Former Tor Project "Core Team" member Jacob Appelbaum took to Twitter on Monday morning to slam sex-related accusations against him that developed over the weekend. He also denounced the matter as a "calculated and targeted attack has been launched to spread vicious and spurious allegations against me."

"I want to be clear: the accusations of criminal sexual misconduct against me are entirely false," he wrote.

The Tor Project is the Massachusetts-based nonprofit that maintains Tor, the well-known open-source online anonymity tool.

Just two days earlier, Tor Project officials published a statement on its website saying that the group was familiar with these "types of allegations" regarding Appelbaum, adding that "they were consistent with rumors some of us had been hearing for some time. That said, the most recent allegations are much more serious and concrete than anything we had heard previously."

This fracas first became public on June 3, just one day after the Tor Project suddenly announced Appelbaum's departure from the group.

The 33-year-old Appelbaum wrote that he is prepared to use "legal channels, if necessary, to defend my reputation from these libelous accusations."

He continued:

Inevitably, there may have been moments in my professional or private life when I may have inadvertently hurt or offended others’ feelings. Whenever I was aware of these instances, I have, and will continue to, apologize to the friends and colleagues in question and to continually learn how to be a better person. Though the damage to my reputation caused by these allegations alone is impossible to undo, I nonetheless take the concerns of the Tor community seriously. To dispel any further rumors, to the best of my knowledge, the Tor network is not ‘compromised.’

Appelbaum has not responded to Ars' requests for comment.