3 ms·

Someone should release a version of Tor where users set the private key of their hidden service to something human readable (with the necessary mapping and padd

Someone should release a version of Tor where users set the private key of their hidden service to something human readable (with the necessary mapping and padding). Then someone wanting to access the hidden addy types that same private key in the url bar of a correspondingly twisted Tor Browser which would generate the hidden service pubkey and request the service at that addy. Who wants to surf fwodjslkf...sdfjs.onion when you could be surfing amazon.onion? It's also more democratic because if you don't like what you find there you can just publish your own amazon.onion.

Retr0spectrum 8y ago
Uh, what? What you describe doesn't sound remotely feasible...
- jancsika 8y ago
  Here's a bad idea 1. Set a hidden service private key to all zeros. 2. Derive the public key from that private key (plus whatever else you must do) to generate the corresponding onion address for that all-zeros private key. 3. Type that onion address into a Tor browser and see what you get back. If what I just described is not even "remotely feasible," then one ought to be willing to type that addy into Tor browser running on their raw hardware and rest assured there is no possible way someone is running a (probably nefarious) service running at that address. Are you willing to do that? If not, what I'm talking about is just adding some leading, non-random, nonzero bits to that "all-zeros" private key. It's not a secure design, but if all people want is to send files that are too big for email it's no worse than using password authentication to log in to, say, msn.com.
zensavona 8y ago
You can't do that because that's not the way encryption works. The reason onion addresses are random looking is because they are a function of the hidden service's public key. If you could generate a "private key" from the public key, anyone could use your "domain name". The reason tor doesn't require centralised domain name services is because we can trust that whoever owns the private key to the public key which we identify with the onion address, owns the onion address.
- DINKDINK 8y ago
  The closest you could get to OP's idea is to have a human-readable, non-configurable (but minable) mnemonic that maps to a public key.
  - kodablah 8y ago
    This has been tried quite a bit ranging from proquint to random 32-bit phrases [0]. I just don't think we as humans are going to be able to make something both memorable and with enough size to hold, say, ed25519 keys (i.e. Tor v3 keys). KDFs leave a lot to be desired too, we're going to have to find a better way. Until then, obtuse names and lack of easy discovery will plague decentralized setups. 0 - https://blog.asana.com/2011/09/6-sad-squid-snuggle-softly/ https://blog.asana.com/2011/09/6-sad-squid-snuggle-softly/
  - floatboth 8y ago
    Or just "mining" vanity addresses like facebookcorewwwi.onion
- jancsika 8y ago
  > If you could generate a "private key" from the public key, That's not what I wrote at all. I'm just talking about downgrading the onion addy generation to become a simple password authentication scheme. It's bad but no worse than logging into webmail without any 2FA. If you really don't understand what I'm talking about I can put together a PoC. But it's extremely straightforward so I'd rather not if you can just re-read what I wrote and grok the idea.

Retr0spectrum 8y ago

Uh, what? What you describe doesn't sound remotely feasible...

jancsika 8y ago
Here's a bad idea 1. Set a hidden service private key to all zeros. 2. Derive the public key from that private key (plus whatever else you must do) to generate the corresponding onion address for that all-zeros private key. 3. Type that onion address into a Tor browser and see what you get back. If what I just described is not even "remotely feasible," then one ought to be willing to type that addy into Tor browser running on their raw hardware and rest assured there is no possible way someone is running a (probably nefarious) service running at that address. Are you willing to do that? If not, what I'm talking about is just adding some leading, non-random, nonzero bits to that "all-zeros" private key. It's not a secure design, but if all people want is to send files that are too big for email it's no worse than using password authentication to log in to, say, msn.com.

zensavona 8y ago

You can't do that because that's not the way encryption works. The reason onion addresses are random looking is because they are a function of the hidden service's public key. If you could generate a "private key" from the public key, anyone could use your "domain name". The reason tor doesn't require centralised domain name services is because we can trust that whoever owns the private key to the public key which we identify with the onion address, owns the onion address.

DINKDINK 8y ago
The closest you could get to OP's idea is to have a human-readable, non-configurable (but minable) mnemonic that maps to a public key.
- kodablah 8y ago
  This has been tried quite a bit ranging from proquint to random 32-bit phrases [0]. I just don't think we as humans are going to be able to make something both memorable and with enough size to hold, say, ed25519 keys (i.e. Tor v3 keys). KDFs leave a lot to be desired too, we're going to have to find a better way. Until then, obtuse names and lack of easy discovery will plague decentralized setups. 0 - https://blog.asana.com/2011/09/6-sad-squid-snuggle-softly/ https://blog.asana.com/2011/09/6-sad-squid-snuggle-softly/
- floatboth 8y ago
  Or just "mining" vanity addresses like facebookcorewwwi.onion
jancsika 8y ago
> If you could generate a "private key" from the public key, That's not what I wrote at all. I'm just talking about downgrading the onion addy generation to become a simple password authentication scheme. It's bad but no worse than logging into webmail without any 2FA. If you really don't understand what I'm talking about I can put together a PoC. But it's extremely straightforward so I'd rather not if you can just re-read what I wrote and grok the idea.