Upcoming Tor Design Battles Hidden Services Snooping

More than 100 malicious Tor Hidden Services Directories (HSDirs) were found to be snooping on the services they host, and in some cases, operators were actively using the data collected to attack the services.

While at first blush, the discovery would seem to put another dent in the privacy and anonymity aspects so heavily associated with the Tor network, project representatives say it’s been an “ongoing annoyance” and one that has been addressed in an upcoming design. Developer Sebastian Hahn said code has been written, but a release date is still to be determined. Tor representatives also downplayed the attack, saying for example, that it does not unmask the operator behind a hidden service, which has long been a law enforcement and intelligence agency goal.