security advisory

There have been a lot of questions today about just what the
recent Debian OpenSSL flaw means for Tor clients. Here's an attempt to
explain it in a bit more detail. (Go read the Tor security advisory before
reading this post.)

First, let's look at the security/anonymity implications for users who
aren't running on Debian, Ubuntu, or similar. These implications all
stem from the fact that some of the Tor relays and v3 directory authorities
have weak keys, so the Tor network isn't able to provide as much anonymity
as we would like.

The biggest issue is that perhaps 300 Tor relays were running with
weak keys and weak crypto, out of the roughly 1500-2000 total running
relays. What can an attacker do from this? If you happen to pick three
weak relays in a row for your circuit, then somebody watching your local
network connection (or watching the first relay you pick) could break all
the layers of Tor encryption and read the traffic as if they were watching
it at the exit relay. read more »