Almost Half of TOR sites compromised by FBI

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Klipspringer

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#127282 5-Aug-2013 12:41

As many of you might know the US has been pushing for the extradition of Eric Eoin Marques who an FBI agent has called as "the largest facilitator of child porn on the planet."

But most of you might not know that he is also the owner of "freedom hosting" the largest hosting provider for .onion sites within the TOR network . This means that all the sites hosted by "freedom hosting" are at the hands of the FBI. As you can see from the above linked article freedom hosting has been accused of hosting child pornography for a very long time.

Though the action's done by the FBI to take down child pornography in the TOR network is appreciated by all of us .They should also make sure that what they do does not kill the freedom and anonymity that the TOR network stands for.

- See more at: http://www.ehackingnews.com/2013/08/almost-half-of-tor-sites-compromised-by.html#sthash.4MyQX9Jk.dpuf

Klipspringer

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#871979 5-Aug-2013 12:48

Lias

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#871980 5-Aug-2013 12:49

I'm generally pro freedom of speech, anti big brother, anti spying on us all etc, but I'm somewhat conflicted over this because I am even more strongly opposed to kiddie porn.

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trig42

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#871998 5-Aug-2013 13:18

That surprises me, because it means that more than half are not...

freitasm

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#872016 5-Aug-2013 13:46

Lias: I'm generally pro freedom of speech, anti big brother, anti spying on us all etc, but I'm somewhat conflicted over this because I am even more strongly opposed to kiddie porn.

A side effect means people in oppressed countries such as China and Iran lose one of their accesses to international, unfiltered Internet. Seeing not all TOR traffic is that kind of content, it's overreaching and impacts on people's freedom.

On that note, should we have computer ownership by individuals banned because it can be used to spread that kind of content? Why stop there, why not ban printers since this could also potentially be used to spread that content. Sure, we could ended up closing newspapers and magazines, but we know we'd be safe with only monks writing manuscripts to enlighten us...

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1080p

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#872017 5-Aug-2013 13:49

What the FBI have done should be found to be illegal. They prosecute people who do the same thing to other systems after all...

RedJungle

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#872021 5-Aug-2013 14:01

"Now lets all go burn down the observatory so this never happens again!"

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rossmnz

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#872069 5-Aug-2013 14:59

Im with Mauricio on this one.

We dont ban cars because people can crash and kill people in them.

i applaud the FBIs desire to shut down child porn but personally would rather this didnt impinge upon freedom of others caught in the effort of them doing so.

The force is strong with this one!

Lias

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#872158 5-Aug-2013 16:49

rossmnz: Im with Mauricio on this one.

We dont ban cars because people can crash and kill people in them.

i applaud the FBIs desire to shut down child porn but personally would rather this didnt impinge upon freedom of others caught in the effort of them doing so.

We don't ban cars, but if we knew that a particular car dealer was supplying 80% of NZ's stolen cars alongside the perfectly legit cars, would we think it was okay for the police to take over the car yard, put GPS trackers on all the stolen cars and see what crims they could catch? Still flawed but a better analogy.

Ragnor

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#872277 5-Aug-2013 19:30

TOR's a pretty silly system open to all kinds of man in the middle attacks/problems.

PaulBags

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#872386 5-Aug-2013 21:17

Klipspringer: More on Slashdot

The FBI has also embedded a 0-day Javascript attack against Firefox 17 on Freedom Hosting's server. It appears to install a tracking cookie and a payload that phones home to the FBI when the victim resumes non-TOR browsing.

So what? We're already up to firefox ~~eleventy-billion~~ 22 anyway. Anyone paranoid enough to use tor and not block javascript is a moron. Anyone etc etc and not run a portable version of their favourite browser from a firewalled VM instance is also a moron.

If the FBI is expending this kind of energy to catch morons, what are the smart criminals getting away with?