NSA Firefoxed: Mozilla Team-Up With Tor To Improve Internet Privacy

[Purveyor]

Published time: November 11, 2014

The internet browser Mozilla is teaming up with Tor to give internet users greater security online. The new Polaris project is designed to combat internet censorship and make NSA like intrusion’s a thing of the past.

Edward Snowden’s revelations concerning the extent of the National Security Agency’s spying on the general public, hit computer and internet enthusiasts hard. A poll conducted by Harris Poll on behalf of the internet company Mozilla last month, found that three quarters of those surveyed feel that their personal information on the web is less secure than it was one year ago.

Mozilla, which is responsible for the Firefox browser, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary, is looking to regain the public’s trust again by enlisting the help of Tor, which is a popular software tool designed to protect online anonymity. Tor, which is an acronym for ‘The Onion Router,’ works by bouncing its way randomly around servers, which are manned by volunteers around the globe. This makes it significantly more difficult for surveillance companies to keep track of ones online movements.

Tor has had so much success that one top secret NSA document described it as being the, “the king of high-secure, low-latency internet anonymity,” which was reported by the Guardian in October 2013. The agency admits they are at a loss at how to try and decode the identity of a user in response to a specific request.

Apart from added privacy, Mozilla will also offer a ‘Forget button,’ which will allow users to not have their browsing history recorded. Users can select to forget the last five minutes, or last 24 hours and leave no trace that they were ever on the internet, the technology news site VentureBeat reports.

more...

http://rt.com/news/204411-mozilla-privacy-internet-tor/

[VScott]

1. Related to this, perhaps?

Recently it was announced that a coalition of government agencies took control of many Tor hidden services. We were as surprised as most of you. Unfortunately, we have very little information about how this was accomplished, but we do have some thoughts which we want to share.

Over the last few days, we received and read reports saying that several Tor relays were seized by government officials. We do not know why the systems were seized, nor do we know anything about the methods of investigation which were used. Specifically, there are reports that three systems of Torservers.net disappeared and there is another report by an independent relay operator. If anyone has more details, please get in contact with us. If your relay was seized, please also tell us its identity so that we can request that the directory authorities reject it from the network.

But, more to the point, the recent publications call the targeted hidden services seizures "Operation Onymous" and they say it was coordinated by Europol and other government entities. Early reports say 17 people were arrested, and 400 hidden services were seized. Later reports have clarified that it was hundreds of URLs hosted on roughly 27 web sites offering hidden services. We have not been contacted directly or indirectly by Europol nor any other agency involved.

Tor is most interested in understanding how these services were located, and if this indicates a security weakness in Tor hidden services that could be exploited by criminals or secret police repressing dissents. We are also interested in learning why the authorities seized Tor relays even though their operation was targetting hidden services. Were these two events related

https://blog.torproject.org/blog/

[randome]

4. Wasn't that about taking down Silk Road 2.0?

[hr][font color="blue"][center]Everything is a satellite to some other thing.[/center][/font][hr]

[VScott]

6. Only to a small degree.

Silk Road 2 was compromised pretty much from the beginning because the guy who started it
appointed an undercover fed as the admin...

The complaint describes how federal agents infiltrated Silk Road 2.0 from the very start, after an undercover agent working for Homeland Security investigators managed to infiltrate the support staff involved in the administration of the Silk Road 2.0 website.

Using his own personal email account to register the servers was another boneheaded move...

Benthall’s biggest mistake may have been using his own personal email to register the servers used for the Silk Road 2.0 marketplace. In the complaint against Benthall, an undercover agent who worked the case said that “based on a review of records provided by the service provider for the Silk Road 2.0 Server, I have discovered that the server was controlled and maintained during the relevant time by an individual using the email account [e-mail].”

http://krebsonsecurity.com/2014/11/feds-arrest-alleged-silk-road-2-admin-seize-servers/

[malaise]

2. RT - hehehehhehe

3...2...1 for the detractors.

[Purveyor]

3. I would be disappointed if it were otherwise. eom

[adirondacker]

5. Keepin McCarthy alive!

signed,
not a Putin lover (just in case they're wondering)

[jeff47]

7. Yeah! Software developed by the US Navy will totally keep the US government at bay. (nt)