The Tor Anonymity Project has been hit by the deadly Heart Bleed Bug that might force the network to shrink in vulnerability gets fixed. Sadly this means that if you use Tor Anonymity to work as anonymous chances are you might have patched the Heart Bleed Bug. About 380 exit and guard relays of tor network got affected by the bug and the network is blacklisting the vulnerable relays.
Since almost 1/8th of the Tor network capacity will be cut due to the much needed repair it may cause a temporary lose in the trusted entry relays. The Key Developer of Tor Network Roger Dingledine said in an email to Tor Relays mailing list that users will experience 12 % of the exit capacity and 12% of the guarding capacity while the Open SSL vulnerability gets fixed.
The 12% may sound marginal but it will be visible for users as both exit and guard relays play important role in the Anonymous network. However, the 12% lose in exit and guard relays are not permanent and Tor Anonymity user can expect the networks to be in a good shape within couple of days.
Soon after the Heart Bleed Bug Vulnerability was exposed Roger Dingledine tweeted a list of Tor components that got affected by the Open SSL vulnerability. It also states that web surfers who use old version of Open SSL are not vulnerable to Heart Bleed Bug.
Project or Tor Anonymity is free Software that allows users to browse the web without revealing their identity. The software relies on hundreds of Volunteer who bounce the information of its users in a relay of network to protect users location, identity, instant messages and internet watchdogs.
