Not the FBI per se, but it shows that someone is clearly attempting to compromise TOR users.
Also there's been whispers about it forever. Much like the "black rooms" at datacentres before all the NSA leaks.
The FBI has a long history of tracking down and compromising CC theft and CP rings, along with silk road and the hoards of clones. Most of these sites are primarily or only accessible over TOR.
Running compromised TOR nodes would be an extremely cheap way to monitor a large portion of illicit Internet traffic. The frequent busts are usually attributed to other reasons to shift attention away from TOR, but this is classic parallel construction.
The feds will nearly always get you on secondary evidence when the primary means is too sensitive... See stingrays. The sheer number of TOR based site busts however is telling.
Anyone relying on TOR for security is a fool. It's more heavily monitored than the regular net.
While a compromised exit node is bad, isn't the situation improved if your TOR session is encrypted? With an encrypted session over tor, and a trusted endpoint, what is your risk profile beyond your exposure to the endpoint?
I believe that Tor Project ought to encourage bulk data transfer through and among onion services. That would add chaff to protect other users. There's resistance because it would increase network load. However, there's considerable excess capacity for middle relays, because they attract so little attention. There's even excess capacity for entry guards, and policy could be changed to increase that. It's exit relays that are rate-limiting, and onion sites don't use them.
Using multiple Tor instances with MPTCP, I've managed 50 Mbps between onion sites with gigabit uplinks.
Not the FBI per se, but it shows that someone is clearly attempting to compromise TOR users.
Also there's been whispers about it forever. Much like the "black rooms" at datacentres before all the NSA leaks.
The FBI has a long history of tracking down and compromising CC theft and CP rings, along with silk road and the hoards of clones. Most of these sites are primarily or only accessible over TOR.
Running compromised TOR nodes would be an extremely cheap way to monitor a large portion of illicit Internet traffic. The frequent busts are usually attributed to other reasons to shift attention away from TOR, but this is classic parallel construction.
The feds will nearly always get you on secondary evidence when the primary means is too sensitive... See stingrays. The sheer number of TOR based site busts however is telling.
Anyone relying on TOR for security is a fool. It's more heavily monitored than the regular net.