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Tor Project responded to claims that law enforcement can de-anonymize Tor users
- The Tor Project has responded to claims that German police have classed a technique to deanonymize users.
- According to German media, law enforcement agencies have been surveilling Tor network by operating their own servers for months.
- Research conducted by ARD’s Panorama and STRG_F revealed that data collected during surveillance is processed using statistical methods, effectively breaking Tor’s anonymity.
- While investigating the pedo-criminal darknet platform “Boystown” between 2019 and 2021, Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) successfully identified Tor nodes used by Andreas G., an administrator of the platform.
- Experts who reviewed the research documents from Panorama and STRG_F confirmed that law enforcement de-anonymized the suspect.
- The Tor Project commented on the case in a post published on its website.
- The maintainers said they have not received the technical details related to the reported deanonymization methods and is seeking the same information given to the Chaos Computer Club (CCC) for further investigation.
- The Tor Project believes that a user of the now-retired Ricochet application was fully deanonymized through a guard discovery attack.
- This occurred because the user was using an older version of Ricochet that lacked the Vanguards-lite protection and the vanguards addon, which were designed to prevent such attacks.
- Matthias Marx warned that authoritarian governments could use the technique to de-anonymize to target opposition, journalists and whistleblowers worldwide.
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