Tor replacements pop up
Network struggles under strain from security agencies.
Thanks to a number of high-profile news stories, not least involving Edward Snowden, the Tor network ( seep34) became the go-to solution for many people seeking anonymity on the internet. Sadly, Tor’s increased popularity has also meant that government agencies, such as the NSA and GCHQ, have also taken a keen interest in discovering ways to de-anonymise Tor users and it looks like their attempts to crack it are making headway.
A study that was undertaken at the US Naval Research Laboratory found that 80% of Tor
users were at risk of being de-anonymised in the next six months, ( http://bit.ly/
UsersGetRouted) as Tor is vulnerable to traffic analysis attacks that can see traffic entering and leaving the Tor network, which can lead to users being identified. While the Tor project is looking at ways to make these attacks more difficult to launch – and improving user-friendliness by lowering the latency of its service – a number of projects aiming to dethrone it have emerged. The most notable ones are Aqua ( https://
aqua.mpi-sws.org), an anonymous file-sharing network, and Herd ( http://bit.ly/HerdAnon, PDF), which is based on Aqua and concentrates on anonymising VoIP communications. Both projects use ‘chaff’, which is random noise mixed in with network traffic, making individual users’ traffic more difficult to distinguish and identify.