https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Gry4U6L7l8
$53 Kills the Tor Network (And They Won't Fix It)
Tor's directory protocol has a fundamental design flaw that costs $53 to exploit. Purdue researchers disclosed it December 2024, published the fix, and got ghosted. The vulnerability lives in the bounded synchrony assumptions target five directory authorities with basic DDoS traffic and the entire network collapses. 2 million daily users relying on infrastructure held together by hope.
The current protocol fails completely under bandwidth exhaustion attacks. The proposed partial synchrony model works even when five authorities lose connectivity, generates consensus documents in 15 minutes under 0.5mbps conditions where the existing system just dies. The implementation exists in rust, the performance benchmarks prove it works, and the Tor Project keeps running vulnerable C code while collecting six-figure salaries and major donor funding.
Arti doesn't have directory authority implementation on the roadmap. The legacy protocol keeps running with known attack vectors documented since 2022. Academic papers keep proposing fixes, researchers keep getting ignored, and state adversaries can disable the primary anonymity network for less than dinner costs.
This covers the Purdue research paper, the specific technical failure in the directory protocol, why current DDoS mitigation doesn't address application layer design flaws, and what the fix actually requires versus what's being deployed.
☆-☆-☆-☆-☆ CHAPTERS ☆-☆-☆-☆-☆
00:00 Tor Project Ignores Critical Vulnerabilities
00:20 $53 Attack Disables Entire Network
01:43 Purdue University Research Findings
02:02 Fundamental Design Flaw Remains Unfixed
03:00 Six Figure Developers Ignore Security
03:32 December 2024 Disclosure Ghosted
04:50 Directory Protocol Vulnerability Explained
05:11 How Tor Routes Traffic Through Relays
10:11 Current Protocol Fails Under Attack
12:40 Partial Synchrony Solution Proposed
14:02 Performance Under Simulated DDoS
14:41 Trivial Overhead Eliminates Attack Vector
15:38 Byzantine Fault Tolerance Trade-offs
15:51 Security Community Knew Since 2022
16:22 Why Tor Project Refuses To Fix
17:45 Arti Implementation Lacks Directory Authorities
18:33 Academic Fix Ignored While Vulnerable Code Runs
19:40 Privacy Infrastructure Funding Problems
20:36 Volunteer Network Held Together By Hope