14 DAY TRIAL // The US Department of Defense denies the NSA received any personal data on users of anonymity service Tor following a project funded by the US government to detect vulnerabilities.
According to Reuters, the project was only focused on identifying vulnerabilities within TOR, not to collect data that would reveal the personal identities of its users. The Defense Department spokeswoman Lieutenant Colonel Valerie Henderson added that the National Security Agency did not receive any of the data.
However, it is possible that the FBI or other agencies obtained the info, since she did not rule this out. The FBI denied to comment on the topic, however, so it is unknown whether or not the agency did get its hands on any of the data.
The project was conducted by two researchers at the Software Engineering Institute at Carnergie-Mellon University, but the entire thing was funded by the Department of Defense.
Tor itself is largely funded by the government and works to hide agents’ identities online by routing traffic through a range of servers before dumping the traffic through one of its over 1,100 gateways. The complicated journey the traffic takes while within the networks makes tracking someone’s identity impossible in theory.
In recent years, Tor has become a thorn in the side of authorities who are trying to take down various sites within the network and to punish those visiting various sites within the so-called “dark internet” where anonymous sites enable people to hire assassins, sell drugs or watch illegal content with children.
While NSA leaked documents indicate that the agency has been keeping an eye on the Tor network entrance and exit points, while also flagging for surveillance anyone looking for a way in the heavily encrypted network, it is the FBI who has managed to find a way to keep an eye on criminals.
In fact, it was just reported that over a dozen individuals were arrested and heading for trial for visiting a site within the Tor network containing child abuse footage. This was possible after the FBI took over some of the site’s capabilities and infected with malware all visitors, which enabled the agency to then track down the identities of the visitors.
In other worrying news, it was just last week that Tor said the service had managed to identify computers on its networks that had been altering Tor traffic for five months as it tried to unmask users connecting to the “dark internet.”