[tor-talk] FBI cracked Tor security

[Nick Levinson]

The FBI reportedly cracked Tor's security to crack a child porn case with over 100 arrests of Tor users. I don't know how the FBI did it, and that's a good type of case for which to do it, but, considering that legitimate users need to evade high-end intelligence agencies that may be as skilled as the FBI and less friendly, it's worth discussing how the FBI might have done it. The news story didn't say what specific exploit it used. I forgot the news citation.

But one clue might be that the FBI can read Bugzilla posts for whichever browser Tor uses (Firefox now) to catalogue security flaws various people have discovered and reported. Some reports and responses are confidential but hacking those Bugzillas may be a priority for a hundred or more foreign intelligence agencies, most of whom are probably more skilled at cracking than Mozilla (or whomever) is at defending. It's also possible that a security flaw for another browser might be something to test for whether Firefox has a similar flaw.