Tor Powered “Freedom Hosting” Goes Offline From Hacking, Operator Arrested

The Tor service is well known throughout the world as a safe and private networking service that uses other members on the network to protect the identity of everyone. However, Tor has been exploited for illegal purposes – such as for use by criminal organisations and for viewing illegal content. The hosting company “freedom hosting” sits at the centre of one of the most famous and long running incidents. Freedom hosting has been associated with hosting a whole variety of bad stuff, such as child pornography, and over the years it has been hacked numerous times by Anonymous and other hacktivist groups for the illegal and immoral content it hosts. Freedom hosting is not in any way associated with the founders of Tor but exploits the public Tor service.

Just recently the Tor network saw the disappearance of a large number of service addresses. These addresses disappeared at the same time Eric Eoin Marques (Freedom Hosting’s owner) was arrested in Ireland on an American arrest warrant issued in Maryland according to the Irish Examiner. The Tor organisation have already publicly disassociated themselves from Freedom Hosting. In addition to Freedom Hosting’s owner/operator being arrested, the site was also hacked to redirect visitors to the child pornography website to an IP harvesting website. This has led many to believe the FBI is behind the attack and used the hack to reveal the identity of users to the illegal website.

Image courtesy of Tor