Mevade botnet miscalculated effect on Tor network, says Damballa

The migration of the 'Mevade' botnet to use the Tor anonymity network was most likely a botched attempt to hide that has ended up having the opposite effect, security firm Damballa has speculated.

News that something was afoot came after a huge spike on Tor from 19 August onwards, which caused a doubling of traffic on a single day to just over one million connections per day. Three weeks later and Tor’s daily connections have hit 4 million per day, with no end to the rise in sight.

At the time, the Project’s admins were only able to speculate as to the cause, but eventually researchers traced the likely culprit to the obscure but otherwise well-established Mevade.a bot.