The Latest in IT Security

Tor has been a thorn in the side of law enforcement for years now, but new work from Wireds Kevin Poulsen shows the FBI has found a new way to track users across the network. Poulsen looks at the 2012 case of Aaron McGrath, who agents found hosting child pornography on a network of servers in Nebraska. Looking to expand on the bust, agents got a warrant to track anyone who visited the website at its Tor address, and infected servers with tracking malware to identify the root IP of anyone who visited the site. The FBI has tracked users across Tor before, most notably in the massive Freedom Hosting busts last August, but the McGrath operations give a new window into the bureaus techniques, particularly the sophisticated use of tracking malware.