Russia failed to break Tor

[Anton Nesterov]

A company hired by the Russian Interior Ministry to identify users of
the Tor network, an anonymous Internet browser, has announced its plans
to terminate its state contract without finishing the task.

According to the Russian newspaper Kommersant, the Russian Interior
Ministry signed a series of contracts in 2013 and in 2014 with a company
called “the Central Scientific Institute for Economics, IT and
Management Systems” (CSI EIM) to study and to fight online anonymity.
The newspaper reports that CSI EIM has now hired lawyers, in order to
terminate its four government contracts.

Information about the contracts between CSI EIM and the Interior
Ministry is classified. According to an investigation conducted by
Kommersant, however, one of the agreements, under the code name “TOR
(Flot),” involved studying how to retrieve information about Tor users
and investigating what technologies Tor uses. CSI EIM was supposed to
earn 3.9 million rubles ($57,540) for the work.

In addition, CSI EIM won a government contract in 2014 for 20 million
rubles ($295,000), known under the code name “Chameleon-2,” involving
“the creation of a hardware and software complex for allowing secret and
anonymous remote access to strategically important information.”

The Interior Ministry has refused to comment.

https://meduza.io/en/news/2015/09/09/the-russian-government-hired-people-hack-the-tor-browser-but-they-failed-and-now-they-re-quitting


Tender to crack Tor
http://zakupki.gov.ru/epz/order/notice/zkk44/view/common-info.html?regNumber=0373100088714000008
Archived version with Tor in description https://archive.is/gCweX
Tender that has info on termination of tender to crack Tor
http://zakupki.gov.ru/223/purchase/public/purchase/info/common-info.html?noticeId=2423688&epz=true

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https://nesterov.pw
GPG key: 0CE8 65F1 9043 2B11 25A5 74A7 1187 6869 67AA 56E4
https://keybase.io/komachi/key.asc