The Tor Project, victims of an attempted hack by a group known as Lizard Squad, has reassured users that the threat is being dealt with and that users’ anonymity remains intact.
It seems that Lizard Squad launched what is known as a Cybil attack, creating new relays in the hope of saturating the network, as opposed to taking control of existing relays. But, despite reports, the hackers only controlled 1% of the total number of relays within the Tor network. Tor confirmed this in a statement to Business Insider:
“This looks like a regular attempt at a Sybil attack: the attackers have signed up many new relays in hopes of becoming a large fraction of the network. But even though they are running thousands of new relays, their relays currently make up less than 1% of the Tor network by capacity. We are working now to remove these relays from the network before they become a threat, and we don’t expect any anonymity or performance effects based on what we’ve seen so far.”
Lizard Squad claimed responsibility for the Christmas attack on Xbox Live and PlayStation Network, explaining that it brought the two online gaming servers down to demonstrate that users were being short changed by a weak, lacklustre network. Its reasoning for attacking Tor is still a mystery but, whatever its motives were, the move has turned the collective head of Anonymous:
Hey @LizardMafia don't fuck with the Tor network. People need that service because of corrupt governments. Stand the fuck down.
— Anonymous (@YourAnonNews) December 27, 2014
On Friday, Anonymous declared war on Lizard Squad, warning the malicious group in a YouTube video, “now you are all going down.”
Source: Business Insider
