Black Hat talk on Tor weaknesses canceled

It appears lawyers have stepped in to pull the plug on a Black Hat talk that was set to reveal vulnerabilities impacting the Tor network.

The planned session at the Las Vegas hacking conference, “You Don't Have to be the NSA to Break Tor: Deanonymizing Users on a Budget,” was to be presented by Carnegie Mellon University researchers Alexander Volynkin and Michael McCord next month. Black Hat organizers announced this week, however, that legal counsel for the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) and CMU intervened.

"Unfortunately, Mr. Volynkin will not be able to speak at the conference since the materials that he would be speaking about have not yet [been] approved by CMU/SEI for public release,” lawyers told event organizers.

In Monday email correspondence with SCMagazine.com, conference organizers said that the session slot had not yet been filled.