
A New Era at the Tor Project - ehPReth
https://blog.torproject.org/blog/new-era-tor-project
======
CatDevURandom
"Although we are sad to see Andrew leave, Tor is entering an exciting period
of growth. "

Why not stop at Andrew is leaving? The whole "exciting period of growth" thing
feels tacked on and forced. Reminds me of the type of stuff managers say after
a layoff.

~~~
bane
Just wait until "it's been an incredible journey".

~~~
jacquesm
Is he going to spend more time with his family?

~~~
weego
He feels that there are so many great opportunities out there, but his is
going to take some time to decide which one to focus on. The timing just felt
right.

------
cubano
I guess it would have been nice if they at least hinted at what these new
directions may be?

As it was, it came off identically to a Fortune 500 press release about the
CEO moving on.

~~~
antocv
Perhaps this is a hint. Something is amiss in the Tor project?

Infiltrated perhaps? Backdoored? Even worse? All they can do is throw this CEO
moving on shit.

~~~
diminoten
This, ladies and gentlemen, is what paranoia looks like.

~~~
psykovsky
It's not paranoia if it's true.

~~~
middleclick
But it's not, is it? Unless there can be some proof of the said backdoor.

I don't get how a person - even though he is the Executive Director - moving
on can co-relate to a "backdoor" in a project that puts all its code online
and does deterministic builds.

~~~
psykovsky
I don't know. Is it?

------
mfkp
I didn't know Tor had an Executive Director. Looking now at their staff list
[0], I'm now unsure about how they have the money to support all these
employees. All I see is a donate button.

[0]
[https://www.torproject.org/about/corepeople.html.en](https://www.torproject.org/about/corepeople.html.en)

~~~
ta82828
Tor is funded at least partly by the U.S. government.

[https://www.torproject.org/about/sponsors.html.en](https://www.torproject.org/about/sponsors.html.en)

See:

* Radio Free Asia

* US Department of State Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor

* Naval Research Laboratory

~~~
noir_lord
A fact that in light of all the stuff in the last few years is doubly
hilarious.

~~~
ta82828
I've read that the primary motivation is to allow intelligence assets in other
countries to communicate with the agencies they work for.

[https://www.evernote.com/shard/s1/sh/96791ee9-98d5-44a0-b0a9...](https://www.evernote.com/shard/s1/sh/96791ee9-98d5-44a0-b0a9-c2a5b3b6ec31/72b5e81135196815a23eb969d080ddf0)

~~~
mikeash
It's well known that Tor is vulnerable to traffic analysis by an adversary
that can basically monitor the entire internet. In the past, this was
considered impractical, but now we know the NSA does something like this.
Since this is inherent in its design, that means it doesn't really matter if
it's funded by the US government, because they don't even need to weaken it in
the first place.

Not to say that funding diversity wouldn't be a good thing, but there's no
particular reason to think Tor is broken any more than is already known
because of where the money currently comes from.

~~~
antocv
What about I2P?

~~~
wongarsu
I2P claims to try to defend against large scale traffic analysis, but they are
a underfunded project with few contributors. There was some mention of
implementing cover traffic which would solve the issue (at the cost of
massively increasing traffic), but I don't think that's happened yet.

~~~
throwaway7767
I2P, being fully decentralised, is also very vulnerable to a sybil attack.
Join thousands of nodes to the network, wait until you are strategically
placed, then follow the traffic streams routed through your nodes.

Of course, sybil attacks are a concern in any open network. In theory the tor
directory authorities are able to deny new nodes so they have some recourse,
but in practice if you stagger your new nodes you can still infiltrate the
network. :/

The fact is, anonymity systems are a hard and unsolved problem. That's not due
to the source of the funding. We take what we get.

------
patcon
> Andrew Lewman, our current Executive Director, is leaving The Tor Project to
> take a position at an Internet services company.

Anyone know the name/type of the company? I'm really curious. Hoping it's an
ISP or MVNO or some other space that needs good people like him

~~~
hueving
Networking Services of America

~~~
goalieca
Sadly, tor is Not Secure Anymore.

~~~
maze-le
TOR has never been "secure". Everyone running an exit-node can intercept all
communications going through that node, and since everyone can run an exit-
node... So, you always had to take care that you use encryption when using
TOR. In Terms of anonymity though TOR seems still to bug NSA and the likes.

~~~
ncza
Apples and oranges. All I want is anonymity, I am fine with the exit seeing
things as it does not know who I am.

------
worklogin
I find it really surprising and frustrating how many paranoid/cynical posts
are in this thread.

* Is this a hint that Tor has been infiltrated?"

* "So sad to see the organization become so self-centered"

None of these comments have any basis in the story!

------
dataker
Such a sad announcement.

Organizations like this and the Bitcoin Foundation eventually become so self-
centered they start to undermine the work of all past contributors.

Hope the community works around these issues.

~~~
fabulist
I rather like the idea that someone from Tor is going to be working at an ISP.
If everyone who worked at ISPs shared ideals with the Tor project, perhaps the
Internet would be a better place.

