Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Aussie cops: Silk Road TOR anonymity 'not guaranteed'

cso.com.au

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–10 of 16 posts

Re: Aussie cops: Silk Road TOR anonymity 'not guaranteed'

#2

Post by pwny »

As another commenter suggested in the article, the government probably found the man because of factors external to TOR, such as the delivery address and the payment processor/information he used.

I don't believe the TOR network was compromised just yet, although I wouldn't test that assertion by buying drugs on it...

Re: Aussie cops: Silk Road TOR anonymity 'not guaranteed'

#3

Post by victork2 »

pwny wrote: post #2

As another commenter suggested in the article, the government probably found the man because of factors external to TOR, such as the delivery address and the payment processor/information he used. I don't believe the TOR network was compromised just yet, although I wouldn't test that assertion by buying drugs on it...

Not entirely true, see here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tor_%28anonymity_network%29#Wea...

"security consultant, revealed that he had intercepted usernames and passwords for a large number of email accounts by operating and monitoring Tor exit nodes.[27] As Tor does not, and by design cannot, encrypt the traffic between an exit node and the target server, any exit node is in a position to capture any traffic passing through it which does not use end-to-end encryption such as TLS."

It's strongly suspected that China used that method to arrest some opponents of the regime that were talking with TOR. I don't know if Australia has the same level of organization and can drop into communications like that though.

For this story, it really looks that they just used other factors than TOR to find out this guy.

edit: apparently Silk Road is 100% TOR, so it does not work in that case! Mea culpa

Re: Aussie cops: Silk Road TOR anonymity 'not guaranteed'

#5

Post by sp332 »

victork2 wrote: post #3
pwny wrote: post #2

As another commenter suggested in the article, the government probably found the man because of factors external to TOR, such as the delivery address and the payment processor/information he used. I don't believe the TOR network was compromised just yet, although I wouldn't test that assertion by buying drugs on it...

Not entirely true, see here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tor_%28anonymity_network%29#Wea... "security consultant, revealed that he had intercepted usernames and passwords for a large number of email accounts by operating and monitoring Tor exit nodes.[27] As Tor does not, and by design cannot, encrypt the traffic between an exit node and the target server, any exit node is in a position to capture any traffic passin…

Silk Road is only available via TOR, so there is no exit node involved.

Re: Aussie cops: Silk Road TOR anonymity 'not guaranteed'

#6

Post by pwny »

victork2 wrote: post #3
pwny wrote: post #2

As another commenter suggested in the article, the government probably found the man because of factors external to TOR, such as the delivery address and the payment processor/information he used. I don't believe the TOR network was compromised just yet, although I wouldn't test that assertion by buying drugs on it...

Not entirely true, see here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tor_%28anonymity_network%29#Wea... "security consultant, revealed that he had intercepted usernames and passwords for a large number of email accounts by operating and monitoring Tor exit nodes.[27] As Tor does not, and by design cannot, encrypt the traffic between an exit node and the target server, any exit node is in a position to capture any traffic passin…

Thanks for the link, this is very interesting.

Although by transmitting any personal information (email address, etc) through a supposedly anonymous network you kind of limit the benefit of said network.

Re: Aussie cops: Silk Road TOR anonymity 'not guaranteed'

#7

Post by unimpressive »

After seeing the headline, I expected to read a bluff by the Australian Federal Police that they can pierce through TOR.

Instead they didn't even do that; which to me implies that they caught this guy through weaknesses in his anonymity that had little to do with the merits of TOR.

Re: Aussie cops: Silk Road TOR anonymity 'not guaranteed'

#8

Post by icebraining »

victork2 wrote: post #3
pwny wrote: post #2

As another commenter suggested in the article, the government probably found the man because of factors external to TOR, such as the delivery address and the payment processor/information he used. I don't believe the TOR network was compromised just yet, although I wouldn't test that assertion by buying drugs on it...

Not entirely true, see here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tor_%28anonymity_network%29#Wea... "security consultant, revealed that he had intercepted usernames and passwords for a large number of email accounts by operating and monitoring Tor exit nodes.[27] As Tor does not, and by design cannot, encrypt the traffic between an exit node and the target server, any exit node is in a position to capture any traffic passin…

Exit nodes are only relevant if you're communicating with servers outside the TOR network. Silk Road runs as a Tor hidden service[1], which means you never go through an exit node, it's TORified (and therefore encrypted) end-to-end.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tor_(anonymity_network)#Hidden_...

Post reply on HN