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I recently ran across several articles related to the NSA's attempts
at cracking Tor and de-anonymizing its users. They are after
terrorists and other individuals who seek to do harm of course, but
their work obviously has implications into other Tor users, the vast
majority of whom use Tor for legal and proper activities. So far, it
appears that the cryptographic standards and protocols implemented
by the Tor devs appear to be holding, which I find interesting. The
NSA has been trying other methods to figure out Tor, including
identifying and then infecting user machines, trying to
control/hijack the Tor network, or by influencing the network as a
whole, and they've had a very small amount of success, but not much.
One thing that was especially interesting to me (and I expect to
everyone on this mailing list) is that they are trying to control
more relays via cooperation or direct access, which can then be used
for timing attacks or disruptions to the users. They are also trying
to shape traffic to friendly exits. For anyone interested, I would
highly recommend these links:<br>
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<a
href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2013/oct/04/tor-stinks-nsa-presentation-document">http://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2013/oct/04/tor-stinks-nsa-presentation-document</a><br>
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<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-24429332">http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-24429332</a><br>
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<a
href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/04/nsa-gchq-attack-tor-network-encryption">http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/04/nsa-gchq-attack-tor-network-encryption</a><br>
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Also, from <a
href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2013/oct/04/tor-high-secure-internet-anonymity">http://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2013/oct/04/tor-high-secure-internet-anonymity</a>
it appears that their opinion of Tails is that it "adds severe CNE
misery to [the] equation". These are all highly informative
articles, and it appears that Tor is remaining resilient to their
efforts, as long as people (including relay/exit operators) use the
latest software, remain aware that Tor doesn't protect them in all
aspects, and as long as there are enough non-NSA relays and exits
(we need more!) such that everything they see still remains
encrypted and anonymous. Interesting I say.<br>
<br>
Jesse V.<br>
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