Tor is an important Internet service for anonymous browsing. It is free and can be used by anyone who wants to hide information such as a device's public IP address.
Tor is used by all over the world to bypass censorship. It is used for good, but it is also abused. Criminals use Tor for the same purpose: to remain anonymous and avoid law enforcement.
So they believed…
Law enforcement agencies in Germany have been monitoring Tor servers for months with the goal of tracking down individual users. Authorities were eventually able to identify a Vanir Locker ransomware group server operating through the Tor network.
Authorities were able to determine the exact location of the server using a technique called Timing Analysis.
Timing Analysis is used to connect to nodes on the Tor network from local Internet connections.
Journalists from ARD, a public broadcaster, were able to see documents that confirming four successful identifications in a single survey. Authorities used the technique to track down members of a child abuse platform.
Of course, it's not just the authorities who can use the Timing Analysis technique to track down criminals. Oppressive regimes can use the same method to identify users who try to remain anonymous to avoid prosecution.
A post on the Tor Project blog it states more on the subject. They report that the maintainers admit that they did not have access to sources, but believe that Tor is still one of the best options for staying anonymous on the Internet.
