Former Tor Developer Created Anti-Tor Malware To Unmask Tor-Users For the FBI

Tor is an anonymity software used by millions of people, including government officials, human rights activists, journalists and, of course, criminals around the world to keep their identity hidden while surfing the Internet.

For this purpose, the Tor is used by people to visit Dark Net websites, like child pornography sites, which are inaccessible via standard web browsers.

Matthew Edman, a cyber security expert and former employee of the Tor Project, helped the FBI with Torsploit malware that allowed Feds to hack and unmask Tor users in several high-profile cases, including Operation Torpedo and Silk Road.This was revealed in the investigation.

Matthew J. Edman , a former part-time employee of the Tor Project, created a malware for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) that has been used by US law enforcement and intelligence agencies in several investigations, including Operation Torpedo.

 He is a computer scientist who specializes in cyber security and investigations and joined the Tor Project in 2008 to build and enhance Tor software's interactions with Vidalia software, cross-platform GUI for controlling Tor.

After 2009 , Matthew was hired by a contractor who was working for the defense and the FBI,to develop an Anti-Tor Malware.

Even the Tor Project also said that Matthew who worked on the development of Tor Project until 2009 ,subsequently was employed by a contractor who was working for defense and the FBI to develop Anti-Tor Malware to unmask Tor Users.

The team said "Edman worked only on the Vidalia project that Tor dropped in 2013 and replaced it with other tools designed to improve the user experience".

To unmask Tor users, he worked closely with FBI Special Agent Steven A. Smith to develop and deploy malware, dubbed "Cornhusker" or "Torsploit," that collect identifying information on Tor users.

The Cornhusker malware was also deployed in Adobe Flash Player for exploit vulnerabilities in it  to reveal Tor users' actual IP address to an FBI servers outside the Tor network.

The agency hijacked and placed Cornhusker on three servers that ran multiple anonymous child pornography websites. The malware then targeted the flaws in Flash inside the Tor Browser.

According to Officials,Cornhusker is no longer in use, the FBI is using its own funded "Network Investigative Technique" (NIT) to obtain IP and MAC addresses of Tor users in the course of investigations.

However,the NIT was has been considered as invalid by the court during a news on the burst of the world's largest child pornography site in the dark web,PlayPen.

Last Monday , the lawyers have filed a motion case against the FBI to reveal the whole source code which was used to hack and reveal the users of PLayPen ,or else simply drop the case.