A Swedish security researcher who publicly posted 100 embassy, government and Fortune 500 email passwords in late August has revealed that he used <A HREF="http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2181811,00.asp?kc=EWKNLINF091207STR4">The Onion Router, or ToR,</A> exit nodes outfitted with a packet sniffer to catch the unencrypted email messages and passwords.

Ironically enough, ToR is a free tool distributed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation that's supposed to allow users to communicate anonymously. According to the researcher, Dan Egerstad, the governments whose email and passwords he intercepted have instructed personnel to use ToR, "a software that sends all your traffic through not one but three other servers that you know absolutely nothing about," he said in a blog post.