Alleged Tor 'hidden services' operator arrested on child porn charges

Written by Andre Yoskowitz @ 04 Aug 2013 6:23 User comments (10)

Earlier this week, 28-year-old Irish resident Eric Eoin Marques was arrested by FBI agents for being "the largest facilitator of child porn on the planet."

Along with the arrest, a large number of hidden services have been removed from the anonymizing, encrypted network Tor.

Marques is being accused of being the founder of Freedom Hosting, one of the largest hidden services hosting providers. Additionally, Marques has been connected to the Tormail anonymized e-mail service and the escrow service Onionbank. All those services have been taken down.

Hidden Services can be used for many purposes, some used for legal (and anonymous) communications and others for criminal purposes including places to buy fake IDs, stolen credit card numbers and more. Even worse, Freedom Hosting became infamous for hosting many child pornography sites, and the "Hidden Wiki" that allowed child porn traffickers to easily distribute their videos and pictures.

Irish law enforcement told the court that Marques had been transferring large sums of money to accounts in Romania.

Tags: Tor Freedom Hosting

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10 user comments

14.8.2013 20:35

megadunderhead

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Senior Member

Wow doesn't surprise me romania and a lot of other country's actually have no laws against explotation of a minor its very sick and twisted but i am glad they got the scumbag

24.8.2013 20:39

scorpNZ

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AfterDawn Addict

Its good to deal a blow to the peds & scum sucking sicko porn makers & distributors,just not sure if this fella is more guilty than .com

that's the bad porn not the good stuff..lol..

This message has been edited since its posting. Latest edit was made on 04 Aug 2013 @ 8:59

35.8.2013 01:30

SomeBozo

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Member

Originally posted by megadunderhead:
Wow doesn't surprise me romania and a lot of other country's actually have no laws against explotation of a minor its very sick and twisted but i am glad they got the scumbag

I can't agree more this stuff is simply terrible. I don't if they have no laws on the books only because A.) People never thought there was a need for such laws. and B.) To many it is unimaginable people would use, exploit and ruin an innocent children in this way. I can't help but think, at least in the U.S. here people talk about prison justice, where even your coldest and most heartless criminals have no tolerance or compassion for those who exploit children and will normally carry out justice in there own way.

45.8.2013 10:42

Mysttic

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US should have kept Gbay open for people as sick as this. There is no treatment in the world that can cure the mind of a person willing to make $ off childrens sexual exploits, forced or otherwise.

55.8.2013 14:42

Mrguss

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Tor statement:
https://blog.torproject.org/blog/hidden...freedom-hosting

& update:
https://blog.torproject.org/blog/tor-se...dles-vulnerable

This message has been edited since its posting. Latest edit was made on 05 Aug 2013 @ 2:44

66.8.2013 13:17

hearme0

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Any organization that in ANY WAY SHAPE OR FORM propagates or perpetuates child porn should be shutdown, property destroyed and the owners/operators exiled or publicly executed and televised.

76.8.2013 16:51

Bozobub

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All of the other topics aside, who was the idiot responsible for re-enabling Javascript in the Tor Browser in the 1st place..?! It used to be disabled, by default.

86.8.2013 21:10

Interestx

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Originally posted by hearme0:
Any organization that in ANY WAY SHAPE OR FORM propagates or perpetuates child porn should be shutdown, property destroyed and the owners/operators exiled or publicly executed and televised.

I wholeheartedly agree....the trouble is that these days it's being used as an excuse to censor the wider net.

The British 'opt in' for porn & a new 'flagging system' is being done under the excuse that child pornography is freely available if you just Google it.

I am concerned that labels like child porn, rape porn, violent porn or terrorist are used to shut down debate & consideration about what is really going on.

96.8.2013 22:34

xtago

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The problem with tor is you don't start on it nor end on it, so your packets are still traceable and have to be unencrypted to be transferred over the net.

Cops and torrent trackers just packet sniff the tor entry/exit servers, and pick up tons of people, doing stuff.

You'd have to be on a isp headend dns server the actual computer to have any sort of protection.

That way the packets start and end at the headend server

107.8.2013 15:26

Mrguss

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Originally posted by Bozobub:
All of the other topics aside, who was the idiot responsible for re-enabling Javascript in the Tor Browser in the 1st place..?! It used to be disabled, by default.

Actually was Java updates: since it command all the browsers including Tor.
On this particular NSA attack arrive via JVM (Java Virtual Machine use on simple video games on FF-ESR17 or older.) not via JavaScript.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013...ed-home-to-nsa/

For now just to have a peace of mind, disable Java:
Start > Control Panel > Java (double click) > Security > Un-check (Enable Java content in the browser) > Apply

People who updated the last Tor (June 2013) were find; and this exploit happen in August 2nd.
Update your PC's & Browsers is not a bad idea.
How to update:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/08/t...are-immediately

Tor Automatic upgrades are on the way, based on discussions at the Munich dev. meeting in July 2013.
https://trac.torproject.org/projects/to...ndleUpdatePlan/

This message has been edited since its posting. Latest edit was made on 07 Aug 2013 @ 6:24

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