I suppose this points out a social function that malicious software can fill.
The discovery of methods to identify TOR traffic in the pursuit of reigning in malicious software, should encourage the TOR network to become less easily detectable before authoritarian governments manage to shut it down more effectively.
Seems unlikely that the antimalware scene is driving the Tor detection research. China seems to be putting the lots of effort behind it for censorship purposes.
I was partly responding to my own irritation with the underlying premise of the article. If Tor is being used maliciously to deliver or receive an encrypted payload on your computer or network, it isn't a problem caused by Tor. Furthermore, Tor has an enormous social benefit.
In other words, my first reaction was that it is harmful to attack the technology, but realized that is a silly argument for obscurity. Publishing a vulnerability, and more people publicly searching for vulnerabilities is a good thing, since authoritarian actors will just exploit what they find without any disclosure.
The discovery of methods to identify TOR traffic in the pursuit of reigning in malicious software, should encourage the TOR network to become less easily detectable before authoritarian governments manage to shut it down more effectively.