Items tagged with Tor
At long last, The Tor Project has officially ported its Tor browser to Android devices with the first stable release for Google's open source operating system. It is now available on Google Play and will also make its way to F-Droid within the next day. Previously, Android users had access to test builds, with the first alpha version being released last September. Now after "months of hard work" and listening to feedback from its users, The Tor Project has released Tor Browser 8.5 to Android (alongside a desktop upgrade to 8.5 as well). "Mobile browsing is increasing around the world, and in some parts, it is commonly the only way people access the internet. In these same areas, there is often...
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TorBrowser users could be in for a rude awakening thank to some rather nefarious Windows DRM-protected files that are making the rounds. It appears that malicious parties could use malware that is ensconced within DRM-protected files to reveal their true IP address. It should be noted that this latest attack vector requires both the use of Windows and the Tor Browser. As Hacker House reports, clicking on “these ‘signed WMV’ files do not present any alert to a user before opening them they can be used quite effectively to decloak users of the popular privacy tool TorBrowser with very little warning.” Such a sneaky attack would leave your IP address wide open for hackers, copyright holders, or...
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Internet privacy is kind of like a VCR or CD player, in that one day our kids will ask us “you used to have that?” It’s staggering how much of our online activity is tracked, catalogued, and used for a wide array of purposes, most of them related to commerce. But if you’re a dissident, journalist, someone who lives in a country where the Internet is restricted, or just want to browse the web without being tracked, your options are becoming increasingly limited. It’s likely the situation will only get worse in the future, as companies devise more sophisticated ways of tracking our every move online. The Tor project was designed to combat this scourge. Tor is a freely accessible network of global...
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It seems that it was just yesterday that someone had to know a thing or two about software and programming to wreak havoc on fine upstanding Internet citizens via malware incursion. Ah, the good old days. Nostalgia aside, though, one cannot help but feel rattled by the news that security researchers at McAfee have discovered new software with which the oh-so-nefarious out there can easily construct their own ransomware. And not only is such a product in the wild, but it is online software, too, accessible by anyone capable of navigating a keyboard and a TOR browser. Dubbed Tox, the devil's tool raising the ruckus runs on TOR and is easy to work out and completely...
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Last week a joint operation between the Federal Bureau of Investigations, Department of Homeland Security, and Europol was announced. Named Operation Onymous, it led to the arrest of 17 people, the shutdown of over 400 hundred .onion sites, and Tor relays seized by government officials. As a result, the Tor Project is asking for help to determine how government officials were able to locate these services. “Tor is most interested in understanding how these services were located, and if this indicates a security weakness in Tor hidden services that could be exploited by criminals or secret police repressing dissents,” reads a statement on the Tor Project blog. “We are also interested...
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A joint law enforcement operation has managed to seize hundreds of Dark Web domains that have been associated with over a dozen black market wesbites. On top of taking and shutting domains, was the seizure of various products such as computers, drugs, weapons, and gold. The operation was revealed on Thursday, which involved the Federal Bureau of Investigations, Europol, and the Department of Homeland Security. Called Operation Onymous, the joint venture resulted in the arrest of 17 people that included Silk Road 2’s alleged operator Blake Benthall (26 years old) in San Francisco. Benthall is accused of running the new Silk Road under the handle “Defcon” for the past year ever...
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Facebook seems to have been focusing giving its users the ability to be anonymous in recent weeks. In October it was rumored that the company was working on a new mobile app, which has been designated Rooms, that would allow users to interact with each other under an alias. But now, Facebook is making its social media website more Tor-friendly. The company announced that Tor users could get a secure connection to its servers by visiting https://facebookcorewwwi.onion/ that will provide end-to-end encryption. Prior to this, it was a chore for Tor users to connect through a Tor-enabled internet browser since Facebook’s security would tend to treat Tor as a botnet. “We decided to...
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Invasion of privacy is a valid concern for everyone who goes online. But for those who wish to keep their online activity private, so that cable providers and government agencies are unable to see what is going on, there is Tor Browser. Tor encrypts a user’s online activities and makes it impossible for cable companies and government agencies, such as the FBI and NSA, to keep track of what you are doing. However, the Tor Browser requires a bit of technical knowledge to implement, a barrier for many who might be seeking anonymity. Enter the Anonabox, which quickly surpassed its Kickstarter goal of $7,500. It is a plug-and-play, open source networking device that will run Tor, making...
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When Star Wars: The Old Republic made news in September, it was for announcing that one of the mythos' most enduring antiheroes, the onetime Sith Lord Revan, would be making an appearance in the MMO. Now, a new bug could wipe some of that goodwill off the map. Modder and TOR enthusiast SWTorMiner has created a video that shows him fixing a simple visual bug (introduced in one of the recent game patches) to make a character's eyewear render properly. (I've artificially lightened the screen cap below so that it's easier to tell the difference.) Fixing a bit of character geometry might seem like a minor change, but the manner in which this particular adjustment was accomplished opens up a raft of...
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Over the weekend, there was a report from DeepDotWeb talking about users who were contacted by Comcast agents that proceeded to tell them to stop using Tor Browser or risk losing their service. This has prompted Comcast to release a statement denying these claims. DeepDotWeb reported that users were contacted about their use of Tor with one Comcast representative saying that it was an “illegal service” and then asking one customer what site the person visited. This customer then called Comcast and spoke to another representative that stated, “Users who try to use anonymity, or cover themselves up on the internet, are usually doing things that aren’t so-to-speak legal....
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More details have surfaced on how the FBI uses its own custom malware to penetrate the Tor network's anonymizing service -- and while those tools have been deployed in some important investigations, it's sure to raise hackles in the post-Snowden era. Several years ago, the FBI launched a major sting operation against the operator of a Tor-anonymized website dubbed Pedoboard. They eventually traced the account back to one Aaron McGrath, discovered he was hosting three separate child pornography distribution hubs, and smashed all three of them. Hosting child pornography via Tor is a flagrant violation of the ToS, national, and international law, and few tears have been shed over the outcome. What...
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The average Internet user probably has no idea what "Tor" is. If you're one of those users, you've probably had no good reason to even investigate what it is, what it does, or how it hides. But if you're the NSA, you're acutely aware of Tor, and a new report suggests that both the NSA and GCHQ have had their sights on Tor. In simple terms, Tor is a network that protects anonymity of those who use it. What's interesting about Tor is that the software behind it is mostly funded by the U.S. government; despite all that, the U.S. National Security Agency has had no success in "developing attacks against people using Tor." This is all part of the Edward Snowden fallout, and the latest batch of intel...
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We've covered the NSA revelations and subsequent government petitions at some length, but here's a new twist to the story of the government's pervasive monitoring program -- a view of the activity from an ISP's perspective. According to Pete Ashdown, the CEO of XMission, a Utah ISP, the company received its first FISA warrant "request" in 2010. There's no way to challenge FISA warrants and no legal recourse -- so Ashdown had no choice but to install a server, one of the NSA's own machines, in their data center. The technical aspects of the situation are remarkably straightforward. The NSA sent over a server (Ashdown was only allowed to take technical notes on how the unit was to be deployed)....
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Plextor Announces New Lineup of Optical Drives with PlexUTILITIES Advanced Application & Diagnostic SoftwarePlextor, a leading developer and manufacturer of high-performance digital media equipment, announces new products as a part of its new 2008 lineup. Featured in the new offering are 6x Blu-Ray Combo drives, 22x Super Multi DVD±RW drives, and an 8x Slim External USB DVD±RW for PC and Mac.“Plextor continues to strengthen its position in the optical storage market with the addition of these new drives to its already robust line of products,” said Bob Gronski, vice president of sales and marketing for Plextor. “Now more than ever, people are going out less and taking advantage...
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