Concerns about Tor security are cited by the Agora Marketplace as the reason behind their recent decision to suspend service. According to the Agora administrator research into deanonymization attacks as well as suspicious activity are prompting them to move servers as a temporary mitigating measure with a rewrite of their entire software stack being necessary. They encourage users of their platform to withdraw funds at the first possible opportunity. Their full announcement is reproduced below. Users are encouraged to validate the below text against public keys of known vintage.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA512 Recently research had come that shed some light on vulnerabilities in Tor Hidden Services protocol which could help to deanonymize server locations. Most of the new and previously known methods do require substantial resources to be executed, but the new research shows that the amount of resources could be much lower than expected, and in our case we do believe we have interested parties who possess such resources. We have a solution in the works which will require big changes into our software stack which we believe will mitigate such problems, but unfortunately it will take time to implement. Additionally, we have recently been discovering suspicious activity around our servers which led us to believe that some of the attacks described in the research could be going on and we decided to move servers once again, however this is only a temporary solution. At this point, while we don't have a solution ready it would be unsafe to keep our users using the service, since they would be in jeopardy. Thus, and to our great sadness we have to take the market offline for a while, until we can develop a better solution. This is the best course of action for everyone involved. In the mean time we shall do our best to clear all outstanding orders and we ask all of you users who have money on their accounts, withdraw them as soon as possible, because we don't want to be responsible for it during the time when the market will be offline. During this time, there might be some delays in payouts, since many people are expected to withdraw money at the same time, but we intend to resolve any such issues in the end. But we advice you to use only destination bitcoin addresses that do not expire when you send money out from Agora, as the payments to them might get delayed. While the market is offline, do not send any bitcoin to any of your deposit addresses on Agora. We do not gurantee the safety of any funds sent there. Vendors, we strongly advice you to abort any orders that haven't been sent out or processed yet, as we cannot gurantee what will happen with the orders in resolution. We shall try to resolve it on a case-by-case basis, but there might not be time to wait for orders that require long shipping times. We are going to handle the situation with the vendor bonds soon, we need some time to make sure that noone uses this as an opportunity to start scamming wildly. All of the market data will be kept intact and be available upon return, including all of the user history and profile data. Since our PGP key is nearing expiration date, here is a new PGP key which could be used to check authenticity of our messages in the future. - -----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- mQINBFXbhfUBEADwmNTkQPx8UCSx4HBnuj4XpAA5uIceXAa6dBAGnLdZ8XjpgqM2 scPLqPd0DHLu5SPB9+zq1H/YoDeG+Ha1LfZ6kbl1PTZjieGiyhiRN2cctlOL6RKJ vqdWduTO8i5XKN0cxm8VX0vB8g5JUQf7mNtxQ3UTbOt+HCLKAu2cdSPMhn3VQub+ f6Tys7UyoFodovqOmdgjbQNsEBSWxYhGfaQ5NlzDRzaWVf4GdTf5vf1rnhr6S/Gz NU2Qc3/xO5Foldl1Muv/A6BL0Ixx9ahmyq0IC53+w+zeouJg2OZ4UVFIxvGT+N7R rMUe21QfOMCqJU7CPLD3tgp15Z1s7Fext9WIQ7gzueo6COx1xFW85rbSusbDCaW4 dkIRkgUoQs1/lqIht+gWGxDdz/7L+S5NqXYDCP8yn861GOsRRqrmAEvqQTzBe12F Wb/SB3K8FtzPH72+gUcs4GsVoUNShPytv9rghPYqI/3P9E9RgI3AtOFcsBTwWW8Z WWrWhg5B2qXNrwPQd92ssCcaIAPdei7WKUP1MwHCAQhiyuoAsLFGL0aqvN7Q8cBj 5VoWLY23IIvlcuGFiFt7M7VBZuNlJDb+VJaXWB81xAySWEgXOUyfOldzIr5lZSzn vNbIu+l9LfaGY2bp+J4J8TZwYBlrqYjErYPtlKCIHNclS/CRMfzZWYk/2wARAQAB tBFBZ29yYSBPbmUgKGtleSAyKYkCPwQTAQIAKQUCVduF9QIbAwUJCWYBgAcLCQgH AwIBBhUIAgkKCwQWAgMBAh4BAheAAAoJEOp1/g0qDsM2lLsP/2o6SFcbpAVH6FrY dvG4FzSbVivDSNM+lR/9aa3MvpfKj2QDvJtCJPgP0EaCBzmhfpc+D61QWL+ZATvW z2WM8vznRQ5vaIsTnNu9hWuqFAe0ihQU0o6dmS7zBfpMFj0Z5SeTJjKPwyEiQzqY jg1qx9RCt0K6KXZ2hz6ImBcwICzQkNImtbJDuT0+UHgOCRHG3M7KzUUT0WiGhl90 D4EmBmGzCtXWJ0zJ7oAtWm1OnlkKlqDDb3NEZ+QnddsfWCyzVIRTej8/x91NnTBa otW7VgrsjW31V31jRevmQyRKgE19+zkRgKYJVuYUoPjnQUDJuAD1maueAR66p3lJ aKbpHTAzVWii9SybqwwsopJ160zAXXW68rBf6p84XVxD1yNNE/jLZl83nNtjn2RS u+AaPowqt7TfcYCx7/QPiuTIlg0/k1MAFvRLsaG3QdcyKSYU6AEL4dLXVRgjHY7T oIxrAuWRH7KJrEoouuF0lmQ2D4ic65C1QxBmiEA4ct/tdlhFHXlEAB4mm8J/dLpE Dhxq6sb1jRK6eXbZqPbCgHZfsh9wOa9TQ66Xk9F67LG3F84ds2yihqt+26kV2rjP lcgW8B24XHaGRx9X/gPrZ1+DBRDINnwXTOlmhj2F+7axj04gcaXT1wjCjiNf7PMZ 2obuMNv5/20xWcaEIdVMyew9g4iUuQINBFXbhfUBEADiMhYYBdq6GUF75lvhVfFJ VPpQpUgGIREfOwnX8MtbgtUQ3d5TTLD/uwiMRBU61t/jKYy8Xq5Cmz0ddC6P+px0 yZhnXdmd5LwW4TO7Ao2jq6W+7XLUD/WXZ6Q5uZtLRif2DY26dtDK6rYZSiYHuXaE usE3pEhYE1zHMlBYSI8U9xbCb73611fZE5IRZ6Zj7PCzlaRKZX4MiwWtJSsJ4IZQ CnlfKoZh2VtQRWy87M8NbWlnQDl6Lmi6/unCS5I2sRS42SYz75QBIVfn+GJ9wk/p lfUhPGfneQsuou+F2EyNAT96kuHUxrB9Ir89XuyO4uiwhsiVDW7YX2CTA1Y1V+2f m49PXvdK1P9ZFIst2Xb4WrdNVwM/ShUG9W/Bbgo4AZ7VeLW2JDgzkhQOLyZC2RnO ma8n9LuJQMZrpwTF4BmZkUGDSUybLbCdNYDZ5S/+njBaWXuBZ3e5OcnVhWcVuHJL Uhp/f2iAWalQfbWfzW3hh72l+7Ek4ZuXRudbqJyRkWpUChlUBziWh0osSw+DIDpj mJUJLOOnGDmdSlJQhKtiq528BxPRKiNwMIp9tFB4uaI3wRKWsNNw30aQ34OjopoH lpCO818M4K5aZa3tWNLK8Adn8Fm2m87F7RZ8yMURdjLYHbwmYmE1xX0BdtmdAWz4 xUhHlsrCmD3zx64kNMKE2wARAQABiQIlBBgBAgAPBQJV24X1AhsMBQkJZgGAAAoJ EOp1/g0qDsM2H24QAM18kejrnDdyRIcuLNB5RRXItpYvUMUisVOgyPDZBerOgvfj /a8eLKTyKW9PsDXNtNJsi5gGLRluGtuZuh8BgYv+fpv6m6zCcoEmbfh7qt7kTGYG AnzVynGvxgHhNiEETBmmIRJ+Yg5MV4CRIQFEpzdSBXSSHiJIzcDnl316Uu8y1Glj zAlRtyIwQ0FuSahLIajbb+7V+Cpw4OQHwAGVsMVGLmsWuDwRhmUB9pc0choGoeA7 /Vk5IJuWM+Wz0pbSoPTaf+Vmp0rDgVEvhOia/nQVsT6O6iZ9oh8SVdP/stIE6TpL el6UvWrVzOR6cPYiAOJhWwCJ7Zx7sTp+Iv39ojZR/3N7V7MED6Qx3hnpq6b8phv4 Qe3Telab2ss8ZYr44e/WQY1sr+3xF12IfZYEn606MlKdWgTm1TAxS/GGMoefsKap yhFT5wsuPhIqB0q+6nHePnJOZGhYPo8q/AX+pOnjY13cG+myk62NkGsh5d1rmc+k 1+wMHK6cpLF123CSF7WWUnt1aI0MOLEwDXZ+6gidE9GjiFMq6z7BS5ZutfHKiHTK /ZWI5iZjxSSQLEfxigeu9PE8LWzayTTW2DJR0SCaMVyCQG5XnjO2ozHRQX47KE8Z XhtwS0aE2SI6BE5V8EZ3euZ3ok/CeNQPLFYNJWbCuEMEd4NuktvzR2skh94I =xcF3 - -----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- iQIcBAEBCgAGBQJV3MOEAAoJELCkZxCnK9YVfToQAINT8hwQqTaYy1H24XaiWS5K VtTG6I38Taz4yJO/Oe7Co3M2lKn0qgIZYOD1CK9iKuKr2/jub+JtDUWEX06GwWmp zfVrOWgaQMDhaSOv+7iCCzKFv5xMulMqhPdh9R+wXaTGqT0i3+ix8jbtVpQzA4lI oWdafP8n3wxFdOaNKUugsRo1r8WriOmVObv8efgnlHB2pxSib3/HQefF+rCZMRrU RshckkobrwkcjdVwwpROfhBtX1Ra+KQdCcig/4mycLcaxLbkX7R5U/7tnTuF7B5O l52PMMyoclwK/Gl3h3W4LC9PumUxJesc3vrSUGmDXw3pf1+qR81HzGsNlO93Qzzd h8/mo3KsZvCQaAcD5Q11104ZDOFjg+yayKoGjYrKmRl19u+r98qAKEzpqvn+ahKV eR4Z2/r+s+6HIIDvkR/NX013+r8kO1EmYYAC0TtGVmUeVP6YobfBA1gHvm5RgnRc 4W4Zm0qpKRk18ZjvZAPXcgC0L0azbY+7byYnXZpHNhd+7TI/twU6w6CHYB08tdHt FSp9CkRT/YDuhCaMkBGV0BHxkstdOITxl+23LApIY68Tb+yj+nZmYBNoo5wOwBYa kmRT7I3mX8gTGIb+LUPIpeEN2zyupbc7vRpked5FRC9BcH+Uma0kc6MtzYShUEKe NghlKoNBPQruQt7EEejn =IIZh -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----