The Ministry of Internal Affairs is suing a contractor for hacking an anonymous network

The Rostec structure, it seems, failed to hack the anonymous Tor network within the time frame established by the state contract with the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and the ministry launched a procedure for terminating the contract through the court. However, the results of scientific work that lasted more than a year were transferred to the police, and cases have already appeared in which law enforcement officers identify the identities of Russian Tor users. According to experts, the Ministry of Internal Affairs will use the trial with the contractor to create the “illusion of Tor security.”

The Ministry of Internal Affairs filed a claim in the Moscow Arbitration Court against the Central Research Institute of EISU (part of the United Instrument-Making Corporation (UPK) Rostec) for the termination of contract N131-2014/TsOKiPDT dated September 9, 2014. The contract under this number was concluded with the Ministry of Internal Affairs structure "Special Equipment and Communications" (NPO STiS), which ordered "a study of the possibility of obtaining information about users of the anonymous Tor network and their equipment." Tender for 3.9 billion rubles. carried out in July 2014, the contract was concluded in September of the same year.

A representative of the military industrial complex confirmed to Kommersant that the Ministry of Internal Affairs intends to terminate the contract for research work on Tor. The OPK has not yet received the claim. Kommersant's interlocutor, close to one of the parties, claims that the Central Research Institute of EISU did not meet the deadlines specified in the contract. “Therefore, the Ministry of Internal Affairs does not have the right to accept and pay for the work, although in fact the research work was almost completely completed and transferred to the Bureau of Special Technical Activities of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (direction “K” - “Kommersant” ), which is already using its results,” says source "Kommersant". The Ministry of Internal Affairs did not respond to Kommersant's request. The defense industry assures that in this case there is no conflict, the initiative of the Ministry of Internal Affairs does not affect partnership relations in any way. They explained that the contract “is large and multi-stage.” “Within its framework, specialists from the Central Research Institute of EISU carried out serious work, the results of which were partially transferred to the customer. All work was carried out by the contractor at his own expense, there was no government funding for the contract. Any details of the work performed are not subject to disclosure, since the contract is closed,”— reported to the defense industry. The Ministry of Internal Affairs “simply wants to reduce the price of the contract or claim a penalty,” suggests Vladimir Pleshakov, managing partner of the law firm “Pleshakov, Ushkalov and Partners” (representing the interests of the Central Research Institute of EISU). “Government customers have recently often filed lawsuits for formal reasons, simply to save money,” he notes.

Now any RuNet user can download the Tor web browser and access the Internet through it. The path will pass through several servers, often located around the world. On each server, traffic is encrypted, so it is extremely difficult to determine a person’s location. According to Tor Metrics, Russia is in third place in the world in the number of Tor users - on average, during 2015, 179.8 thousand Russians used it daily, but on some days their number reached 400 thousand.

Russian law enforcement already knows how to identify Tor users. Thus, in September 2015, the Leninsky District Court of the city of Penza issued a ruling on an administrative offense against Andrei Karusev under Part 1 of Art. 6.13 Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation (“Drug Propaganda”). As stated in the decision, while monitoring the Internet for drug propaganda, law enforcement officers found an anonymous user on one of the forums who left reviews about the substances he had tried. “It was established that the specified profile belongs to A. V. Karusev... He accessed the specified resource from his home computer on which he installed the Tor browser,” the resolution says. Already on the territory of the local administration of the Federal Drug Control Service of Russia, Andrei Karusev confirmed that this was his account, but how the drug police reached him using Tor is not reported in the case.

However, Deputy General Director of InfoWatch Rustem Khairetdinov doubts that the Central Research Institute of EISU could have found a Tor vulnerability in a year and two months, which would have made it possible to determine the user’s identity with 100% accuracy. “Many people are interested in hacking Tor, but until now known vulnerabilities have only provided indirect evidence that a user, already under surveillance, anonymously visited certain sites through Tor. And then only due to the negligence of the user himself,” says Mr. Khairetdinov. On the other hand, he continues, it is impossible to say for sure that Tor was not hacked. “It is much more logical for the Ministry of Internal Affairs to abandon the illusion of safety of this channel,” he notes.

Maria Kolomychenko

TOR of business entities