Kickstarter suspended the Anonabox, a Tor-based router project because of security reasons.
Tor is a free software that enables users to surf the Internet anonymously so their activities and whereabouts cannot be disclosed to anyone else.
On the other hand, the Anonabox is "an open source embedded networking device designed specifically to run Tor."
The project's goal initially was to raise $7,500, but far surpassed that and raised $585,549 from almost 9,000 sponsors which include three editors from technology news and information web site Ars Technica.
At first, August Geramar, the creator of Anonabox was not informed that it had been suspended until the web site sent him an e-mail listing the reasons why the router was pulled out.
Many users of the device pointed out on Kickstarter that the device somehow had striking similarities from other devices, and they allegedly found links of other sites having the identical devices.
Aside from that, a report from tech web site Wired said that Anonabox has only made available a series of configurations files for the device, despite the claim that it was a fully open source project.
Furthermore, when Redditors cracked a password installed on all Anonabox devices, they allegedly discovered a hashed root password with a weak security "developer!."
Germar defended the products saying that creating Anonabox was no easy feat and needed "a lot of work."
He reiterated that "if it were as easy as installing Tor on a regular router, everyone could just do it with their current home devices now, but it takes a lot of system resources to make Tor run smoothly. You need at least 16 mb flash memory just for the Tor binaries themselves. Our current image is just over 10 mb which will not fit on most routers rou could find even at Best Buy unless you paid $300."
