Governmental and powerful organizations’ digital spying is exactly what
privacy advocates have been warning about for many years. However, the
scale of the revealed program by the National Security Agency (NSA) is
rather scary, even for experts.
Edward Snowden showed us that the NSA is actively collecting as
much information as possible and uses any means possible to achieve this
goal. They have, for example, actively influenced various companies’
implementations and standards to make sure that backdoors and weak
implementations would exist. After the disclosures made by Snowden, many
people seek a way to protect their privacy. However, what tools can we
trust in the light of recent events?
privacy advocates have been warning about for many years. However, the
scale of the revealed program by the National Security Agency (NSA) is
rather scary, even for experts.
Edward Snowden showed us that the NSA is actively collecting as
much information as possible and uses any means possible to achieve this
goal. They have, for example, actively influenced various companies’
implementations and standards to make sure that backdoors and weak
implementations would exist. After the disclosures made by Snowden, many
people seek a way to protect their privacy. However, what tools can we
trust in the light of recent events?
In this paper we investigate the anonymization tool The onion router
(Tor). We looked at how much privacy Tor can provide against an
adversary as powerful as the NSA. We looked at available attacks on Tor
and how the NSA can use those attacks. We also investigated how likely
it is that the NSA can brute force the ciphers that Tor uses. To find an
answer, we have made an estimation of how powerful the NSA can be,
given certain assumptions.
more here........http://www.kevinvalk.nl/assets/papers/Tor_vs_NSA.pdf