The Tor Anonymity Network Just Got Hacked by Law Enforcement

Paul Carr at Pando has been writing a lot about potential security issues with TOR, both issues with the ties between the founders and the US state security apparatus, and possible technical issues.

One of the ones that he has mentioned is the compromise of their exit nodes or their directory authorities.

It now appears that a large cluster of exit nodes has been seized by the authorities:

Earlier this week, we reported on an apparent threat by an unnamed agency to disable the Tor anonymity network.

According to founder Roger Dingledine:

The Tor Project has learned that there may be an attempt to incapacitate our network in the next few days through the seizure of specialized servers in the network called directory authorities.

This is not the current problem though,  it appears that some of the exit nodes have been seized by the authorities:

Today, Thomas White who operates “a large exit node cluster for the Tor network and [a] collection of mirrors,” reports that his servers have apparently been compromised.

Tonight there has been some unusual activity taking place and I have now lost control of all servers under the ISP and my account has been suspended. Having reviewed the last available information of the sensors, the chassis of the servers was opened and an unknown USB device was plugged in only 30-60 seconds before the connection was broken. From experience I know this trend of activity is similar to the protocol of sophisticated law enforcement who carry out a search and seizure of running servers.

White warns “Do NOT use my mirrors/services until I have reviewed the situation,” adding:

At this moment in time I am under no gagging orders or influence from external parties/agencies. If no update is provided within 48 hours you may draw your own conclusions.

Needless to say if you rely on TOR for some sort of crucial secure communications, I would suggest that you find some other method, or go dark, over the short term.

I know a guy with a carrier pigeon.