Tor hacked with FBI bung: CMU “researchers” got $1M, it’s alleged

The Tor Project is up in arms, alleging that the FBI paid Carnegie Mellon University “at least” a million dollars to unmask Tor users.

Tor is an anonymizing network overlay, partially funded by the U.S. Navy’s ONR. The allegation is that CMU researchers hacked Tor’s hidden services feature. The vulnerability exploited has since been fixed.

What price due process? It doesn’t appear that this was done under a search warrant. It’s alleged that the FBI allowed CMU to pretend that this was mere academic research. However, it walks and quacks like a fishing expedition.

If true, extremely worrying. In IT Blogwatch, bloggers worry about the constitutionality of fighting crime in this way.

To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here