Is the Onion Router a Secure Network?

This section reviews the historical literature of how Tor evolved into its current state. The literature seems to indicate that Tor has been billed as a secure network, where users can safely send and receive messages anonymously. However, the research demonstrates that Tor is anything but safe. Individuals that blithely employ Tor for legal or illegal purposes do so at their own risk. The section observes that there are some legitimate uses for Tor, but the fact that Tor is government funded and that the NSA and the GCHQ run many of the relays establishes the existence of a significant flaw its implementation.

The principle of onion routing was created by the United States Naval Research Laboratory (“USNRL”) on May 31, 1996, at the first Information Hiding Workshop held in Cambridge, UK.¹⁷Tor was invented Paul F. Syverson a mathematician, and by Michael G. Reed and David M. Goldschlag, both computer scientists.¹⁸The first generation of the open source code was made available in July 1996.¹⁹Although several proofs of concept models were developed, in 2002 the alpha version of Tor was produced by Syverson along with Roger Dingledine and Nick Mathewson, again both computer scientists.²⁰The project was affectionately known as the Tor Project.²¹In 2004, the USNRL freely released the source code of Tor.²²Also in 2004, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (“EFF”) started funding Dingledine and Mathewson to ensure the survival of the project. ²³

In December 2006, Dingledine, Mathewson, and a host of others officially founded The Tor Project, a 501(c)(3) organization located in Massachusetts.²⁴The project itself is a research-oriented nonprofit organization that not only supports Tor, but also develops additional functionality to further ensure user anonymity.²⁵The EEF was the first sponsor of the Tor Project, but funding has also come from such organizations as the National Science Foundation (“NSF”), US Department of State Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (“DSBD”), DARPA through the University of Pennsylvania, Google, the SRI International, etc. (Sponsors, n.d.).²⁶After 2006, the United States government has been the major funding source for Tor.²⁷

In 2013, the NSA discovered how to penetrate the Tor network, unmasking its users.²⁸The Washington Post published the notes of the meeting in 2007 between Dingledine and the NSA.²⁹In these notes it was revealed that Dingledine not only described to the NSA how Tor worked, but also disclosed the categories of users that employ Tor or a regular basis.³⁰In 2011, the Tor staff admitted that Tor was not as safe as it had been advertised.³¹Mike Perry, a Tor developer admitted that “^extremely well funded adversaries that are able to observe large portions of the Internet can probably break aspects of Tor and may be able to deanonymize users.”³²One year later, Syverson confirmed Perry’s assertion when he stated that Tor is insecure against an adversary that can analyze correlated traffic at different relays by exploiting traffic patterns, thereby subverting Tor security.³³

Although Tor has been advertised as a secure network that preserves anonymity, the future of Tor is uncertain. If it becomes generally known that Tor is insecure, its usefulness diminishes rapidly. The question that the Tor Project must answer is what additional security measures can be effectively implemented in the future, particularly because Edward Snowden recently revealed that the NSA and the British Government Communications Headquarters (“GCHQ”) run a substantial number of Tor relays and desire to run even more relays.³⁴

Tor permits its users to access the Internet as well as chat and send messages, just like many other Internet applications. However, has been used in the past for a variety of legal and illegal purposes, including gambling pornography, hacking, counterfeiting, whistleblowing, fraud, and selling illicit drugs.³⁵The Economist has labeled Tor “a dark corner of the web” because of its relationship with Bitcoin and Silk Road.³⁶Even so, Tor has been targeted by the NSA and the GCHQ, although these actions appear to be either software quality assurance efforts or a desire to track illegal Tor usage.³⁷For example, GCHQ used a tool called Shadowcat to monitor encrypted access to virtual private servers (“VPS”) over secure shells (“SSH”) using Tor to capture illegal activity.³⁸Other illegal uses of Tor include selling controlled drugs, weapons, stolen credit card numbers, money laundering, identity theft, and exchanging counterfeit currency.³⁹

In the complaint regarding United States v. Ross William Ulbricht, the federal government admitted in court that Tor could be employed legitimately even though the document listed a plethora of illegal usages.⁴⁰Even so, Tor is increasingly used by domestic violence victims and their social workers to communicate anonymously.⁴¹One legal advantage of using Tor is that it prevents stalking by private actors, but according to the information above, Tor in no way assures anonymity from government actors.⁴²Nonetheless, Tor has been legally employed by The Guardian, The New Yorker, ProPublica, The Intercept_, etc.⁴³

From a naïve technological perspective, Tor seems to be an impenetrable network. Onion routing is attained by encrypting data in the application layer, and then when processing a packet, a relay peels off one layer of the encryption, sending the packet onto the next relay until a packet reaches its destination.⁴⁴The reality of the situation is something entirely different. Tor is freely available to anyone who wants to use it, the majority of the funding for Tor comes from the federal government, and the NSA and GCHQ operate many of the relays in the network.⁴⁵However, for all of the assurances by the Tor Project that employing the software enables Internet communications to be secure, the fact is that many of the Tor relays are owned and operated by the federal government.⁴⁶This fact begs the question of whether Tor is as secure as its advertising purports it to be. After all, Perry and Syverson have publically admitted that Tor is susceptible to surveillance when an adversary can monitor large portions of its network.⁴⁷What better organization is there to scrutinize Internet traffic than the federal government with their virtually unlimited budget?⁴⁸The answer is that the federal government is the best candidate to engage in extensive Internet surveillance.

A question that remains to be answered is: Why would the federal government fund Tor development in the first place? Two responses are readily apparent. First, federal agencies such as the NSA and its British counterpart the GCHQ need a secure network where they can communicate with individuals both in the field and at headquarters.⁴⁹Almost as a corollary, Tor has value to the NSA and the GCHQ because it is advertised as providing secure communication, and private individuals who have something to hide are more than likely to use Tor for legal or illegal purposes.⁵⁰In advertising that Tor is a secure network, it is as if there is a big red flashing neon arrow pointing at Tor attempting to discourage private individuals from using the network, while at the same time, individuals ignore the flashing indicator because the advertising is so enticing and hypnotic. These people forget or are unaware that the federal government developed Tor, and that the government is interested in its communications, but not necessarily the interactions of its citizenry.

It is well established that Tor is employed for legal and illegal purposes, such as selling controlled drugs, weapons, stolen credit card numbers, money laundering, identity theft, and exchanging counterfeit currency.⁵¹From a common sense perspective, the surveillance of illegal actives on the Tor network could be construed to be entrapment.⁵²However, when dealing with entrapment, it is not an affirmative defense if an individual has a predisposition to commit a crime.⁵³If a person is employing Tor for illegal purposes, then it is legally impossible to invoke entrapment as a defense because the person has the appropriate mental state or mens rea to commit the particular crimes. ⁵⁴Thus, the secondary purpose of Tor can be stated in the vernacular to be to catch the bad guys.

One problem with Tor that can defeat secret government communications is when adversaries such as the China and Russia governments covertly own and operate Tor relays. Both countries are adamantly against private citizens operating Tor relays, sometimes prosecuting its citizens on charges of terrorism.⁵⁵,⁵⁶Even so, a more critical is issue occurs when foreign governments, whether or not the governments are American allies, use Tor relays to spy on U.S. government activities.⁵⁷Given that this negative consequence can be effectively mitigated, Tor has many economic, legal, and political advantages and few disadvantages.

In conclusion, if this author were to suggest to a third party whether to use Tor, the recommendation would be negative. Although Tor seems to be a mechanism for secure communication, first looks are deceiving. The federal government has too much influence in the use and results of Tor for the simple reason that it is its primary funding source. The adage at play here is that the person who pays the piper calls the tune. The paper followed the money that funded The Tor Project and discovered that the major contributor was the federal government. The government is not necessarily interested in altruistically protecting the privacy of individuals. It pursues its interests. Thus, if the Tor Project puffing transfixes a person, one uses the network at one’s own risk. In the opinion of this author, it is just not worth the risk. There are alternative forms of communication that do not employ the Internet and are probably much safer, such as Federal Express. Why expose oneself to government surveillance when it is not necessary? It should always be remembered that not all that glitters is gold.