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A comment on Hackers breach FSB contractor, expose Tor deanonymization project. Parent comment

Re:Hackers breach FSB contractor, expose Tor deanonymization... by Santosh83 on Saturday July 20, 2019 @11:38AM (#20486385)
I'd be surprised if the big countries used plain Tor for their vital communication. They would be having their own secret networks or tunnel through Tor. Small countries have probably simply given up hiding their intelligence from the big ones at this point and are simply interested in ensuring their immediate rivals are kept out, which Tor can probably do.
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Re:Hackers breach FSB contractor, expose Tor deanonymization... by Paul-ish on Saturday July 20, 2019 @11:44AM (#20486414)
A custom protocol can potentially be fingerprinted. I wouldn't be surprised if they used something less sophisticated. Like (encrypted) direct messages on twitter/reddit/facebook. This way the traffic blends with the rest.
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Re:Hackers breach FSB contractor, expose Tor deanonymization... by nameismypw on Saturday July 20, 2019 @12:02PM (#20486505)
There's a companion project to Tor called obs4proxy which is designed to hide the protocol's implementation.
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Re:Hackers breach FSB contractor, expose Tor deanonymization... by kijin on Saturday July 20, 2019 @12:39PM (#20486779)
It doesn't need to be a completely custom protocol. HTTPS can handle a very large percentage of anyone's communication needs these days.
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Re:Hackers breach FSB contractor, expose Tor deanonymization... by Paul-ish on Sunday July 21, 2019 @03:25PM (#20493158)
An application level protocol implemented on top of HTTPS can be fingerprinted. If you look up "Website Traffic Fingerprinting" you will see what I mean. That traffic is encrypted.
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Re:Hackers breach FSB contractor, expose Tor deanonymization... by closeparen on Saturday July 20, 2019 @02:40PM (#20487531)
For official operations, they would not be using the internet in any way, but their own parallel enterprise networks. Tor could be useful for covert operatives, and for generally weakening the grip of governments where we are inducing "popular" uprisings.
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