Months after Edward Snowden first leaked information about the National Security Agency to multiple newspapers, most notably the Guardian and the Washington Post, new information continues to be revealed; a top secret slide show leaked by the former contractor shows that the NSA tried to crack into the Tor network that allows people to communicate anonymously over the Internet, according to CNN.
Tor, the preferred nickname for The Onion Router, was funded and developed by the U.S. government which adds a touch of irony to the revelation. The slide show indicates that the NSA was able to identify users and in some cases enter their computer through vulnerable software and gain complete control, according to the Guardian.
It appears that the agency's ability to identify users is fairly limited. One of the slide shows states, "We will never be able to de-anonymize all Tor users all the time," and "With manual analysis we can de-anonymize a very small fraction of Tor users," the Guardian reports.
Roger Dingledine, one of Tor's principal designers, said in a 2007 meeting with the spy agency that the service was created to provide anonymity to people who were trying to share business secrets or hide from political regimes. The NSA argues that the service provided protection to terrorists, according to the Washington Post.
"The good news is that they went for a browser exploit, meaning there's no indication they can break the Tor protocol or do traffic analysis on the Tor network," Dingledine told the Guardian. "Infecting the laptop, phone, or desktop is still the easiest way to learn about the human behind the keyboard."
A statement from the NSA indicated that all of the surveillance they conduct is legal because it is for "valid foreign intelligence and counter-intelligence purposes," the Guardian reports.
"It should hardly be surprising that our intelligence agencies seek ways to counteract targets' use of technologies to hide their communications," the statement read. "Throughout history, nations have used various methods to protect their secrets, and today terrorists, cybercriminals, human traffickers and others use technology to hide their activities. Our intelligence community would not be doing its job if we did not try to counter that."
The NSA's techniques to break into Tor were credited by FBI agents helping them to break into one of the largest purveyors of child pornography and for helping to bring down Silk Road, an online marketplace for illegal drugs, according to the Washington Post.
"Like any tool, [Tor] can be used for something good, and it can be used for something bad," Gareth Bruen, an investigator of Internet crimes, told the Washington Post. "It's all about how people are using it, and criminals have been using it to great advantage... It's a nightmare."
