Patrick Howell O’Neill from the dailydot.com posted about how Russia is offering a reward for de-anonymizing Tor. The original post can be found HERE.
Here are the highlights: The Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs aka (MIA) is accepting proposals until August at their Moscow office. The MIA specifically calls for research to “study the possibility of obtaining technical information about users and users equipment on the Tor anonymous network,”. It seems Russian leadership sees Tor as a CIA project used assist people looking to bypass cyber laws being enforced by Russian government. For example, all bloggers must register with the government (see the dailydot’s post on this HERE).
I don’t blame people wanting to bypass censorship and hope Tor maintains its integrity as a source for those looking to preserve their anonymity. You can find more on Tor and the Tails browser HERE. Another interesting note is there was going to be a talk at Blackhat 2014 on breaking Tor however that has been removed. I wonder if we will hear anything about this during Blackhat / Defcon next week.
