Security News > 2020 > August > Malicious Actor Controlled 23% of Tor Exit Nodes
A malicious actor was at one point in control of roughly 23% of the entire Tor network's exit capacity, a security researcher has discovered.
While malicious relays on the Tor network are not something new, this was the first time that a single actor managed to control such a large number of Tor exit nodes, a Tor server operator going by the name of Nusenu reveals.
In May this year, a malicious actor ended up controlling more than 380 exit nodes on Tor, accounting for over 23% of the relays.
At the peak of the attack on May 22, when opening up Tor, "You had a 23.95% chance to end up choosing an attacker controlled Tor exit relay. Since Tor clients usually use many Tor exit relays over time the chance to use a malicious exit relay increases over time," the researcher says.
The problem, the researcher says, does not appear to be gone, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic forced Tor to lay off a third of its staff, impacting the project's ability to tackle malicious nodes.