Core Tor Contributor Leaves Project, Plans to Shut Down Crucial Server

[Exterminator]

One of the Tor Project's first contributors, a man known only as Lucky Green, has decided to leave the project and shut down the Tor bridges under his administration, among which there's a crucial server working as a Bridge Authority.

Green is one of the people who were part of the Tor Project before the network was known as Tor, to begin with. He is also one of those who ran one of the first five nodes ever introduced in Tor, and across years, he has gained the trust of the Tor Project to allow him to manage special nodes inside the network.

Tor Project has 45 days to update all Tor apps
These nodes, called Bridge Authorities, have their IPs hard-coded in the Tor applications and allow the Tor network to go around various bans and blocking attempts at the ISP level. They also hold precious information regarding other Tor nodes, since all Tor servers added to the network report back to one of the Bridge Authorities.

Green is giving the Tor Project until August 31, 2016, to issue a new update of the Tor apps and remove the IP of his Bridge Authority, known internally as the Tonga node.

Besides the highly important Tonga node, Green also plans to shut down the other five Tor servers he is also running.

No clear reason why he left the project, "ethics" mentioned
Green didn't give too many clues about the reasons he decided to do this. "Given recent events, it is no longer appropriate for me to materially contribute to the Tor Project either financially, as I have so generously throughout the years, nor by providing computing resources," Green wrote.

"Nonetheless, I feel that I have no reasonable choice left within the bounds of ethics, but to announce the discontinuation of all Tor-related services hosted on every system under my control."

It is unclear to what these recent events he is referring to might actually be, but the Tor Project has been rocked by a huge sexual misconduct scandal in the past two months. As a result, last week, it wad decided that the Tor Project Board of Directors would be replaced.

Green may not trust the new Board of Directors, or is siding with Jacob Applebaum, an important figure who was forced to leave the Tor Project following some serious accusations.

Below is Green's entire statement, and here is an email exchanged on the Tor mailing list by the Tor staff.

 

[DardiM]

Thanks for sharing

A story to be followed

 

[hjlbx]

A set-back, but should not cripple Tor network. It will involve a mad-dash to replace the server though...