Tor: Online Anonymity Not So Anonymous After All

By | November 7, 2011 | 10 Comments

Tor: Online Anonymity Not So Anonymous After All

As you might know, the Anonymous group has declared a war on pedophiles and their “favorite” web sites. After releasing 190 IPs of alleged pedophiles, they also revealed how such data was collected.

Turns out, the TorButton (aka “The Honey Pawt”) has been modified to track usage of visits to the child pornography web sites and sent data back to Anonymous.

How did they do that?

According to the group, they have “secretly contacted our friends at The Mozilla Foundation, Developers of Firefox, for them to authorize a developer signer certificate for ‘The Honey Pawt’, a TorButton that we Anon created to funnel all originating traffic to our forensic logger.”

“Our TorButton aka “The Honey Pawt” did not contain any malware or virus. It was developed according to the Firefox/Mozilla Foundation guidelines,”

However, Mozilla’s Justin Scott has denied such claims, stating that no one at Mozilla was contacted by Anonymous and that the company does not issue add-on certificates.

The drama continues…

Via: ArsTechnica


About (Author Profile)


Vygantas is a former web designer whose projects are used by companies such as AMD, NVIDIA and departed Westood Studios. Being passionate about software, Vygantas began his journalism carrier back in 2007 when he founded FavBrowser.com. Having said that, he is also an adrenaline junkie who enjoys good books, fitness activities and Forex trading.

  • Jkdsfgikfdngfdiu

    im curious, does Tor work? ive installed it once or twice, but didnt see anything, i have comodo internet security and stuff
    i dont visit porn sites, warez and stuff
    do i really need Tor? if it protects something, im willing to give it a shot, but i dont like fiddling with it settings, thats the thing i hate the most – tinkering with some settings

    • http://www.favbrowser.com Vygantas Lipskas

      Not really, considering that some networks are really really slow.

      I personally use it to troll some forums, when bored.

      https://www.torproject.org/projects/torbrowser.html.en

      • George453

        Like the myopera ones?

        • http://www.favbrowser.com Vygantas Lipskas

          After spending most of the time reading about web browsers, last thing I need is read more about that :P

      • http://twitter.com/bricky149 Shane Bundy

        “I personally use it to troll some forums, when bored.”

        XD

  • http://twitter.com/bricky149 Shane Bundy

    That’s why it’s always important to download Tor from the official website.
    Even if you do get a free cookie from downloading it from another, don’t. This may happen… :O

    Kidding aside, this Honey Pawt idea isn’t so bad. But the way Anonymous distributes it may not be.

    And when did Mozilla want anything to do with Anonymous? Is that why they’re denying it here?

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100002546890219 Mikael Dahl

    Thats a good thing thought…

  • Anonymous

    What did you expect if the servers you were connecting to were ran by normal people

    If you  want to access a website that has been region locked. EG: Vevo, southpark studios

    You can use:

    Ultra surf - http://ultrasurf.us/

    It is the only one I find fast enough to actually stream content.

    (No viruses. False Positive)

    Just don’t expect anonymity

    • Anonymous

      I think the real reason is that this “Anonymous” Fella, is a big pedo and wants the addresses to these websites.

  • Rod

    don’t install opera 11.6, it deletes all your bookmarks, feeds, mail settings, everything……crap!!!

«
»