and your data is split between them then it gets to Exit through multiple paths (Middle Nodes) and there it is reconstructed to one data stream. How about that?

bananamango 2y ago

Connecting through multiple EntryGuards should help in this situation, Tor should split data transfer to many smaller ones travelling through different paths (Entry+Midddle) and then get it reconstructed to one stream at ExitNode.

ementally 2y ago

Are there any projects that generates random traffic? Like a website where you have it open it keeps sending random traffic. It will make traffic analysis very hard.

Cthulhu_ 2y ago
It probably doesn't; think about it, most websites already have a load of random stuff, plus all users combined is also heaps of randomness. No self-respecting analyist would go through logs manually, it's all fed into search / analysis software, filtering through noise.
- ementally 2y ago
  Depends, it is a very well-known attack vector https://www.whonix.org/wiki/Speculative_Tor_Attacks#Website_Oracles https://www.whonix.org/wiki/Speculative_Tor_Attacks#Website_...
BonusPlay 2y ago
Yes, loopix. https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity17/technical-sessions/presentation/piotrowska https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity17/technical...
mdhb 2y ago
As I mentioned elsewhere in this thread if you’re looking for proper state of the art it’s coming out of DARPA projects and you can see what I mean here https://github.com/tst-race/race-docs/blob/main/what-is-race.md https://github.com/tst-race/race-docs/blob/main/what-is-race...
boltzmann64 2y ago
It is already hard with bots drowning any legit traffic, and you want to add random traffic too.
Brian_K_White 2y ago
Decades ago when first hearing about timing attacks I thought every network switch and nic should generate essentially white noise at all times on the wire, with the actual traffic just mixed in. Random amounts of random data going to random destinations, completely filling the pipe 100% at all times like how a carrier wave is on at all times, just as a feature of lighting up the port. If the electricity is on, the noise is on. Or at least in the switches and maybe not needed at the end points. A fantasy.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

radku 2y ago

Would using VPN prevent prying eyes from detecting the IP address? This issue seems to be related only to Tor users who do not use VPN?

immibis 2y ago
Yes, the German monitoring would point to the VPN provider, instead of directly at the user. However, they would then install a monitoring device at your VPN node.

dialup_sounds 2y ago

It's not directly mentioned in this article, but the four deanonymized users were admins of a CSAM site with hundreds of thousands of users. If you're concerned about being targeted by law enforcement, step one is probably: don't be that. https://www.dw.com/de/darknet-missbrauchsplattform-boystown-zerschlagen/a-57416124 https://www.dw.com/de/darknet-missbrauchsplattform-boystown-... https://www.sueddeutsche.de/panorama/kindesmissbrauch-boystown-darknet-frankfurt-prozess-1.5710224 https://www.sueddeutsche.de/panorama/kindesmissbrauch-boysto...

mingus88 2y ago
Cool, we got the “if you don’t have anything to hide” argument out of the way early. Now we can discuss the actual privacy implications of this news
- dialup_sounds 2y ago
  Are you discussing the privacy implications? It looks like your only comment is this asinine middlebrow dismissal. Meanwhile, I've given actionable advice.
  - Brian_K_White 2y ago
    I don't think you get to charge anyone else with assinine. If a tool does not perform as designed, all users of the tool have an interest in knowing that, and working towards correcting that. It doesn't matter that there are both good and bad users.
    - dialup_sounds 2y ago
      The tool performed as designed. This took a months-long international investigation using social engineering and monitoring of hundreds of nodes to to identify four users that were being specifically targeted. It wasn't some novel attack, it's literally something that has always been possible with enough resources. Ergo, users: don't warrant the resources. Your threat model should not be the same as CSAM site operators. Also, you misspelled asinine.

dang 2y ago

Recent, related, and cited: Is Tor still safe to use? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41583847 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41583847 - Sept 2024 (562 comments)

0x_null 2y ago

[flagged]