Hidden Service localisation

Question

Gentlemen

I thought something about hidden service an onion server. it's just an assumtion, i've not try !

Is it possible to locate a server ( a country, not a fixed point or public ip, but just the localisation of the continant who herbege the server, an aproximity ), by the timestamp of response of server, at the time this server to respond to a request.

By connecting to différent exit relay in the world and performing multiples request to the server, and evaluate the différence times in millisecond of the response of server, and make an average of all time pick up by relay, and this average can allow to localise the hosting country of the server ?

it's just an idea ! i think of that.

And how works the system of hidden service for the resolution of domain name into tor ?

please sorry for my crap English, i don't speak English very well.

Answer 1

No, this isn't possible.

First of all, no exit nodes are used in connections to onion services.

Second of all, the onion service makes it's own circuit through the tor network to respond to your requests, which means it's taking some path through the tor network that you do not control or have visibility of.

This would mean that trying to measure the time for responses from requests made to the onion service would not relate to the location of the onion service, but to the path it chose to take through the network, which will be different for each circuit.

As for how it establishes the connection, see this question and answer: How does it work - “Hidden services”?

Answer 2

The only place in the chain of "accessing the hidden service" that can be pinponted to the map - is a rendezvouz point, but it can be literally any Tor node, so it's practically useless to perform an action. However, some corellation attacks can be performed to locate a HS host if it's not set up properly. In general - no, there's no chance to pinpoint a HS host itself