[tor-talk] FBI cracked Tor security

[Mirimir]

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On 07/14/2016 12:23 AM, Jon Tullett wrote:
> On 14 July 2016 at 01:51, Nick Levinson <nick_levinson at yahoo.com>
> wrote:
>> The FBI reportedly cracked Tor's security to crack a child porn
>> case with over 100 arrests of Tor users.
> 
> I think what you'll find in such cases is that the FBI generally
> crack the servers hosting the illicit material, not Tor itself.
> 
> In other words, the feds locate onion sites hosting illegal
> material, using standard intelligence gathering techniques. They
> establish (encrypted, secure, private, and presumably uncracked)
> Tor connections to those servers, and then attack them over those
> connections. There are frequently vulnerabilities in hosting
> services - content platforms, web forums, third-party Javascript
> libraries, file uploads, management interfaces...many sites,
> darkweb or not, have much broader attack surfaces than their owners
> understand.

Truth.

> Having pwned the server, a malware component is then injected to 
> visiting computers. Ie: when the criminal visits the infected
> site, his PC is infected (over that encrypted, secure, etc)
> connection. Now infected, his PC will be under the control of the
> FBI, and the investigation will proceed from there. As soon as it's
> connected to the regular internet, that connection will be traced,
> but that connection is not necessary - data on the PC can be
> exfiltrated by the feds over Tor and used to identify the user.

Tor Project ought to inform users about this risk, and recommend
countermeasures. It's not like this is new. I see nothing at
<https://www.torproject.org/download/download.html.en#warning>.

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