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by lxgr 462 days ago
Despite the symbolism, does this change anything about their reachability from Tor?

Is there any practical advantage to a website in being explicitly reachable as a hidden service on Tor, as opposed to simply not blocking exit node IPs?
2 comments
heavyset_go 462 days ago
Assuming your adversary is a state with access to certificates, a malicious or compromised exit node could lead to your de-anonymization and access to information you may want to keep confidential or hidden.

Your connection to an onion service is end-to-end encrypted and authenticated, as well, which means no MitM can trick you or sniff your traffic.

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lxgr 462 days ago
Ah, no reliance on the web PKI is a very good point (especially if their site also accepts document drops etc) I didn't consider, thank you!
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marc_abonce 462 days ago
I don't know if there's any benefit for the end user, but I think it helps with the reliability of the Tor network because onion sites are accessed by normal Tor nodes, not exit nodes[1]. This means that if you access the onion version of a site you're "relieving" the exit nodes from the extra traffic, which is good because exit nodes already have to handle a massive amount of traffic from all the requests to the surface web.

[1] https://community.torproject.org/onion-services/overview/

[1.5] http://xmrhfasfg5suueegrnc4gsgyi2tyclcy5oz7f5drnrodmdtob6t2i...

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