The Tor Project—Carnegie Mellon University researchers attacked Tor network to deanonymize users for FBI, raising ethical concerns
In 2015, it was revealed that Carnegie Mellon University researchers had been paid at least $1 million by the FBI to develop and execute an attack on the Tor network to deanonymize users. The Tor Project disclosed that CMU researchers had exploited a vulnerability in 2014 to identify users. This raised major ethical questions about academic institutions attacking privacy infrastructure.
Scoring Impact
| Topic | Direction | Relevance | Contribution |
|---|---|---|---|
| Surveillance Technology | -against | secondary | +0.50 |
| User Privacy | +toward | primary | +1.00 |
| Overall incident score = | +0.064 | ||
Score = avg(topic contributions) × significance (high ×1.5) × confidence (0.57)× agency (incidental ×0.1)
Evidence (1 signal)
Tor Project disclosed that FBI paid Carnegie Mellon researchers to attack Tor network
The Tor Project published a blog post disclosing that Carnegie Mellon University researchers had been paid at least $1 million by the FBI to develop and execute an attack on the Tor network to deanonymize users. The post detailed how CMU researchers exploited a vulnerability in 2014 to identify Tor users.