:''This defunct hosting site is not related to Freedom Hosting Pty Ltd, which is operating in

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

.'' Freedom Hosting is a defunct

Tor Tor, TOR or ToR may refer to: Places * Tor, Pallars, a village in Spain * Tor, former name of Sloviansk, Ukraine, a city * Mount Tor, Tasmania, Australia, an extinct volcano * Tor Bay, Devon, England * Tor River, Western New Guinea, Indonesia Sc ...

specialist

web hosting service A web hosting service is a type of Internet hosting service that hosts websites for clients, i.e. it offers the facilities required for them to create and maintain a site and makes it accessible on the World Wide Web. Companies providing web h ...

that was established in 2008. At its height in August 2013, it was the largest Tor web host.

Anonymous denial-of-service attack

In 2011,

Anonymous Anonymous may refer to: * Anonymity, the state of an individual's identity, or personally identifiable information, being publicly unknown ** Anonymous work, a work of art or literature that has an unnamed or unknown creator or author * Anonym ...

launched Operation Darknet, an anti-

child pornography Child pornography (also called CP, child sexual abuse material, CSAM, child porn, or kiddie porn) is pornography that unlawfully exploits children for sexual stimulation. It may be produced with the direct involvement or sexual assault of a chi ...

effort against activities on the

dark web The dark web is the World Wide Web content that exists on ''darknets'': overlay networks that use the Internet but require specific software, configurations, or authorization to access. Through the dark web, private computer networks can communi ...

. One of the largest sites,

Lolita City Lolita City was a child pornography website that used hidden services available through the Tor (anonymity network), Tor network. The site hosted images and videos of underage males and females ranging up to 17 years of age (18 is the Age_of_cons ...

, hosted by Freedom Hosting, was

Denial-of-service attack In computing, a denial-of-service attack (DoS attack) is a cyber-attack in which the perpetrator seeks to make a machine or network resource unavailable to its intended users by temporarily or indefinitely disrupting services of a host connect ...

ed (DDoS), and later had its member list leaked following a

SQL injection In computing, SQL injection is a code injection technique used to attack data-driven applications, in which malicious SQL statements are inserted into an entry field for execution (e.g. to dump the database contents to the attacker). SQL inj ...

attack, as was

The Hidden Wiki The Hidden Wiki was a dark web MediaWiki wiki operating as Tor hidden services that could be anonymously edited after registering on the site. The main page served as a directory of links to other .onion sites. History The first Hidden Wik ...

which linked to it.

Federal investigation

News reports linked a

Firefox Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox, is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. It uses the Gecko rendering engine to display web pages, which implements current and ...

browser vulnerability to a United States

Federal Bureau of Investigation The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice, ...

(FBI) operation targeting Freedom Hosting's owner, Eric Eoin Marques. In August 2013, it was discovered that the

browsers in many older versions of the Tor Browser Bundle were vulnerable to a

JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language that is one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. As of 2022, 98% of Website, websites use JavaScript on the Client (computing), client side ...

attack, as

NoScript NoScript (or NoScript Security Suite) is a free software extension for Mozilla Firefox, SeaMonkey, other Mozilla-based web browsers and Google Chrome, written and maintained by Giorgio Maone, an Italian software developer and member of the Moz ...

was not enabled by default. This attack was being exploited to send users' MAC and

IP addresses An Internet Protocol address (IP address) is a numerical label such as that is connected to a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication.. Updated by . An IP address serves two main functions: network interface ident ...

and Windows computer names to the attackers. The FBI acknowledged they were responsible for the attack in a September 12, 2013 court filing in

Dublin Dublin (; , or ) is the capital and largest city of Republic of Ireland, Ireland. On a bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Leinster, bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, a part of th ...

; further technical details from a training presentation leaked by

Edward Snowden Edward Joseph Snowden (born June 21, 1983) is an American and naturalized Russian former computer intelligence consultant who leaked highly classified information from the National Security Agency (NSA) in 2013, when he was an employee and su ...

showed that the codename for the exploit was EgotisticalGiraffe. Marques was arrested in Ireland on August 1, 2013, on a provisional extradition warrant issued by a United States court on the 29th of July that year. The FBI sought to extradite Marques to Maryland on four charges — distributing, conspiring to distribute, and advertising

— as well as aiding and abetting advertising of child pornography. The warrant alleges that Marques was "the largest facilitator of child porn on the planet". His attorneys fought for several years to prevent his extradition to the United States on the grounds that he had

Asperger syndrome Asperger syndrome (AS), also known as Asperger's, is a former neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by significant difficulties in Interpersonal relationship, social interaction and nonverbal communication, along with restricted and re ...

, and would not receive the appropriate care in a US prison, if extradited. In December 2016, the Irish Court of Appeal ruled the extradition should proceed. This was not the end of his appeal process, however, and his lawyers announced they would make a new appeal to the Supreme Court. This appeal was dismissed by the Irish Supreme Court on March 20, 2019. Marques faced life in prison if tried and convicted in the United States. On February 6, 2020, Marques pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to advertise child abuse images, as part of a plea agreement that would entail a prison term of 15 to 21 years. On September 6, 2021, Marques was sentenced to 27 years imprisonment and ordered to forfeit over $154,000.

Notable hosted sites

HackBB HackBB was a Tor hidden service Internet forum specializing in buying stolen credit cards, skimming ATMs, and hacking computers, servers and accounts. The site was often a destination for hacked and stolen data dumps. At some point the site was ...

Tor Mail Tor Mail was a Tor hidden service that went offline in August 2013 after an FBI raid on Freedom Hosting. The service allowed users to send and receive email anonymously to email addresses inside and outside the Tor network. History Tor Mail p ...

Proceeding site

Since Freedom Hosting was closed, a new organization, Freedom Hosting II was created, running 20 percent of all dark web sites.

References

{{Tor hidden services Defunct Tor hidden services Dark web Web hosting Internet properties established in 2008 Internet properties disestablished in 2013