Criminals on Tor is the price of global liberty

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

http://www.csoonline.com/article/749367/criminals-on-tor-is-the-price-of-global-liberty

By Antone Gonsalves
CSO Online
March 06, 2014

Research pointing to rising criminality on Tor shows the cost of having a 
network that provides anonymity to whistleblowers, journalists, political 
dissidents and others trying to avoid government surveillance.

Experts agreed on Thursday that nothing could be done to prevent 
cybercriminals from using Tor without raising the risk to legitimate 
users. Recent research by Kaspersky Lab expert Sergey Lozhkin found that 
"the cybercriminal element is growing" on the anonymity network.

The way Tor is used by Chinese dissidents to skirt the Great Firewall and 
oppressive censorship is the same way criminals cloak the operators of 
marketplaces and forums where criminals can rent botnets for DDoS attacks 
or to distribute malware, buy stolen credit card numbers and launder 
bitcoins, the most widely used currency on the dark Web.

"If it were possible to stop criminals from using Tor, it would be 
useless," Julian Sanchez research fellow at the Cato Institute, said. 
"After all, the dissidents who use it to protect themselves are considered 
criminals by their own regimes."

[...]



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