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The Tor site's page about hidden service communication mentions that a given hidden service will always use the same set of entry guards:

At this point it is of special importance that the hidden service sticks to the same set of entry guards when creating new circuits. Otherwise an attacker could run his own relay and force a hidden service to create an arbitrary number of circuits in the hope that the corrupt relay is picked as entry node and he learns the hidden server's IP address via timing analysis.

The hidden service configuration instructions don't say very much about how a service's entry guards are selected:

Now that you've restarted Tor, it is busy picking introduction points in the Tor network, and generating a hidden service descriptor. This is a signed list of introduction points along with the service's full public key.

How does the hidden service host avoid picking a "corrupt relay" as one of its permanent entry guards? What do I need to do to make sure that the guards I use are trustworthy?

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  • I've edited this because the .onion tag is for questions that are about the '.onion' TLD specifically, whereas yours is about Tor in general.
    – George Gibson
    May 20, 2016 at 17:06
  • Thanks, I thought for a moment that the [.onion] tag was for hidden service questions, but that doesn't seem to be the case.
    – Ben N
    May 20, 2016 at 17:08

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They're selected exactly the same as for other Tor needs : i.e. if you're using UseEntryGuards 0 it will be used for your HS('s) too. And - after seeding the HS tor instance I do recommend you to use UseEntryGuards 0, because it will make your HS much more stealth with a short circuit timeout.

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