I've heard a lot of people on the left argue that Tor is likely backdoored because it was created by the U.S. Navy for spies to communicate and is still funded by the government. Yasha Levine has written a lot about this:

He also appeared in TrueAnon episode 50 to talk about this.

On the other hand, a lot of people in the crypto and tech community disagree with this. They believe that Tor is not backdoored for one or both of the following reasons:

  • Tor is open-source and has been audited.
  • The U.S. Government would never do such a thing.

They also point to a leaked NSA presentation from 2007 that admits the NSA can't deanonymize Tor users.

What are your thoughts?

  • Sushi_Desires
    ·
    4 years ago

    javascript exploits

    To expand upon this, interested parties should look up "canvas fingerprinting." JS HTML5 contains within it certain functions that a server can use to query information about your system, setup, and display (such as resolution of the window loading the resources, custom fonts being displayed by the system, etc.), and if your setup is weird/unique enough, it can form a "fingerprint" of your oddities which can be used to track you across the web. This is why TOR's instructions tell you not to resize the window. If everyone runs the TOR browser at the default resolution, that is one less oddity that can be used to track individuals.