@NaibofTabr__dup_14529@infosec.pub
on infosec.pub
Open parent
Yes, surely TOR will protect us from government surveillance…
The project was originally developed on behalf of the U.S. intelligence community and continues to receive U.S. government funding, and has been criticized as “more resembl[ing] a spook project than a tool designed by a culture that values accountability or transparency”.[177] As of 2012, 80% of The Tor Project’s $2M annual budget came from the United States government, with the U.S. State Department, the Broadcasting Board of Governors, and the National Science Foundation as major contributors,[178] aiming “to aid democracy advocates in authoritarian states”.[179] Other public sources of funding include DARPA, the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, and the Government of Sweden.
[…]
Critics say that Tor is not as secure as it claims,[185] pointing to U.S. law enforcement’s investigations and shutdowns of Tor-using sites such as web-hosting company Freedom Hosting and online marketplace Silk Road.
But also…
In October 2013, after analyzing documents leaked by Edward Snowden, The Guardian reported that the NSA had repeatedly tried to crack Tor and had failed to break its core security, although it had had some success attacking the computers of individual Tor users.[27] The Guardian also published a 2012 NSA classified slide deck, entitled “Tor Stinks”, which said: “We will never be able to de-anonymize all Tor users all the time”, but “with manual analysis we can de-anonymize a very small fraction of Tor users”.[186] When Tor users are arrested, it is typically due to human error, not to the core technology being hacked or cracked.
[…]
A late 2014 report by Der Spiegel using a new cache of Snowden leaks revealed, however, that as of 2012 the NSA deemed Tor on its own as a “major threat” to its mission, and when used in conjunction with other privacy tools such as OTR, Cspace, ZRTP, RedPhone, Tails, and TrueCrypt was ranked as “catastrophic,” leading to a “near-total loss/lack of insight to target communications, presence…”
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tor_(network)
YMMV, and your implementation and usage matter.
