Tor Mail was a Tor hidden service that went offline in August 2013 after an FBI raid on

Freedom Hosting Freedom Hosting was a Tor specialist web hosting service that was established in 2008. At its height in August 2013, it was the largest Tor web host. Anonymous denial-of-service attack In 2011, Anonymous launched Operation Darknet, an anti-chil ...

. The service allowed users to send and receive

email Electronic mail (usually shortened to email; alternatively hyphenated e-mail) is a method of transmitting and receiving Digital media, digital messages using electronics, electronic devices over a computer network. It was conceived in the ...

anonymously to

email address An email address identifies an email box to which messages are delivered. While early messaging systems used a variety of formats for addressing, today, email addresses follow a set of specific rules originally standardized by the Internet Enginee ...

es inside and outside the

Tor network Tor is a free overlay network for enabling anonymous communication. It is built on free and open-source software run by over seven thousand volunteer-operated relays worldwide, as well as by millions of users who route their Internet traffic ...

History

Tor Mail provided web mail access with two

webmail Webmail (or web-based email) is an email service that can be accessed using a standard web browser. It contrasts with email service accessible through a specialised email client software. Additionally, many internet service providers (ISP) prov ...

applications to choose from, one fully functional ajax-based, and one simple client which required no

JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language and core technology of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. Ninety-nine percent of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior. Web browsers have ...

cookies A cookie is a sweet biscuit with high sugar and fat content. Cookie dough is softer than that used for other types of biscuit, and they are cooked longer at lower temperatures. The dough typically contains flour, sugar, egg, and some type of ...

. The user could also access mail via

SMTP The Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) is an Internet standard communication protocol for electronic mail transmission. Mail servers and other message transfer agents use SMTP to send and receive mail messages. User-level email clients typi ...

POP3 In computing, the Post Office Protocol (POP) is an application-layer Internet standard protocol used by e-mail clients to retrieve e-mail from a mail server. Today, POP version 3 (POP3) is the most commonly used version. Together with IMAP, i ...

IMAP In computing, the Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) is an Internet standard protocol used by email clients to retrieve email messages from a mail server over a TCP/IP connection. IMAP is defined by . IMAP was designed with the goal of per ...

with an

email client An email client, email reader or, more formally, message user agent (MUA) or mail user agent is a computer program used to access and manage a user's email. A web application which provides message management, composition, and reception functio ...

. The user signed up and accessed Tor Mail via the Tor hidden service and needed to have

Tor Tor, TOR or ToR may refer to: Places * Toronto, Canada ** Toronto Raptors * Tor, Pallars, a village in Spain * Tor, former name of Sloviansk, Ukraine, a city * Mount Tor, Tasmania, Australia, an extinct volcano * Tor Bay, Devon, England * Tor ...

software installed on a computer to access Tor hidden services. Users were not required to provide any identifying information such as their name or address. Tor Mail's goal was to provide completely anonymous and private communications to anyone who needed it. The service providers said that they were

anonymous Anonymous may refer to: * Anonymity, the state of an individual's identity, or personally identifiable information, being publicly unknown ** Anonymous work, a work of art or literature that has an unnamed or unknown creator or author * Anonym ...

and could not be forced to reveal anything about a Tor Mail user. They also said that the service did not cooperate with anyone attempting to identify or censor a Tor Mail user. Tor Mail's service consisted of several servers, the hidden service, and an incoming and outgoing internet facing mail servers. The site's operators said that the only data stored on the

hard drive A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating hard disk drive platter, pla ...

of those servers was the Exim mail server and the Tor software. "No emails, logs or personal data were stored on those servers, thus it doesn't matter if they are seized or shut down." They claimed to be prepared to quickly replace any relay that was taken offline. The service and SMTP/IMAP/POP3 were on a hidden server completely separate from the relays. The relays did not know the

IP address An Internet Protocol address (IP address) is a numerical label such as that is assigned to a device connected to a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication. IP addresses serve two main functions: network interface i ...

of the hidden service.

2013 JavaScript attack

A message appeared on the Tor Mail main page in early August 2013, saying "Down for Maintenance Sorry, This server is currently offline for maintenance. Please try again in a few hours." Since August 2013, the service has been unavailable. The disappearance of Tor Mail has been linked to the arrest on

child pornography Child pornography (also abbreviated as CP, also called child porn or kiddie porn, and child sexual abuse material, known by the acronym CSAM (underscoring that children can not be deemed willing participants under law)), is Eroticism, erotic ma ...

charges of the alleged operator of

, which hosted a large number of .onion sites. In September 2013, the

FBI The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic Intelligence agency, intelligence and Security agency, security service of the United States and Federal law enforcement in the United States, its principal federal law enforcement ag ...

admitted in a court filing in

Dublin Dublin is the capital and largest city of Republic of Ireland, Ireland. Situated on Dublin Bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Leinster, and is bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, pa ...

that it had taken down Freedom Hosting. The following month, details emerged of a zero-day

attack affecting the Tor Browser Bundle based on Firefox 17 if JavaScript was enabled, as it was by default. Later versions of the Tor Browser Bundle disabled JavaScript by default. This zero-day vulnerability was exploited during the takedown to send users' IP addresses and Windows computer names to an FBI-controlled server in

Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern and Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States between the East Coast of the United States ...

. In January 2014 it was confirmed that the FBI had access to Tor Mail servers. In January 2016, it was claimed that innocent TorMail users may also have been subject to hacking by the FBI.

References

{{Tor hidden services

Mail The mail or post is a system for physically transporting postcards, letter (message), letters, and parcel (package), parcels. A postal service can be private or public, though many governments place restrictions on private systems. Since the mid ...

Webmail Internet privacy software Anonymity networks

History

2013 JavaScript attack

See also

References