Why the Tor attack matters
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Why the Tor attack matters
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Re: Why the Tor attack matters
#2[deleted]
Re: Why the Tor attack matters
#3What is so surprising here? The DOD is the largest funder of research grants in the US.
Pretty much every university is doing research for a US agency from cyber security to lasers for missile defense.
I find it very hard to believe that this is the firs time a university was conducting computer security research on live targets.
Re: Why the Tor attack matters
#4[deleted]
Re: Why the Tor attack matters
#5The article raises the issue for computer security but computer science is used in many other fields where it could have ethical implications. Self-driving cars is on top of my mind, but for sure other applications has issue too. So I agree with his point and should be extended.
Re: Why the Tor attack matters
#6The response by Patio11 regarding how this was acceptable penetration testing was beyond stupid.
Just because you are univesity researcher does not means you can take money and then attack some random company and say LOL JK just doing "Research". Universities have enormous computing power / resources available via various means to do research. Just because I have access to a thousand node cluster does not means I can randomly launch DDOS attack against some company and then claim "Research". This is equivalent to those youtube videos where at the end they justify assault and other egregious behaviour claiming "Social experiment" or "Prank".
Re: Why the Tor attack matters
#7What is so surprising here? The DOD is the largest funder of research grants in the US. Pretty much every university is doing research for a US agency from cyber security to lasers for missile defense. I find it very hard to believe that this is the firs time a university was conducting computer security research on live targets.
Whether or not it's surprising is perhaps the least interesting point for discussion. Universities have a responsibility to conduct human research ethically and I hope we hear a lot more about how this research in particular was conducted. This could have endangered lives depending on how it was done, and I'm quite sure the ends don't justify the means unless it was specifically done in a way which protected the anonymity of untargeted users.
Re: Why the Tor attack matters
#8What is so surprising here? The DOD is the largest funder of research grants in the US. Pretty much every university is doing research for a US agency from cyber security to lasers for missile defense. I find it very hard to believe that this is the firs time a university was conducting computer security research on live targets.
It was also done without a warrant it seems.
Re: Why the Tor attack matters
#9It would have been more ethical if the university had not blocked the "researchers" from disclosing the vulnerability at Black Hat. (Though even then they were not following responsible disclosure practices). The fact that Tor had to guess what the vulnerability was and the "researchers" still have not released their paper is unethical and probably illegal.
Re: Why the Tor attack matters
#10I think we have to assume that if a government can hack it, they will try. Perhaps it's sad that a university will help them but I'd also to be assumed that they're going to be trying it in some way.