Computer's Heat May Unmask Anonymized PCs

Virtual_Raider writes "Wired is carrying a story about a method developed by security researchers to identify computers hiding behind anonymity services. From the article: 'His victim is the Onion Router, or "Tor" — a sophisticated privacy system that lets users surf the web anonymously. Tor encrypts a user's traffic, and bounces it through multiple servers, so the final destination doesn't know where it came from. Murdoch set up a Tor network at Cambridge to test his technique, which works like this: If an attacker wants to learn the IP address of a hidden server on the Tor network, he'll suddenly request something difficult or intensive from that server. The added load will cause it to warm up.'"

Comments

Run Distributed.net or SETI@Home etc.

[Lord_Breetai]

They'll peg the CPU, that way it'll be warm all the time. And since they can be set as an idle process they'll step aside as needed.