Pierluigi Paganini February 14, 2023

Tor Project maintainers revealed that for at least 7 months, the Tor network was hit by several different waves of ongoing DDoS attacks.

During the last months Tor users have experienced Tor network performance issues lately, Tor Project maintainers explained that they were caused by different waves of ongoing DDoS attacks.

Tor Project’s Executive Director Isabela Dias Fernandes explained that the methods and targets of the attacks have continuously changed over time. She also added that at this moment it’s not possible to attribute the attacks to certain threat actors.

“For at least 7 months, several different types of ongoing denial of service (DoS) attacks have affected the Tor network. At some points, the attacks impacted the network severely enough that users could not load pages or access onion services.” wrote Dias. “We have been working hard to mitigate the impacts and defend the network from these attacks. The methods and targets of these attacks have changed over time and we are adapting as these attacks continue. It’s not possible to determine with certainty who is conducting these attacks or their intentions.”

In many cases, users were not able to access the Tor Network and faced important delays while attempting to load pages.

Dias added that the Tor Project is working to improve defenses of the Tor network and mitigate these attacks. They are also adding two new members to their Network team who will be focused on .onion services development.

Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon

Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, Tor Project)