It is not clear to what degree the researchers "compromised" the tor network. To make matters worse the news story seems to have some translation issues. I am not arma or nickm but from a quick reading it does not seem like a real threat.<p><pre><code> "But there are also hidden nodes, the Tor Bridges, which
are provided by the system that in some cases. Researchers
have developed a script that, once again, to identify
them. They found 181. "We now have a complete picture of
the topography of Tor," said Eric Filiol."
</code></pre>
The researchers found 181 of over one thousand bridges[1]? That hardly seems like a complete topography of the network. In order to get bridges all you need to do is submit a https request to <a href="https://bridges.torproject.org" rel="nofollow">https://bridges.torproject.org</a> or send an email to bridges@torproject.org from a gmail address. So they scripted https gets and SMTP? The bridge distribution system is designed in such a way that an attacker can not easily flood the system with requests and learn all of the bridge addresses. I imagine this is why they only learned 1/5th of the bridges.<p>The majority of the research seems to indicate that if an attacker can control 1/3 of the relays in the tor network he can influence its operation and decrypt/associate/identify traffic streams. The tor threat model has always stated that an attacker with control over a significant
number of nodes could successfully compromise the security goals of the network. Furthermore the attack depends on users not utilizing trusted entry nodes. I do not think the attack would have any effect on a user who used a trusted entry node that the attacker did not control.<p>[1] <a href="https://blog.torproject.org/blog/strategies-getting-more-bridge-addresses" rel="nofollow">https://blog.torproject.org/blog/strategies-getting-more-bri...</a>