tor
Latest
Tor’s shadowy reputation will only end if we all use it
The Onion Router, now called Tor, is a privacy-focused web browser run by a nonprofit group. This is what people think of as the “dark web,” because the sites aren’t indexed by search engines. But those sites aren’t an inherently criminal endeavor.
Twitter's censorship-evading Tor service is no longer working
Visiting Twitter's Tor onion website will now show you a warning that its certificate has expired, and pushing forward will just send you to an error page.
DOJ seizes $34 million of crypto from the dark web seller
The US has just seized $34 million from the dark web in one of the largest cryptocurrency civil forfeiture filings to date.
Twitter launches a Tor service to help Russians evade censorship
Twitter has launched a Tor onion service to help Russians and others access internet services that would otherwise be blocked.
ProtonMail under fire after giving authorities an activist's IP address
As detailed in our transparency report, our published threat model, and also our privacy policy, under Swiss law, Proton can be forced to collect information on accounts belonging to users under Swiss criminal investigation. This is obviously not done by default, but only if Proton gets a legal order for a specific account.
Facebook sextortionist sentenced to 75 years in prison
Better known by his online alias of "Brian Kil," Hernandez spent years harassing and terrorizing hundreds of girls, some as young as 12-years-old.
BBC fights censorship by launching news site on the dark web
Government censorship of the internet is an issue in many countries, with officials blocking websites for hosting content which is critical of administrations or that includes unflattering news stories. The BBC is fighting back against such restrictions by making a mirror of its international news website available on the dark web, where it can be viewed using the Tor browser.
Hackers broke into a contractor for Russia's spy agency
The Russian government has been linked to a number of high-profile hacks, but it just became a target -- and the data that was stolen says a lot about its apparent goals. A hacking group nicknaming itself 0v1ru$ infiltrated the servers of SyTech, a contractor for the FSB intelligence agency on July 13th. They compromised the firm's Active Directory server and stole 7.5TB of data. The intruders revealed a number of projects that SyTech had been working on for the FSB (and fellow contractor Quantum) since 2009, some of which were pure research while others came to fruition.
Ultra-private Tor browser officially arrives on Android
VPNs and incognito modes can help, but if you want to jump to a whole 'nother privacy level, there's the infamous Tor Browser. It has finally come out of beta and arrived on Android in a stable release, the Tor Project announced. That will make it a lot easier to browse on the Tor network in complete anonymity without having to jump through hoops to get connected.
Firefox disabled all add-ons because a certificate expired (updated)
Many Firefox users around the world are browsing without their usual set of extensions after they suddenly stopped working earlier this evening. The event occurred as the clock rolled over on UTC (Coordinated Universal Time, aka GMT or Greenwich Mean Time), and impacted users quickly narrowed it down to "expiration of intermediate signing cert" -- as it's described on Mozilla's bug tracker. This same problem almost happened three years ago, but "armagadd-on" 2.0 has torn things up once again. In a statement provided to Engadget, Product Lead Kev Needham said: We're sorry that there is currently an issue where existing and new add-ons are failing to run or be installed on Firefox. We know what the issue is and are working hard to restore add-on functionality to Firefox as soon as possible. We'll continue to provide updates via our Twitter channels. Please bear with us while we get the problem fixed.
US charges three Germans over massive dark web marketplace
The US just made a dark web bust that makes AlphaBay's 400,000-user peak seem modest by comparison. Federal prosecutors have charged three unnamed Germans for allegedly operating Wall Street Market, a dark web marketplace that sold drugs, counterfeits and hacking software to more than 1.15 million customers. The trio reportedly maintained the site, including transactional chats, forums and financial transactions.
Undercover dark web bust leads to more than 35 arrests
The US just broke new ground in its bid to shut down illegal markets on the dark web. A slew of agencies (the Department of Justice, Homeland Security Investigations, the Secret Service, the DEA and the Postal Inspection Service) have announced the first-ever national-level undercover bust of dark web outfits selling drugs, weapons and other contraband. HSI agents pretended to be money launderers on multiple sites in an operation that resulted in arrests for "more than" 35 vendors and seizures worth $23.6 million.
Venezuela's largest ISP blocks Tor
Venezuelans have been relying on tools like Tor to access news sources, including local outlets like El Nacional and international ones like CNN en Español, after the government banned them in the country. Unfortunately, they're going to have to work a little bit harder to circumvent government censorship -- according to a report by human rights non-profit group Access Now, the largest ISP in the country, which just happened to be owned by the government, has blocked the software. Previously, people could simply change their DNS to access censored information online, but using Tor or VPN has become a necessity to get around the most recent bans.
Silk Road creator's alleged ally extradited to the US
Key Silk Road figure Roger Thomas Clark, better known by his Variety Jones alias, is now facing trial in the US. The alleged mentor to creator Ross Ulbricht (aka Dread Pirate Roberts) has been extradited to the States after spending well over two years in custody in Thailand. He now faces an American trial over charges that include narcotics trafficking, computer hacking, money laundering and plotting to traffic in fraudulent ID.
Tor axes its secure messaging app due to lack of resources
The Tor team unveiled its Messenger app in 2015 to boost the security of existing chat clients, but those plans are coming to an end less than three years later. The developers are ending support for Tor Messenger due primarily to a lack of support. The developers behind Instantbird, the foundation of Messenger, have stopped working on the interface. There wasn't much overall progress on Messenger, for that matter. The app was still stuck in beta testing years after its debut, and the creators had to ignore bug reports and feature requests due to the limited resources.
Karma's anonymizing LTE hotspot arrives January 15th
Want to keep your internet activity under wraps regardless of what device you're using or where you are? You won't have too much longer to wait. Karma has revealed that its anonymizing Karma Black LTE hotspot will ship on January 15th, with pre-orders open now. Spend $149 ($249 after January 15th), plus $20 per month for security services, and you'll get a portable router that encrypts all your internet traffic while masking your location and other potentially identifying data markers. You can use it to boost the privacy of your home connection, too, and there's the promise of feature expansions that include Tor anonymity network services, antivirus safeguards, ad blocking and parental controls.
A security expert built an unofficial Wikipedia for the dark web
Wikipedia is a nigh-essential source of information, but it's usually so accessible in Western countries that users forget when it isn't. Take Turkey, which blocked its citizens from accessing the site in April and rejected an appeal when the Wikimedia Foundation refused to play ball with the government, part of its wider effort to silence online dissent. For citizens in similar countries that crack down on users accessing the free online encyclopedia, there's a new version those governments hopefully can't track -- which operates on the dark web, naturally.
Tor’s next-gen onion system works to keep servers hidden
The dark web is no longer just a marketplace for illicit drugs, weapons, and other nefarious material. Mainstream media and social networks, from The New York Times to Facebook, are also using it to give users an anonymous way to access their sites. These so-called "onion" services can help publishers evade country-specific web censorship, while also delivering their content to people who simply use the Tor Network to surf in private. The tradeoff for anonymity is a sluggish web browsing experience, but it's a sacrifice more than 2 million people are willing to make. Now, with its almost decade-old onion domains getting rusty, Tor is unveiling its next-gen sites, with the focus on strengthening security.
Neo-nazi website Daily Stormer briefly resurfaces with Russian domain (updated)
After being rejected by both GoDaddy and Google, neo-Nazi publication The Daily Stormer resurfaced today with a Russian domain extension. As Vox reports, Stormer's efforts to secure a Chinese hosting service (DailyStormer.wang) were cut short, so it turned to the Dark Web and then the mainstream internet. A Whois report states that the hosting company is CloudFlare and the IP location is in Arizona. But, the site isn't online as of publication time.
Karma's new hotspot gives users a cloak of invisibility
Personal hotspot hardware provider Karma has announced a new security-focused product, Karma Black. A specialized version of the company's KarmaGO hotspot device, Karma Black will provide anonymous browsing (Tor), an integrated Virtual Private Network (VPN), blacklisting and ad-blocking. KarmaGO allows users to establish a WiFi connection through 4G via a small portable device, either on a pay-as-you-go basis or through a monthly data plan -- it's particularly popular with business travellers. Karma Black will operate in the same way, but will act as an invisibility cloak for users, encrypting web activity and hiding physical location. It'll also provide beefier protection against intrusive advertising and viruses.
