The Tor Project is making some serious accusations against the FBI and Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in Pittsburgh , USA, claiming that the two entities privately entered into an agreement so that the University could find a way to breach the Tor network and "de-anonymize" its users.
According to a blog post, the FBI has agreed to pay $1 million for research that could lead to the unmasking of Tor.
The research was reportedly conducted by Carnegie Mellon researchers in 2014 and was the product of a minor controversy, even if it was never published.
In January 2014, 115 new Tor relays belonging to CMU were added to the network. These relays were used to launch an attack on the known network, documented in a research paper that the scientists intended to present at the Black Hat 2014.
The TorProject, but they declined to comment. After a lengthy email exchange, the researchers were careless enough to provide some hints about their upcoming presentation.
The Tor team used this information and the attack data logs to issue a patch to its software on July 30, a few days before the presentation at Black Hat, which the researchers ultimately canceled...
The explanation given for this sudden cancellation was that the CMU had not approved the publication of the research.
The 115 relays that carried out the attack were also deleted from the network.
This story has raised many concerns and reactions about the ethics of the research and the professionalism of the University staff. Now, a year later, the TorProject is raising these questions again, implying that the entire operation was organized under the auspices and instigation of the FBI, which was looking for a way to hack and spy on Tor traffic.
According to the Tor, the FBI paid for the investigation and had no warrant to justify this type of spying.
At this time, TorProject has not provided any evidence for the FBI.
