tor

Tor is free software for enabling anonymous communication. The name is derived from an acronym for the original software project name "The Onion Router". Tor directs Internet traffic through a free, worldwide, volunteer network consisting of more than seven thousand relays to conceal a user's location and usage from anyone conducting network surveillance or traffic analysis. Using Tor makes it more difficult for Internet activity to be traced back to the user: this includes "visits to Web sites, online posts, instant messages, and other communication forms". Tor's use is intended to protect the personal privacy of users, as well as their freedom and ability to conduct confidential communication by keeping their Internet activities from being monitored.
Onion routing is implemented by encryption in the application layer of a communication protocol stack, nested like the layers of an onion. Tor encrypts the data, including the next node destination IP address, multiple times and sends it through a virtual circuit comprising successive, randomly selected Tor relays. Each relay decrypts a layer of encryption to reveal only the next relay in the circuit in order to pass the remaining encrypted data on to it. The final relay decrypts the innermost layer of encryption and sends the original data to its destination without revealing, or even knowing, the source IP address. Because the routing of the communication is partly concealed at every hop in the Tor circuit, this method eliminates any single point at which the communicating peers can be determined through network surveillance that relies upon knowing its source and destination.
An adversary might try to de-anonymize the user by some means. One way this may be achieved is by exploiting vulnerable software on the user's computer. The NSA had a technique that targets a vulnerability - which they codenamed "EgotisticalGiraffe" - in an outdated Firefox browser version at one time bundled with the Tor package, and in general, targets Tor users for close monitoring under its XKeyscore program. Attacks against Tor are an active area of academic research, and are welcomed by the Tor Project itself. However, Tor was not only developed for a time in the early 2000s by individuals who "were on contract from DARPA and the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory", but since its inception the bulk of its funding has come from the federal government of the United States.

View More On Wikipedia.org