TOR - Attacks and Countermeasures

Explore the inner workings of the Tor anonymization network in this comprehensive conference talk from Security BSides London. Delve into the infrastructure and high-level protocol of Tor, including Hidden Services and their role in bypassing censorship. Examine attempts by countries like China and Iran to block Tor access and the countermeasures developed. Analyze various attacks against Tor users and network infrastructure, along with potential defenses. Investigate the FBI's takedown of Silk Road and the exploit used to deanonymize visitors to Tor hidden services. Gain insights into traffic confirmation attacks, distributed hash tables, and methods for deanonymizing hidden services and their users.

Intro
Overview
The problems
The Tor Ecosystem
Building circuits through Tor
Obvious attacks
Tor Censorship
How China blocks Tor
Tor Hidden Services
Distributed Hash Tables
Hidden Service popularity
Deanonymising Hidden Service users • Traffic confirmation attacks are MUCH more powerful.
Deanonymising Hidden Services