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This is crazy, but really interesting at the same time. I always thought that this was the way to break anonymity on the Tor network. FBI basically generated a

This is crazy, but really interesting at the same time. I always thought that this was the way to break anonymity on the Tor network. FBI basically generated a shit-load of Tor nodes (https://blog.torproject.org/blog/how-to-handle-millions-new-tor-clients https://blog.torproject.org/blog/how-to-handle-millions-new-...) for some while to increase their chances of intercepting traffic. Following the data collection and using statistic, they were able to pin-point the origin of most Freedom-hosting request/response, and then raided the place. Think about it: if you own 9/10 of the node of the Tor network (and they did for a while) and simply analyze all the traffic, it's just a matter of time before you can find what you are looking for. The second interesting thing is how they planned everything using the Firefox exploit to find out who was going on each Website. I'm pretty sure they got what they were looking for. Even thought this is highly scary in term of government control, I think we can all learn a lot about it. Also, I'm wondering how much this attack cost.

jlgaddis 13y ago
You realize that the FBI admission discussed in the article has nothing to do with the blog post on the Tor web site that you linked to, right? Those are two completely separate events.
quasque 13y ago
> FBI basically generated a shit-load of Tor nodes (https://blog.torproject.org/blog/how-to-handle-millions-new-... https://blog.torproject.org/blog/how-to-handle-millions-new-...) for some while to increase their chances of intercepting traffic. The blog post you link to was about a recent massive increase in Tor clients, not Tor nodes. From what I've read I was under the impression that Freedom Hosting itself was hacked to disclose its IP addresses, rather than the FBI taking over the Tor network.
yk 13y ago
You are confusing two things, one is the sudden increase in tor traffic you linked to, and which was possibly caused by a botnet which used tor as command & control network. The other is the attack on freedom host, which the FBI perpetrated. There the FBI injected a trojan into websites and could therefore deanonymyze users of the websites. So in that case tor did protect the malware as designed, but could not protect the anonymity of the user, because the local computer did made a connection over TCP/IP.

jlgaddis 13y ago

You realize that the FBI admission discussed in the article has nothing to do with the blog post on the Tor web site that you linked to, right? Those are two completely separate events.

quasque 13y ago

> FBI basically generated a shit-load of Tor nodes (https://blog.torproject.org/blog/how-to-handle-millions-new-... https://blog.torproject.org/blog/how-to-handle-millions-new-...) for some while to increase their chances of intercepting traffic. The blog post you link to was about a recent massive increase in Tor clients, not Tor nodes. From what I've read I was under the impression that Freedom Hosting itself was hacked to disclose its IP addresses, rather than the FBI taking over the Tor network.

yk 13y ago

You are confusing two things, one is the sudden increase in tor traffic you linked to, and which was possibly caused by a botnet which used tor as command & control network. The other is the attack on freedom host, which the FBI perpetrated. There the FBI injected a trojan into websites and could therefore deanonymyze users of the websites. So in that case tor did protect the malware as designed, but could not protect the anonymity of the user, because the local computer did made a connection over TCP/IP.