Xrqute
New member
Russia’s Interior Ministry is offering 3.9 million ruble which is a touch over $111k USD to give them the ability to identify people using the TOR anonymizer network.
An official Tender has been put out by the government on their website and went virtually unnoticed till several human right activists discovered it on Thursday two weeks after it had been posted. The successful tender is set to be announced 20-08-14.
TOR (the onion network) anonymizes the identity of an online user by encrypting their data and sending their information through thousands of random pathways (think layers of an onion, there are many to get to the center), making it virtually impossible to trace by modern means and it accomplishes this while still maintaining a reasonably low latency. All these factors have been what seen many people around the globe flock to TOR some are paranoid about privacy others are on a darker path like shopping on the now taken down Silk Road aka The Ebay for Drugs. Governments around the globe are taking notice of TOR as it can be used to conceal potentially illegal activity. But it can also be essential for avoiding monitoring or censorship from security services, in countries with restrictive legislation.
“Law enforcers are worried about the ability of internet users to anonymously visit the internet, and particularly blocked sites. Also, the new blogging law that comes into force in August says that all bloggers with a daily audience of over 3,000 must register their identity. But someone blogging through TOR can do so anonymously,” Sarkis Darbinyan, a lawyer for Russia’s Pirate Party, told BBC.
Russia has approx 30 million homes with internet access while this is still a relatively low number of an estimated 80K households were using TOR in May but it is believed that in just two short months that has more then doubled and blown out to an estimated 200k. This huge jump in such a short time is what has caught the Russian Governments attention.
Russia's security service has previously moved to ban all anonymizers from use within Russia previously but the idea ended up being shelved.
Various technological solutions for unmasking TOR users have been applied by the NSA and other leading agencies, though most involve considerable time and expense, or rely on cracking less secure software used in conjunction with TOR and not TOR itself.
A talk titled 'You don’t have to be the NSA to Break Tor: De-Anonymizing Users on a Budget,' which was to be presented at the reputable Black Hat hacker conference in August, was pulled without explanation earlier this week.
This is always a sticky situation they are those with the "I've got nothing to hide" opinion and there are those with the "Stay the hell out of my business, Even thought I'm doing nothing wrong you start with this then whats next". I'm personally on the Pro-privacy side, I don't think anyone should be sticking their nose in but that is my opinion as a (mostly) law abiding citizen but i do think if a person has been flagged for suspicion in horrific crimes such as terrorism, human trafficking, Child pornography etc governments should be able to track and monitor these people and what they do online. But of course these types are going to be the ones drawn to TOR.
It shall be interesting to see how this plays out. no one may even put in a tender or a way to crack the network may not be found.
Join in the conversation and Post you're comments below, this is always a sticky one so i look forwarding to reading your opinions.
Source
An official Tender has been put out by the government on their website and went virtually unnoticed till several human right activists discovered it on Thursday two weeks after it had been posted. The successful tender is set to be announced 20-08-14.
TOR (the onion network) anonymizes the identity of an online user by encrypting their data and sending their information through thousands of random pathways (think layers of an onion, there are many to get to the center), making it virtually impossible to trace by modern means and it accomplishes this while still maintaining a reasonably low latency. All these factors have been what seen many people around the globe flock to TOR some are paranoid about privacy others are on a darker path like shopping on the now taken down Silk Road aka The Ebay for Drugs. Governments around the globe are taking notice of TOR as it can be used to conceal potentially illegal activity. But it can also be essential for avoiding monitoring or censorship from security services, in countries with restrictive legislation.
“Law enforcers are worried about the ability of internet users to anonymously visit the internet, and particularly blocked sites. Also, the new blogging law that comes into force in August says that all bloggers with a daily audience of over 3,000 must register their identity. But someone blogging through TOR can do so anonymously,” Sarkis Darbinyan, a lawyer for Russia’s Pirate Party, told BBC.
Russia has approx 30 million homes with internet access while this is still a relatively low number of an estimated 80K households were using TOR in May but it is believed that in just two short months that has more then doubled and blown out to an estimated 200k. This huge jump in such a short time is what has caught the Russian Governments attention.
Russia's security service has previously moved to ban all anonymizers from use within Russia previously but the idea ended up being shelved.
Various technological solutions for unmasking TOR users have been applied by the NSA and other leading agencies, though most involve considerable time and expense, or rely on cracking less secure software used in conjunction with TOR and not TOR itself.
A talk titled 'You don’t have to be the NSA to Break Tor: De-Anonymizing Users on a Budget,' which was to be presented at the reputable Black Hat hacker conference in August, was pulled without explanation earlier this week.
This is always a sticky situation they are those with the "I've got nothing to hide" opinion and there are those with the "Stay the hell out of my business, Even thought I'm doing nothing wrong you start with this then whats next". I'm personally on the Pro-privacy side, I don't think anyone should be sticking their nose in but that is my opinion as a (mostly) law abiding citizen but i do think if a person has been flagged for suspicion in horrific crimes such as terrorism, human trafficking, Child pornography etc governments should be able to track and monitor these people and what they do online. But of course these types are going to be the ones drawn to TOR.
It shall be interesting to see how this plays out. no one may even put in a tender or a way to crack the network may not be found.
Join in the conversation and Post you're comments below, this is always a sticky one so i look forwarding to reading your opinions.
Source
Last edited:
