Current events in Tor

Tor is a free-software anonymizing network that helps people around
the world use the Internet in safety. Tor's 5500 volunteer relays carry
traffic for around a million daily users, including ordinary citizens who
want protection from identity theft and prying corporations, corporations
who want to look at a competitor's website in private, people around the
world whose Internet connections are censored, and even governments and
law enforcement.

The last year has included major cryptographic upgrades in the Tor
software, dozens of research papers on attacking and improving the Tor
design, mainstream press about government attempts to attack the Tor
network, discussions about funding, FBI/NSA exploitation of Tor Browser
users, botnet related load on the Tor network, and other important topics.

In this talk I'll aim to strike a balance between explaining Tor's
"intellectual merit" side (all the neat research problems that Tor
raises, and how we've positioned ourselves to get so much attention from
academics) and Tor's "broader impact" side (the many ways that Tor has
changed lives around the world).
Roger Dingledine is project leader, director, and head of research for
The Tor Project. In addition to all the hats he wears for Tor, Roger
organizes academic conferences on anonymity, speaks at a wide variety
of industry and hacker conferences, and also does tutorials on anonymity
for national and foreign law enforcement.