Short Bytes: In a blog post, Tor Director has outlined the unethical ways that were employed by FBI to unmask Tor users. He added that the invasion of people’s privacy on a wholesale level is unacceptable by crossing the ethical lines between research and targeting innocent users.
The Tor Project head writes in its blog post that they publicized the attack last year and took some steps to slow down the attacks in future.
One of the revealed IP addresses belongs to an alleged Silk Road 2 lieutenant Brian Farrell, who is due to face trial later this month. A report by Motherboard suggests that a “university-based research institute” was behind this attack that unmasked Farrell.
Also read: Search Tor Honeypot: How to Hack True Identity of Tor Users
The Project suspects this sweep was done to target a large audience, hence it’s very unlikely that some legal warrant was issued while carrying out this activity.
The blog post stresses on the fact that they teach law enforcement agencies to use Tor ethically. But, the invasion of people’s privacy on a wholesale level is unacceptable by crossing the ethical lines between research and targeting innocent users.
“Whatever academic security research should be in the 21st century, it certainly does not include “experiments” for pay that indiscriminately endanger strangers without their knowledge or consent,” the blog post continues.
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Also read: What is Traffic Fingerprinting and How it is Used to Attack Tor Network
