Is Tor network under attack?

I recall that Operation Onymous's location of the servers of numerous darknet markets has been vaguely linked to the government attacking Tor. Numerous vectors have been discussed:

Cisco Netflow Exploit

The forensic interest in quite how international cybercrime initiative 'Operation Onymous' defied Tor's obfuscating protocols to expose hundreds of 'dark net' sites, including infamous online drug warehouse Silk Road 2.0, has led many to conclude that the core approach to deanonymisation of Tor clients depends upon becoming a 'relay of choice' - and a default resource when Tor-directed DDOS attacks put 'amateur' servers out of service."

In addition, rumors are abound that the government used a method based on a canceled talk called You Don't Have to be the NSA to Break Tor: Deanonymizing Users on a Budget

Now that the major market Evolution has disappeared, is it possible that the feds feel that DDOSing the Tor network is more likely to locate servers? As Backopy said, if a large portion of the traffic on Tor flocks towards a single hidden service, is anonymity threatened? Is that why Agora recently shut down due to their security protocols? Are they aware that someone is out for them?

If darknetmarkets are under jeopardy due to more concentrated traffic following evoscam, the community must figure out how to respond. Although Agora purports that

Our setup is not simply a regular web server with extra Tor daemon running on it. We had to implement other levels of protection on top of that, including proxy VPN connections, constant changing of servers, additional software which is not found on any normal web server which handles intrusion detection.

would this prolonged downtime and instability be a consequence of these cautionary moves? I'm not sure how Evolution managed to survive for so long with such good uptime, but the current situation seems to be quite sketchy.

How should the community as a whole respond to the weaknesses in Tor? What was Evolution able to do to keep things running so smoothly without getting pinched?

edit: Could a mod change the title to "Is the Tor Network under attack?" I forgot the the; small errors like this irritate me.


Comments


[15 Points] None:

Is Tor network under attack?

At any time, you can be assured the answer is Yes.

would this prolonged downtime and instability be a consequence of these cautionary moves?

The captcha script being removed, and user sessions being purged while the rest of the site was still running points to Yes.


[3 Points] None:

Agora has been around a lot longer than EVO ever was and they used to have waaaay more traffic too. If they could handle the inflow after Silk Road 1.0 got shut down, then I think they can handle the EVO inflow.


[2 Points] SoulUndead:

FUD:

It would seem that Evolution was not in it for the long term from the beginning, while Agora is using all measures to prevent being discovered in favor of longevity.

Or maybe Agora is just buying our trust :D


[2 Points] fishlr:

I'd imagine they're using a combination of multiple tor instances, HAProxy and stunnel to tunnel traffic through different layers for added benefit. Can't imagine a tunnel over VPN being overly reliable for large numbers of tor hidden service users... would explain Agora's terrible traffic bottlenecks X_X


[1 Points] BlueShadesTM:

My guess would be that markets are getting more traffic than they are used to and its causing their servers to get overwhelmed.


[1 Points] SecondChanceUsername:

Well duh, the Ag admins know "someone is after them". Thats an understatement


[1 Points] Theeconomist1:

edit: Could a mod change the title to "Is the Tor Network under attack?" I forgot the the; small errors like this irritate me.

Unfortunately mods can't change anything on your post.


[0 Points] None:

Dude, the prolonged down time is just because everyone is moving from evolution to agora. He is probably either optimizing what resources he has or is setting up new servers.