6 ms·

We ought to have some kind of DNS alternative that doesn’t allow this sort of thing to happen.

dredmorbius 9y ago
Run your own. https://www.reddit.com/r/Scholar/comments/7m3uin/meta_if_you_cant_remember_what_domains_scihub_is/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Scholar/comments/7m3uin/meta_if_you...
- jrowley 9y ago
  I would just edit my hosts file for those IPs, but cool hack!
  - dredmorbius 9y ago
    You can stil use the generator for that.
- zokier 9y ago
  I was half expecting to see something related to alt DNS roots https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_DNS_root https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_DNS_root That is what I'd call running your own DNS :)
LeoPanthera 9y ago
They could just operate a .onion to work around the whole thing. I think they already do?
- darawk 9y ago
  I'm sure they do. But we really need a more user friendly secure, decentralized DNS alternative. I know there was some noise in the Ethereum community about an ENS domain name system. Is anything likely to come of that?
  - gruez 9y ago
    dns-on-blockchain idea was already tried with namecoin. it doesn't seem to be very popular today. I'm not sure why reimplementing it in ethereum is going to magically make the idea more popular.
    - gsich 9y ago
      Because Ethereum
    - LyndsySimon 9y ago
      I'd really, really like to see Namecoin succeed. It's not gained wide adoption to this point but it's not a dead technology. Further, it can be integrated well within the current DNS infrastructure - granted, without the censorship/security protections offered by the natively decentralized nature of running a full node yourself. There's absolutely no reason a DNS server couldn't maintain a list of entries for .bit domains.
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago
  > They could just operate a .onion scihub22266oqcxt.onion [1] [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sci-Hub https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sci-Hub
  - bigiain 9y ago
    The article mentions that that onion address is in the list of domains that are "included but not limited to" in the injunction. Good luck to ACS getting a .onion address seized... WHatever their legal injunction says.
    - hokus 9y ago
      Its more funny than that. The onion addresses are now published in that very document for everyone to find.
      - Vinnl 9y ago
        I mean... That's theoretically funny, but I don't think anyone who knows what a .onion is had any problem finding Sci-Hub's.
- dooglius 9y ago
  They do, but I don't believe it's possible to access a .onion without going through Tor, which has some major downsides: - You need to install a special browser - The connection is going to be pretty slow - Poor security due to no https; an exit node could inject bad stuff into downloaded PDFs - Unreliability, as of right now sci-hub.tw is fine for me, but the .onion won't load at all. I've found other sites with both .onion and normal URLs to be similarly less reliable.
  - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
    > - You need to install a special browser no, only tor > - The connection is going to be pretty slow not really > - Poor security due to no https; an exit node could inject bad stuff into downloaded PDFs there is no exit node for hidden services, the domain name is the public key, you get end-to-end crypto without https > - Unreliability, as of right now sci-hub.tw is fine for me, but the .onion won't load at all. I've found other sites with both .onion and normal URLs to be similarly less reliable. well, that depends ...
    - tialaramex 9y ago
      The crypto that protects a Tor hidden service is much weaker than you can have in HTTPS. However the CA/B rules that allow certificates for .onion at all (it's not an Internet TLD and private names were outlawed years ago for good reason) require the certs to be validated to a named organisation. So if you aren't legal or insist on real anonymity then that's not going to work for you.
      - coldsauce 9y ago
        > The crypto that protects a Tor hidden service is much weaker than you can have in HTTPS. Could you explain what you mean by that?
        tialaramex 9y ago
        Sure The Tor hidden services actually being used (as evidenced by the .onion address given above being relatively short) are what's called "v2" hidden services. You will see other people saying, oh, this is all fixed, Tor hidden services are much safer now. And maybe v3 really is better, although their documentation sure has a lot of TODO / FIXME lines for a "finished" protocol version. But that doesn't matter so long as in reality it's v2 hidden services people are using, so that's the subject of my critique. The first scary thing is a v2 hidden service's uniqueness depends upon 80-bits from a SHA-1 hash. Technically although SHA-1 is broken that's not a hole in this part on its own, but for comparison HTTPS is using SHA-256. 80-bits is also worryingly small. I clearly can't guess my way to an 80-bit second pre-image using what I know today, but if a further crumbling of SHA-1 gives me a boost maybe it's possible. Next is the public key crypto used, this is 1024-bit RSA. I think you might technically be allowed to still do this in HTTPS, but I haven't seen it for years, everybody is either 2048 or 4096 bits, or they've moved to an elliptic curve that's stronger. Now, I should be clear all this seemed pretty good when Tor was invented, and the new stuff in Hidden Services v3 is pretty good today. But cryptographic recommendations don't age very well, and Tor sat on this problem for far too long, if the above .onion name was a v3 name and I was seeing widespread reliance on v3 hidden services I'd have shut up.
cshenton 9y ago
Last time this happened, sci-hub posted DNS servers that you can use. 80.82.77.83 and 80.82.77.84
- sp332 9y ago
  I like the idea of a bare IP address instead of relying on DNS at all, but that seems to prevent use of HTTPS.
  - userbinator 9y ago
    Technically speaking, HTTPS can work with IP addresses --- the certificate just has to be issued for the IP. But for SciHub, HTTPS is another point of censorship: the CA could simply revoke the certificate, making people believe that the site is insecure.
    - LyndsySimon 9y ago
      There's nothing stopping them from releasing their own root CA or their users accepting a self-signed cert. A pain in the ass, absolutely, but not insurmountable.
  - gruez 9y ago
    >that seems to prevent use of HTTPS. notable counter-example: https://1.1.1.1/ https://1.1.1.1/ it doesn't work for internet explorer though.
    - sp332 9y ago
      I'm surprised a CA would sign a certificate for that, but OK.
      - icebraining 9y ago
        They do, but you probably have to pay for the plan that includes manual checking. Works for IPv6 too: https://[2606:4700:4700::1111]/ https://[2606:4700:4700::1111]/
hossbeast 9y ago
IPNS?
cabalamat 9y ago
Would putting everything on sci-hub on IPFS help?

Run your own. https://www.reddit.com/r/Scholar/comments/7m3uin/meta_if_you_cant_remember_what_domains_scihub_is/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Scholar/comments/7m3uin/meta_if_you...

jrowley 9y ago
I would just edit my hosts file for those IPs, but cool hack!
- dredmorbius 9y ago
  You can stil use the generator for that.
zokier 9y ago
I was half expecting to see something related to alt DNS roots https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_DNS_root https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_DNS_root That is what I'd call running your own DNS :)

LeoPanthera 9y ago

They could just operate a .onion to work around the whole thing. I think they already do?

darawk 9y ago
I'm sure they do. But we really need a more user friendly secure, decentralized DNS alternative. I know there was some noise in the Ethereum community about an ENS domain name system. Is anything likely to come of that?
- gruez 9y ago
  dns-on-blockchain idea was already tried with namecoin. it doesn't seem to be very popular today. I'm not sure why reimplementing it in ethereum is going to magically make the idea more popular.
  - gsich 9y ago
    Because Ethereum
  - LyndsySimon 9y ago
    I'd really, really like to see Namecoin succeed. It's not gained wide adoption to this point but it's not a dead technology. Further, it can be integrated well within the current DNS infrastructure - granted, without the censorship/security protections offered by the natively decentralized nature of running a full node yourself. There's absolutely no reason a DNS server couldn't maintain a list of entries for .bit domains.
JumpCrisscross 9y ago
> They could just operate a .onion scihub22266oqcxt.onion [1] [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sci-Hub https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sci-Hub
- bigiain 9y ago
  The article mentions that that onion address is in the list of domains that are "included but not limited to" in the injunction. Good luck to ACS getting a .onion address seized... WHatever their legal injunction says.
  - hokus 9y ago
    Its more funny than that. The onion addresses are now published in that very document for everyone to find.
    - Vinnl 9y ago
      I mean... That's theoretically funny, but I don't think anyone who knows what a .onion is had any problem finding Sci-Hub's.
dooglius 9y ago
They do, but I don't believe it's possible to access a .onion without going through Tor, which has some major downsides: - You need to install a special browser - The connection is going to be pretty slow - Poor security due to no https; an exit node could inject bad stuff into downloaded PDFs - Unreliability, as of right now sci-hub.tw is fine for me, but the .onion won't load at all. I've found other sites with both .onion and normal URLs to be similarly less reliable.
- zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
  > - You need to install a special browser no, only tor > - The connection is going to be pretty slow not really > - Poor security due to no https; an exit node could inject bad stuff into downloaded PDFs there is no exit node for hidden services, the domain name is the public key, you get end-to-end crypto without https > - Unreliability, as of right now sci-hub.tw is fine for me, but the .onion won't load at all. I've found other sites with both .onion and normal URLs to be similarly less reliable. well, that depends ...
  - tialaramex 9y ago
    The crypto that protects a Tor hidden service is much weaker than you can have in HTTPS. However the CA/B rules that allow certificates for .onion at all (it's not an Internet TLD and private names were outlawed years ago for good reason) require the certs to be validated to a named organisation. So if you aren't legal or insist on real anonymity then that's not going to work for you.
    - coldsauce 9y ago
      > The crypto that protects a Tor hidden service is much weaker than you can have in HTTPS. Could you explain what you mean by that?
      - tialaramex 9y ago
        Sure The Tor hidden services actually being used (as evidenced by the .onion address given above being relatively short) are what's called "v2" hidden services. You will see other people saying, oh, this is all fixed, Tor hidden services are much safer now. And maybe v3 really is better, although their documentation sure has a lot of TODO / FIXME lines for a "finished" protocol version. But that doesn't matter so long as in reality it's v2 hidden services people are using, so that's the subject of my critique. The first scary thing is a v2 hidden service's uniqueness depends upon 80-bits from a SHA-1 hash. Technically although SHA-1 is broken that's not a hole in this part on its own, but for comparison HTTPS is using SHA-256. 80-bits is also worryingly small. I clearly can't guess my way to an 80-bit second pre-image using what I know today, but if a further crumbling of SHA-1 gives me a boost maybe it's possible. Next is the public key crypto used, this is 1024-bit RSA. I think you might technically be allowed to still do this in HTTPS, but I haven't seen it for years, everybody is either 2048 or 4096 bits, or they've moved to an elliptic curve that's stronger. Now, I should be clear all this seemed pretty good when Tor was invented, and the new stuff in Hidden Services v3 is pretty good today. But cryptographic recommendations don't age very well, and Tor sat on this problem for far too long, if the above .onion name was a v3 name and I was seeing widespread reliance on v3 hidden services I'd have shut up.

cshenton 9y ago

Last time this happened, sci-hub posted DNS servers that you can use. 80.82.77.83 and 80.82.77.84

sp332 9y ago
I like the idea of a bare IP address instead of relying on DNS at all, but that seems to prevent use of HTTPS.
- userbinator 9y ago
  Technically speaking, HTTPS can work with IP addresses --- the certificate just has to be issued for the IP. But for SciHub, HTTPS is another point of censorship: the CA could simply revoke the certificate, making people believe that the site is insecure.
  - LyndsySimon 9y ago
    There's nothing stopping them from releasing their own root CA or their users accepting a self-signed cert. A pain in the ass, absolutely, but not insurmountable.
- gruez 9y ago
  >that seems to prevent use of HTTPS. notable counter-example: https://1.1.1.1/ https://1.1.1.1/ it doesn't work for internet explorer though.
  - sp332 9y ago
    I'm surprised a CA would sign a certificate for that, but OK.
    - icebraining 9y ago
      They do, but you probably have to pay for the plan that includes manual checking. Works for IPv6 too: https://[2606:4700:4700::1111]/ https://[2606:4700:4700::1111]/

hossbeast 9y ago

IPNS?

cabalamat 9y ago

Would putting everything on sci-hub on IPFS help?