After PSN and XBox Live, hacking group Lizard Squad targets Tor

Just a day after hacking the networks of Sony’s Playstation and Microsoft’s Xbox, the hacking group that calls itself Lizard Squad has a new target - Tor. Tor is a network that helps its users stay anonymous online. Lizard Squad have sent out an official tweet stating their next target is Tor. The tweet also mentions that they are no longer attacking PSN or Xbox Live.  

  Now, Tor may not be as popular as the gaming networks compromised, but it is being used by a wide range of people. Mashable states, “Tor is not a household name, so any attack on the service would not be felt as widely as the disruption of online play for millions of gamers. But Tor is used by a wide variety of people who seek anonymity online, ranging from political dissidents and whistleblowers to those engaged in more illicit activities.” Tor went on to release an official statement that says: This looks like a regular attempt at a Sybil attack: the attackers have signed up many new relays in hopes of becoming a large fraction of the network.But even though they are running thousands of new relays, their relays currently make up less than 1% of the Tor network by capacity. We are working now to remove these relays from the network before they become a threat, and we don’t expect any anonymity or performance effects based on what we’ve seen so far. The hacking group has reportedly added at least 3,000 relays that ‘bounce connections around the world to hide users’ public IP addresses, to the network. According to TheRegister, “A few thousand “LizardNSA” relays appeared, with IP addresses assigned to Google’s cloud engine; this suggested someone went a bit nuts with a $500 coupon, or stole some credit cards, and spun up a shedload of tiny virtual machines running Tor, or similar.” Lizard Squad is believed to have taken control of nearly half the nodes that Tor uses to provide its users anonymity.