The alphabet soup agencies have managed to get yet another scalp in the Silk Road debacle, this time one of the top dealers that conducted business on the site.
The official story in the report linked above isn’t particularly convincing and reeks of parallel construction.
I believe that at this point there is sufficient reason to believe that tor hidden services are broken and perhaps have been for quite some time. Many speculate that this is being achieved through traffic correlation but there is increasing evidence that the NSA operates a network of evil entry nodes.
Tor selects its entry nodes, known as “guards” and keeps them for an extended period of time. This time period has differed throughout the life of the project. Those involved in the tor project have known of this threat for some time, hence the creation of the guard concept. If guards are kept indefinitely then this causes congestion issues as new entry nodes will never be selected (except by new installations) so a compromise is sought. Even with these protections sources suggest that elucidation of a hidden service could take – on average – six to twelve months.
Mike the Crypto Goat 