Tag: TOR

Tor.com to be slaughtered, gutted, and turned into a skin mask on January 23rd!

Note, not Tor the publishing company itself, just the website. They’re now calling it ‘Reactor,*’ and will be watering down the genre focus of the site to the general level of, well, water. Sorry if I’m giving anything away; but, generally speaking, you don’t go looking for a new audience unless there’s insufficient interest from the audience you already have. From the linked announcement (bolding mine):

Continue reading Tor.com to be slaughtered, gutted, and turned into a skin mask on January 23rd!

Didn’t the federal government renfield Tor a while back?

Which would make this a bit of a… God help me for writing this… ‘false flag’ operation:

Hiding from surveillance is a good way to get noticed by law enforcement in the US. Tor, is a free browser tool that sends traffic from a users’ computer through several different servers and machines, making it unclear where the request originated. In light of the revelations from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden about massive government surveillance of the internet and telecommunications, the Kilton Public Library in Lebanon, New Hampshire became part of the Tor network. This meant some traffic from anonymous users on the Tor network would pass through the computers in New Hampshire, regardless of their point of origin. The Kilton library joined Tor in July. Shortly thereafter, the received an email from the Department of Homeland Security.

Continue reading Didn’t the federal government renfield Tor a while back?

HA! My Secret Map made the Tor.com blog! @tordotcom

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[UPDATE]

cause-of-death

Without attribution, but that’s my own damn fault: I didn’t slap my website info on the thing. So there was no way that either Tor.com nor Thom Dunn could know where it came from, but I’m glad they enjoyed it.  And, besides…

…I kind of ripped off Slate myself, remember? Continue reading HA! My Secret Map made the Tor.com blog! @tordotcom

I suspect that they hacked Tor six months ago, actually.

They’re just telling us now because, well, at some point you have to.

Law-enforcement agencies are increasingly finding ways to unmask users of a popular Web browser designed to hide identities and allow individuals to exist online anonymously.

To keep their identities secret, users and administrators of a recently shuttered child-pornography website used a browser called Tor that obscures the source of Web traffic, authorities said in March. Agents from Homeland Security Investigations tracked many of them down anyway, largely because of mistakes that even some of the most sophisticated users eventually make.

Continue reading I suspect that they hacked Tor six months ago, actually.

An interesting article on the FBI/TOR Raid…

…which is kind of a misnomer, since the FBI went after a prominent Deep Web host that used TOR. The short version: the FBI definitely took down a site that pretty brazenly hosted child porn sites and MAY have salted the earth with malware. A somewhat less sympathetic take on this can be found here: nobody decent gives a crud about child porn users getting hammered, but there are more savory groups and individuals affected.

As for myself… speaking as an individual, I recognize the utility of anonymity. Speaking as a victim of TOR-fueled shenanigans – EVERY person involved with any political website with an open comments section has been victimized by TOR-using trolls at some point, which is why everybody makes you register for comments these days – well. That sure is a real shame, there. What’s for lunch?

Moe Lane