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Tor Is Building the Next Generation Dark Net With Funding From DARPA

Posted by Soulskill on from the seek-and-go-hide dept.

Patrick O'Neill writes: After years of relative neglect, Tor has been able to dedicate increasing time and resources to its hidden services thanks to funding in part by DARPA, as well as an upcoming crowdfunding campaign. DARPA's funding lasts 1-3 years and covers several projects including security and usability upgrades that close the gap between hidden services and the everyday Internet. "Next-generation hidden services may be run from multiple hosts to better deal with denial of service attacks and high traffic in general, a potentially big power boost that further closes the gap between the Dark Net and normal websites. ... Hidden services, which make up about 4 percent of the entire Tor network, have until recently been relatively neglected when it comes to funding and developing."

6 of 67 comments (clear)

  1. Trus but verify... not by Cornwallis · · Score: 5, Informative

    So, the gubmint agency that built the Internet... "owned" by the same gubmint that built NSA wants to build the new TOR to increase privacy?

    Sounds trustworthy to me.

    1. Re:Trus but verify... not by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      "The government" isn't one big entity. There are a lot of agencies in it and some have very conflicting goals. Even in the NSA itself some will be working on securing everything more so that their government is safe from spying while others will be working on breaking everything more, so that other governments can be spied on.

      And isn't this just really a grant? Its not like darpa controls the implementation, they just point out what they want to be worked on, no?

    2. Re:Trus but verify... not by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      A large chunk of DARPA do not like NSA.

      Hell, a large chunk of NSA don't like NSA either.

      Not everyone agrees with the shit they have been doing to (not) catch criminals.

    3. Re:Trus but verify... not by fulldecent · · Score: 4, Informative

      Speaking with experience on the receiving side of DARPA contract negotiations.

      DARPA projects are not like kickstarter (BYO vision and get money) or like NIH (have reputation and get money); rather they do require actual competency and demonstrated ability to win them. The projects are managed like real engineering projects, requiring lots of documentation up front, thorough project planning, and plenty of checkpoints. However, aside from this good accountability, they do not exert direction on the projects, prescribe technical solutions or gain direct contact to your engineers for day-to-day operations.

      --

      -- I was raised on the command line, bitch

  2. Re:So..... by NotInHere · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Yes, This is pretty much press bloat. Improving hidden services has been a long time goal of them, read their blog. This is just a press release that they've got funding, and actually started working on that.

    There are multiple problems with hidden services, for example you can't delegate your domain, meaning that you can't keep a root key containing your master keys offline, and have a VPS or similar server (which you don't trust) run the onion page.

  3. Re:More criminality by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Exactly right. The drug war and the 'think of the children' meme are two of the worst things about the US. We could stop a lot of harm if we abolished them both.