FreedomWeb is a renowned Irish concern which provides web hosting services for the purpose of Tor hidden services which reached via the Tor encrypted or anonymised network has been shut down. The reason behind the shutdown of the network is that the owner of this company Eric Eoin Marques has been arrested because of allegations of being involved in facilitating child pornography.
Users of this services have claimed that the copies of the Tor browser that they were using has been infected via malicious JavaScript that has de-anonymized them and they have also made a speculation that this might have been originated from FBI. TOR browser which came previously had a JavaScript disabled but they made it enable recently in order to add more to its general usefulness. Some of the users have also predicted that the Bitcoin crash was caused by shutdown.
The bundle of Tor Browser is the most commonly used one and therefore the malicious JavaScript which has penetrated it comes as quite as surprise. The execution of the JavaScript in the browser was previously disabled by default but the developers have now reverted back to its execution to enhance the usefulness for the common users. However this has caused the app to become quite vulnerable to attacks.
An in depth technical analysis of this malware might be conducted in the upcoming days as the security researchers have now started to examine its greater details. Since this attack was formulated for Firefox used with windows, which is actually based on the Bundle of Tor browser, the chances are quite high that this attack is not a random happening and has been carried out intentionally for compromising with internet user identities.
Though it might be a good victory for the FBI authorities against those who have been using Tor network for child pornography purposes, but this has also given rise to a serious threat of security breach from internet users having malicious intentions and the international activists who utilize the internet platform for expressing their opinions.
