Former Tor Developer Created Malware To Hack Tor Users For The FBI (dailydot.com)
Patrick O'Neill writes: Matt Edman is a cybersecurity expert who worked as a part-time employee at Tor Project, the nonprofit that builds Tor software and maintains the network, almost a decade ago. Since then, he's developed potent malware used by law enforcement to unmask Tor users. It's been wielded in multiple investigations by federal law-enforcement and U.S. intelligence agencies in several high-profile cases. The Tor Project has confirmed this report in a statement after being contacted by the Daily Dot, "It has come to out attention that Matt Edman, who worked with the Tor Project until 2009, subsequently was employed by a defense contractor working for the FBI to develop anti-Tor malware." Maybe Tor users will now be less likely to anonymously check Facebook each month...
Yes, please. Anonymous or otherwise, FB needs to be removed as a main gatekeeper for the masses.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
Cornhusker used a Flash application to deliver a user's real Internet Protocol (IP) address to an FBI server outside the Tor network.
Really, you'd have to be next-level, monumentally stupid to use Tor and allow ANY kinds of plugins to run. Like holy shit, my general browsing habits are more secure than these retards.
All your privacy are belong to us - "the" FBI
Perhaps you don't know Tor's history?
The core principle of Tor, "onion routing", was developed in the mid-1990s by United States Naval Research Laboratory employees, mathematician Paul Syverson and computer scientists Michael G. Reed and David Goldschlag, with the purpose of protecting U.S. intelligence communications online. Onion routing was further developed by DARPA in 1997.[17][18][19]
The alpha version of Tor, developed by Syverson and computer scientists Roger Dingledine and Nick Mathewson[20] and then called The Onion Routing project, or TOR project, launched on 20 September 2002.[1][21] On 13 August 2004, Syverson, Dingledine and Mathewson presented "Tor: The Second-Generation Onion Router" at the 13th USENIX Security Symposium.[22] In 2004, the Naval Research Laboratory released the code for Tor under a free license, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) began funding Dingledine and Mathewson to continue its development.[20]
In December 2006, Dingledine, Mathewson and five others founded The Tor Project, a Massachusetts-based 501(c)(3) research-education nonprofit organization responsible for maintaining Tor.[23] The EFF acted as The Tor Project's fiscal sponsor in its early years, and early financial supporters of The Tor Project included the U.S. International Broadcasting Bureau, Internews, Human Rights Watch, the University of Cambridge, Google, and Netherlands-based Stichting NLnet.[24][25][26][27][28]
From this period onwards, the majority of funding sources came from the U.S. government.[20]
Tor is now, and has always been, and will always be compromised.
Acting for your own paycheck instead of thinking about what's best for humanity, Matt? You're a despicable little traitor, Matt. Let's hope you like the surveillance society you contributed to, Matt, and I hope you already know you'll be stalked by the FBI for the rest of your life, Matt.
Even on Slashdot, I'm startled by the people willing to give up anonymity.
When the FBI wanted Apple to unlock the terrorist's phone, people pointed out that encryption wasn't the problem. They said that terrorists evaded detection with burner phones. The response, of course, is to require identification to use a prepaid sim card. It's trading away anonymity to retain privacy.
I'm also disappointed at how many people would like to get rid of anonymous posting. There are people who abuse anonymity, sure, but is it worth giving up anonymity to silence trolls?
Free speech often isn't free. The only kind of speech that needs protection is the kind of speech that offends someone. If nobody is offended, the speech won't be censored and the person speaking won't face retribution. The most threatened type of speech is the kind that benefits most from anonymity.
A single Judas in your midst, and it all falls down.
While this tends to mean no networks are immune from the government intrusion, it also means no government network is secure either.
Your move.
I wonder if he'd be less likely to continue the work is a hacker collective attacked and destroyed his personal privacy.
Well surprise, the FBI had broken into your favorite tool
Did you think you were ever going to speak freely?
Not in this country.
In the same vein that you have a right to employ secure encryption, the spooks have a duty to decrypt it. There really is a national security interest in this now that every nation on earth is involved in it or interested in being so.
The trick is to constantly remind the folks with the unlimited budgets that they work for us.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Is IF/WHEN you're hired to write either ONLY interfaces OR portions of a ware (as in a subsystem) BUT NOT THE ENTIRE THING...
* "Been there, done that" in my career & I wondered WHY things were done that way during them (& when I asked/complained since knowing the BIG PICTURE helps too? I was told I didn't need to know)...
APK
P.S.=> You build a piece of a larger whole but you never see the ENTIRE 'machine' (ware) @ work OR what it's for... apk
???
Really, I get the whole "mah privacy" thing, but if you use tor, it's obviously because you have something to hide.
Whoever pays the highest rate wins our (temporary) loyalty. Welcome to society where no one agrees on a set of values.
develop8ent models at times. From polite to bring many users of BSD
Tor has always been funded by the CIA/Navy.. It has been infiltrated since day 1
Subject says it all.
This sig intentionally left blank.
Just as there was an audit (or two) for TrueCrypt, I say it's time for an audit of Tor!
The same goes for the mysterious developer's project known as "Tails".
I really wish
people would
stop
posting like this.
I know it's
easier to get
more views this way
but it's annoying.
I stopped reading the daily dot because they started paying Sabu (the anonymous snitch that put Hammond in jail). Did they kick him out? Even with adblockers I don't feel comfortable entering their domain.
It's disgusting to see an article about a traitor in a website that has one in their payroll.
I wonder if he'd be less likely to continue the work is a hacker collective attacked and destroyed his personal privacy.
I wonder how difficult it would be to penetrate a Slashdot alias to make life a little more miserable for the agent provocateur.
The "hacker collective" is, by the way, widely despised beyond the inbred circles of Slashdot. When one is torpedoed the sound you are mostly to hear is applause. I don't expect that to change no matter which way the elections go this fall.
The victim of the retaliation you suggest could be drawn into something like the witness protection program. That would set a precedent that could cost the geek dearly somewhere down the road.
He hacked, so he's a hacker, so a criminal, so must be locked up. It's the law.
An ugly fucker with a head like a hemorrhoid http://www.dailydot.com/politi...
Who, this man? http://www.thinkbrg.com/professionals-matthew-edman.html#Overview
people here are assuming that this guy has sacrificed ethics for money.
those who are assuming this are assuming it from a belief that their own ethical discernment is the one true way.
that sounds a bit religious to me, i don't think it's that clear cut. i can see a good argument for both sides of this debate.
"The opposite of a fact is falsehood, but the opposite of one profound truth may very well be another profound truth." ~nils bohr
See subject: Doing compartmentalizing no 1 man "knows it all" about a program IN DETAIL, so those looking to hire away a developer of such a program in order to subvert it CANNOT DO SO AS EASILY, if at all.
* Typically in software development that's NOT how it's done since it's GOOD for anyone on a larger project that has teams writing it to KNOW what the other parts do & in a GOOD software shop, you do code reviews of othes' work too & do get familiar with it that way also, PLUS, since you often have to interact with others' code routines also anyhow & LEARN what they're doing (you have to in order to work with it effectively + correctly).
(MAYBE only 1 guy does (who sometimes codes, sometimes not) - a Business/Systems Analyst OR team lead (that would be the WISEST to go after imo IF he can code himself - anyone else is useless for "reverse engineering" or vulnerability exploitations, imo) - but again... to stop this happening? What I noted DOES help...)
I also don't write wares to hurt others. I do QUITE the opposite in fact.
I write wares to empower people speeding them up, securing them better, making them more anonymous (to a degree), + more reliably connected online -> https://news.slashdot.org/comm... & I do it absolutely gratis, no strings attached.
Lastly - Imo @ least based on calling me a-hole?
You seem to THINK I did things like this article to WRECK security of a ware or 'hack it' etc. - no, I have not.
I have, however, done work in code for the "Military Industrial Complex" or their contracted companies @ times on contracts.
I have, however, been part of teams over a 23++ yr. long career professionally as a software engineer/programmer-analyst where I saw it done (hindered me imo) compartmentalizing with GOOD reasons now that I think about it putting myself in the companies' shoes that did it this way to protect their investments OR personal data of others, by being given datasets to work on that made little sense to me minus having knowledge of what it was doing OR for what (largely to do with personal data of others like payrolls that was 'faked' playground stuff to test if the code worked right @ all OR just a subsystem portion that was more 'tech' in nature for hardware interfaces - to protect intellectual property the way I said in fact)... that was the point of it being done thus.
Additionally: "40 decades"? What's your secret, "Highlander"??
APK
P.S.=> BOTTOM-LINE: Perhaps I didn't express myself as well as I should've that you misunderstood my point thus, per my subject... but, I'm no asshole to point out how to stop what happened to TOR by doing that - I don't even use TOR myself by the way (too slow when I tried it LONG ago just to see how it was) but I do NOT agree with it being done (other than it can help shore up deficiencies in it to correct them IF they are made public knowledge, this article says they're not) - yes, morons & "terrorists" & sickos + troublemakers use TOR quite often (nothing I can do about that) - yes, I don't like that either but that's how it goes quite often... good things get abused too for "the bad" (purely relative terms depending on what point of view you have)... apk
"Yeah, it runs in the family; grandma turned in Anne Frank's family, so my decision was a no-brainer. The law is the law, you know."
Former Tox Developer Created Malware To Hack Tox Users For The FBI
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https://github.com/Tox/tox.cha...
https://slashdot.org/submissio... https://github.com/Tox/tox.cha...
First, why would any activity to break Tor cause people to use it less? Is the submitter implying that it is better to keep your mouth shut and cower in a corner? Seems to me he is.
Second, anybody that accesses FB via Tor is already known and identified when they log in because FB knows how they are. Keeping that in mind, the last sentence of the "story" could not be any more stupid, unless the submitter is actively trying to spread fear. Again, I think he is.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.