Tor Browser 16.0a2 Drops the ESR Safety Net

Tor Browser 16.0a2 lands with a Firefox 147 base, OpenSSL 3.5.5 security patches, and the first glimpse of life after ESR.

Europol Raids X Over Crimes That Don't Exist

A Macron loyalist filed a complaint because he didn't like X's algorithm, and now Europol is calling it a child exploitation investigation.

Arti 2.0.0 Ships: Tor Rust Rewrite Hits Major Milestone

The Tor Project released Arti 2.0.0 on February 2, 2026, advancing relay infrastructure and eliminating legacy configuration options as the Rust-based implementation moves toward replacing C tor entirely.

Kingdom Market Operator Pleads Guilty After Airport Arrest

A 33-year-old Slovakian man who ran Kingdom Market has pleaded guilty after customs inspectors at Newark Airport found crypto wallets and devices linking him directly to the darknet marketplace.

Empire Market Operators Plead Guilty to $430M Dark Web Operation

The two men who ran Empire Market, one of the largest darknet marketplaces ever, have both pleaded guilty to drug conspiracy charges and now face sentences ranging from 10 years to life.

Dream Market Vendor Convicted After Navy Sailors Overdose

A British national faces life in prison after a four-day trial connected his Dream Market fentanyl operation to the overdose deaths of two Navy submariners in Georgia.

FTC's Child Safety Scam: Surveillance for Everyone

The FTC claims behavioral age verification protects children while requiring continuous monitoring of every user's online activity.

Tor Browser 15.0.5 Patches Sabotaged Translations and 14 CVEs

A malicious contributor vandalized Vietnamese translations in Tor Browser 15.0.4, prompting an unscheduled release that also backports 14 Firefox 147 security fixes including sandbox escapes.

Tails 7.4 Adds Persistent Locale, Drops BitTorrent

Linux 6.12.63, Tor Browser 15.0.4, and critical bug fixes arrive in Tails 7.4 alongside a controversial feature cut.

Monero 0.18.4.5 Fixes Ledger Crash Bug

Monero 0.18.4.5 arrives with Ledger Nano Gen5 compatibility and patches for daemon synchronization problems.

Threema Sold to Private Equity Again

Your encrypted messages sit on infrastructure controlled by a German private equity firm whose previous acquisitions include Cloud7 premium dog beds and The Tofoo Company.

Up in Smoke: How X-Rays Burned a €3.75M Cocaine Run

Hiding 53.5 kilograms of cocaine in a vehicle's exhaust system worked exactly as well as anyone with basic OPSEC knowledge would expect Revenue officers found it in minutes.

GNUnet

GNUnet 0.26.2: Post-Quantum Layer and UTF-8 API Fixes

GNUnet 0.26.2 shipped December 22, 2025 with two targeted bugfixes: NULL reporting in the post-quantum cryptography layer and UTF-8 case conversion API repair.

Tor

How Tor Circuits Actually Work Under the Hood

Every Tor circuit travels through exactly three relays, but the algorithm selecting those relays determines whether your traffic stays anonymous or gets correlated.

qubes

Qubes OS 4.3: Faster Disposables, Better Device Control

The latest Qubes release eliminates disposable VM boot delays while introducing self-identity device assignment for hardware you actually control.

briefings

I built this video site for you. No ads, vpn blocking, or digial ID req.

(link at the bottom)

Privacy

Your Printer is Snitching On YOU!

Color laser printers have contained hidden surveillance technology since the mid-1980s. Xerox and Canon developed Machine Identification Code, a system of microscopic yellow dots that encode your printer's serial number and the exact date and time of every print job. This technology was implemented through a secret agreement

Tails

Tails 7.3.1 Ships with Vertical Tabs and Security Fix

The update includes Tor Browser 15.0.3 with vertical tabs and tab groups, the first major interface change to hit the anonymous browser in years.

btc

312 Dormant Silk Road Wallets Spring Back to Life

The 176 transactions over 12 hours suggest either someone methodically testing wallet access or an automated sweep consolidating legacy addresses into modern bech32 format.

tor browser

Tor Browser 15.0.3: NoScript Goes Independent

The Tor Project now hosts its own NoScript builds, versioned with ".1984" suffixes to mark independence from Mozilla's Add-ons infrastructure.

Darknet Markets

Omerta Market Lasted 15 Days Before IP Leak Exposure

A darknet market that claimed two years of development leaked its server IP within approximately two weeks of launch.

simplex

SimpleX Chat's X Account Hijacked for Crypto Scam

Hackers blocked the company founder from his own brand's account while promoting wallet-draining scam links.

drugs

Prison for the competition, settlements for the connected

Federal prosecutors celebrate busting consensual drug sales while pharmaceutical executives who created the opioid epidemic face zero prison time.

Darknet Markets

The CSAM Buyer Who Ran Bohemia's 12 Million Euro Drug Empire

The architect behind 67,000 monthly drug transactions and 12 million euros in peak revenue also maintained a collection of child abuse images he purchased with cryptocurrency.