German authorities apparently cracked Tor anonymity, but onion heads say its still safe
German police were able to identify individuals using the Tor network, link them to certain criminal activity, and have them arrested and later convicted of the crimes. This is according to multiple German media outlets, who recently reported on the law enforcement using so-called “timing analysis” attacks.
Tor’s heads, on the other hand, argue that the network is perfectly fine and safe, and that the person that was arrested was, in fact, using outdated software that exposed its identity to the police, The Register found.
The Onion Router (Tor) is a privacy-focused network that enables anonymous communication by routing internet traffic through a series of volunteer-operated servers, or nodes. It hides users' IP addresses and encrypts their data, making it difficult to trace their online activity.
In its writeup, the German outlet Panorama briefly explains the logic behind timing attacks: “By timing individual data packets, anonymised connections can be traced back to the Tor user, even though data connections in the Tor network are encrypted multiple times.” That would presumably require the law enforcement to add, or compromise, the nodes, and use them to observe clues about users sending traffic into the network.
