Questions over Tor exploit link to US Govt
Links between a exploit targeting users of the Tor network and US spy and law enforcement agencies should now be consider tenuous, researchers say.
The attack involved a JavaScript exploit targeting an old version of Firefox then commonly used in the Tor Browser Bundle. It served to identify the IP addresses of vulnerable users and tie them to the Freedom Hosting Tor Hidden Services they were visiting.
Reverse engineering efforts found the small Windows executable within a variable dubbed Magneto found a user's MAC address and Windows hostname and obtained their IP address by sending the user to a US server located in Virginia. IP address checks on the server led some in the research community to consider US contractor the Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), the NSA or FBI as being behind the exploit.
