16 votes

Do all .onion addresses use SSL/TLS?

No, .onion sites are not using https/ssl by default. But the connection inside the Tor network is always encrypted, so it is not really necessary to use https for .onion sites. Exit nodes aren't used ...
  • 2,209
9 votes

What are the best Tor2Web anonymous gateways?

Some people like http://onion.direct . However I am a fan of onion.link. I do know at least in terms of size of GOOG index, the results come out to: onion.direct | 21k onion.cab | 232k onion....
  • 195
6 votes
Accepted

How does a OR know that it is the cells final destination?

All the nodes after the initial circuit starter are doing rougly the same thing : unwrapping the message by their-and-circuit-starter very own pre-negotiated key ant takig a look at the next layer. ...
  • 5,543
6 votes

Understanding the tor circuit

You build a TLS connection to your guard. Over that TLS connection you perform a key exchange using the OR protocol. Now you and the first guard compute two keys from the shared secret the key ...
  • 10.9k
6 votes

Why doesn't torproject.org have an official onion address?

Actually, there is an onion address for Tor: http://expyuzz4wqqyqhjn.onion/ The Tor Project runs quite a few onion addresses: https://onion.torproject.org/ I can't confirm if the Tor Browser uses ...
6 votes

Looking to create a onion domain; need some help

How-to: Quoting hiddenwiki: Getting a .onion domain is not only free (they are automatically generated by Tor), but it is simple once you have completed the basic server installation procedure. If ...
5 votes

Is it possible to access a dark web server by a public IP instead of an .onion address?

The difference between .onion URLs and normal URLs, is that the normal URL is simply a "human readable pointer" points to a network location... on the other hand, a .onion URL is actually the only ...
  • 191
5 votes

sending email through .onion

It depends, there are a few scenarios. Internal mail, from: alice@foo.onion to: bob@foo.onion or from: alice@foo.com to: bob@foo.com The email never leaves the foo.com server(s), there's no way to ...
  • 10.9k
4 votes

How does a OR know that it is the cells final destination?

Tor: The Second-Generation Onion Router explains it pretty well in section 4.2 Circuits and Streams, subsection Relay cells: Once Alice has established the circuit (so she shares keys with each OR ...
4 votes

Suddenly my Tor hidden service isn't available

Ok, I figured this out. For some reason the custom onion address I made with Shallot was no longer working. I made a new hidden service and got rid of the existing one, restarted Tor, and voila! I'm ...
  • 41
4 votes
Accepted

Is it possible to ping .onion?

ping, assuming you're talking about the *nix command, is ICMP. Tor is exclusively TCP in the requests carried across the network. You cannot "ping" an onion. If you want to know if an onion is online,...
  • 10.9k
4 votes
Accepted

Is it possible to access a dark web server by a public IP instead of an .onion address?

No, correctly-configured Tor hidden services are not accessible by direct IP connection. When setting up a hidden service, you set up your web server to only listen to traffic from the local machine, ...
  • 419
4 votes
Accepted

How can Facebook's Tor Onion be constantly accessible with the massive bandwidth demand?

First of all to entirely deny service to an onion service you'd need to take 6 positions in the hidden service directories hashring constantly. You need to generate long term identity keys for all 6 ...
  • 10.9k
4 votes
Accepted

How does Tor use application proxy (SOCKS)?

The "Onion Proxy" is a name for a Tor client, it is the entire client process. The SOCKS interface is just a way for a client to utilise the onion proxy. The SOCKS server is provided by the Tor ...
  • 10.9k
3 votes

How do law enforcemnet agencies seize a .onion domain?

When a hidden service is seized, 'they' (the LE agency in question) are in possession of the private key. Either obtained from the server or from the operator. I imagine that in many cases they are ...
  • 3,735
3 votes
Accepted

Designing P2P application over Tor

"the IP for other users to connect to?" Onion services don't use IPs. You should use SOCKS5's remote hostname functionality, this hands over the hostname to Tor and will ensure you do not ...
  • 10.9k
3 votes

Does Tor insert random delays or perform packet re-ordering to make the discovery of the communication path harder?

@Jens's answer has a great description of current Tor. The Tor-Browser adds some additional defenses, namely: it enables HTTP pipelining, so that several requests can be sent on the same "batch" it ...
  • 387
3 votes

Change the private key for my .onion domain

Your host name is calculated from your private key. If you change your private key, you will get a new host name.
  • 3,735
3 votes

How to have assigned previous onion address for my hidden service?

Basing on official docs you should copy-paste content of old HiddenServiceDir to your new HiddenServiceDir location (you should overwrite new ones). There are only two files: hostname and private_key....
3 votes

Do sessions still work for onion websites?

Yes, sessions still work, and no, users won't be logged in all the same. Website sessions are stored client-side, so every client will have a unique session.
3 votes

What would happen when multiple servers are having the same onion hostname?

It depends on the exponent, if the people will use the same exponent - yes, they will have an identical keys. And - as far as I know - as soon you publish your HS descriptor, no descriptor with the ...
  • 5,543
3 votes

Is it possible to access a dark web server by a public IP instead of an .onion address?

The concern you're rising here is "will it be able to detect a clearnet address of a darknet server" - so it's must be protected by firewall. And the most effective technique here is to separate the ...
  • 5,543
3 votes

Restarting a tor relay. Does it go back to phase one?

No. Your relay will lose some of its flags if it's offline for a period of time, but simply restarting doesn't seem to affect its consensus status. I'm not sure if the consensus deteriorates if your ...
3 votes

How can i nginx reverse proxy to .onion site ? which is on TOR network?

You need a polipo proxy - because Tor is not a http proxy, it's a Socks one. You can get it on polipo's official website and don't be upset that it's no longer maintained: this is the case when "the ...
  • 5,543
3 votes
Accepted

What is passed to the Onion Proxy in terms of the OSI model?

The SOCKS proxy operates on the application layer. Therefore the answers to your questions are: The SOCKS proxy receives whatever you send to it via the TCP connection that is built up to the SOCKS ...
3 votes
Accepted

Finding all onion addresses

Tor directory authorities don't keep onion addresses. It is Hidden Service Directory which keeps descriptors for currently running onion services. As they are responsible for holding descriptors, ...
  • 205
3 votes
Accepted

Do Tor relays require knowledge of the real IP address of a hidden service, to enable routing to it?

defalt answered your question in a nutshell. The solution Tor uses to hide your IP address, and nevertheless allows you to host a hidden service, is that it is the host of the hidden service that ...
  • 146

Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible