3 ms·

I'm still not understanding why the 15 year history of communities was not able or willing to act on the 13 months of warning, and months of discussion before t

I'm still not understanding why the 15 year history of communities was not able or willing to act on the 13 months of warning, and months of discussion before that. There was more than ample time to prepare. Surely you don't expect a project like Tor to simply ignore security forever going forward because "people still use it"? Should Tor just stay V2, security be damned? I don't think Tor's main goal is to ensure your community stays friends; the goals are a bit loftier. I wonder if you hold the same views on any other security-related thing like cryptography or password storage. We'd still be at 8 character, lower-case only, truncated passwords "because people built infrastructure for it".

npteljes 5y ago
I just don't get GP's point. If the workings of the system compromise its entire premise, of course they upgrade the system so that it matches the original intentions. It's like they shouldn't have deprecated old SSL and TLS versions, because some web services still only use those. I can't imagine an active community having trouble with this.
- saurik 5y ago
  The problem is that the URLs themselves got deprecated: the entire interlinked ecosystem got destroyed. Maybe think of what would happen if all of our current TLDs got deprecated tomorrow, and in a year or two support for them would start getting dismantled. Every single link anyone has ever posted on Hacker News is now broken. Now what? You are all making it sound like this isn't some big deal: that people just needed to "get their act together"... but how do you rebuild the world wide web after breaking every link in the web? Whose job is it even to fix every single link on every single page and stored in every single comment in every single database? Now, you can certainly argue that the old system was broken by insecurity and thereby had to die. But that just means the entire concept of onion services was some temporary art project more than a platform on which people could build the kind of ecosystem we have on the "normal" world wide web. At best, it means that people needed to come up with some extremely different way of thinking about what those .onion addresses really were, as they were clearly more like IP addresses than hostnames. I personally can't help but think there could have been some better transition plan. Like maybe a mechanism where people can leave cross-signed redirects from v2 to v3 domains, and maybe even they would only be honored if signed before some date, or maybe there is a disambiguation dialog for competing redirects that also shows the time the redirect was published (these being attempts to deal with "in the future someone could crack this and start making arbitrary redirects for any old site"). But that clearly didn't happen and now that entire ecosystem is dead. Maybe it will rebuild, and maybe one day it will be stronger than it is now, but frankly... when that happens, wouldn't you expect people to start pointing out that the cryptography of the ECC curve they are using is now subject to breaking by quantum computers or whatever we have in another 15 years? Maybe they will handle that transition better, or maybe the mere thought of that will serve as a lesson to not rebuild inside that design. Truly, though, a design that doesn't take this into consideration from the beginning is inherently flawed. As I noted in passing earlier: these .onion names were clearly more like IP addresses, and so you needed some kind of translation later on top of that to provide later portability. As much as I often hate on the current players in "decentralized DNS" (for various reasons that they could have avoided), that's the kind of concept that clearly is going to win the day going forward.
  - ziddoap 5y ago
    >Now, you can certainly argue that the old system was broken by insecurity and thereby had to die. But that just means the entire concept of onion services was some temporary art project An insecure Tor is less than worthless. Tor is not trying to be a community or be the next geocities. It is an evolving security and privacy project, adapting to the landscape as it needs to, in an effort to anonymize and protect it's users. >a platform on which people could build the kind of ecosystem we have on the "normal" world wide web This was never the goal of Tor, and may be the source of your frustrations. Tor has one fundamental mission: deploying free and open source anonymity and privacy technologies. It is a shame that links will be broken, and it sucks that you feel like something you built up is being torn down. But arguing that it should be kept insecure because of the friends you've made along the way is exactly the opposite of Tor's mission statement.
    - saurik 5y ago
      > It is a shame that links will be broken, and it sucks that you feel like something you built up is being torn down. FWIW, your comment is confusing either identities or motives: I have never myself built a .onion site, in no small part because I saw clearly a long time ago that the ecosystem was doomed: I carefully consider all of the tech I use for "sustainability". I am merely someone who is sitting on the sidelines, attempting to--and apparently succeeding, based on your sibling comment--at providing some context and translation in a disagreement. > Tor is not trying to be a community or be the next geocities. ... This was never the goal of Tor, and may be the source of your frustrations. I even have a lot of sympathy for your attempt here to seemingly agree with me that the .onion ecosystem could never be taken seriously for a "world wide web"-like ecosystem... but, then you seem to fail to realize the context of me responding to someone who was willing to believe that .onion could work and felt that the websites in question merely should have somehow updated sooner (forgetting that the web is, well, a "web" <- a mistake I actually think is understandable as it isn't necessarily immediately obvious). > But arguing that it should be kept insecure because of the friends you've made along the way is exactly the opposite of Tor's mission statement. I absolutely did no such thing, and it is disingenuous to claim such after literally quoting me providing and admitting the opposite argument in my comment. If you re-read my point, I even sketch out a potential securable transition plan for a "road not taken" that doesn't involve Tor being "kept insecure". The real travesty, frankly, is that Tor failed to understand the implications of what they had built and prepare people for the future.
superkuh 5y ago
Because tor v2 and v3 are not compatible. You can't just make all the links everyone ever made on any site, or entries in any search index, suddenly point to a new URL. You can announce v2 is going to disappear and say that everyone should try to port what they can, but most don't. Only the big sites and their users actually have any pseudo-continuity through their efforts. And even then all the links stop working.
- ziddoap 5y ago
  The fact that people didn't port is not an argument that they shouldn't have ported. Tor is primarily a security and privacy project. Arguing that they should keep an insecure version because people decided to ignore the security implications of that insecure version is an awful argument. Especially when those people had well over a year to execute. Your use case for Tor seems to be unrelated to the projects goals.

npteljes 5y ago

I just don't get GP's point. If the workings of the system compromise its entire premise, of course they upgrade the system so that it matches the original intentions. It's like they shouldn't have deprecated old SSL and TLS versions, because some web services still only use those. I can't imagine an active community having trouble with this.

saurik 5y ago
The problem is that the URLs themselves got deprecated: the entire interlinked ecosystem got destroyed. Maybe think of what would happen if all of our current TLDs got deprecated tomorrow, and in a year or two support for them would start getting dismantled. Every single link anyone has ever posted on Hacker News is now broken. Now what? You are all making it sound like this isn't some big deal: that people just needed to "get their act together"... but how do you rebuild the world wide web after breaking every link in the web? Whose job is it even to fix every single link on every single page and stored in every single comment in every single database? Now, you can certainly argue that the old system was broken by insecurity and thereby had to die. But that just means the entire concept of onion services was some temporary art project more than a platform on which people could build the kind of ecosystem we have on the "normal" world wide web. At best, it means that people needed to come up with some extremely different way of thinking about what those .onion addresses really were, as they were clearly more like IP addresses than hostnames. I personally can't help but think there could have been some better transition plan. Like maybe a mechanism where people can leave cross-signed redirects from v2 to v3 domains, and maybe even they would only be honored if signed before some date, or maybe there is a disambiguation dialog for competing redirects that also shows the time the redirect was published (these being attempts to deal with "in the future someone could crack this and start making arbitrary redirects for any old site"). But that clearly didn't happen and now that entire ecosystem is dead. Maybe it will rebuild, and maybe one day it will be stronger than it is now, but frankly... when that happens, wouldn't you expect people to start pointing out that the cryptography of the ECC curve they are using is now subject to breaking by quantum computers or whatever we have in another 15 years? Maybe they will handle that transition better, or maybe the mere thought of that will serve as a lesson to not rebuild inside that design. Truly, though, a design that doesn't take this into consideration from the beginning is inherently flawed. As I noted in passing earlier: these .onion names were clearly more like IP addresses, and so you needed some kind of translation later on top of that to provide later portability. As much as I often hate on the current players in "decentralized DNS" (for various reasons that they could have avoided), that's the kind of concept that clearly is going to win the day going forward.
- ziddoap 5y ago
  >Now, you can certainly argue that the old system was broken by insecurity and thereby had to die. But that just means the entire concept of onion services was some temporary art project An insecure Tor is less than worthless. Tor is not trying to be a community or be the next geocities. It is an evolving security and privacy project, adapting to the landscape as it needs to, in an effort to anonymize and protect it's users. >a platform on which people could build the kind of ecosystem we have on the "normal" world wide web This was never the goal of Tor, and may be the source of your frustrations. Tor has one fundamental mission: deploying free and open source anonymity and privacy technologies. It is a shame that links will be broken, and it sucks that you feel like something you built up is being torn down. But arguing that it should be kept insecure because of the friends you've made along the way is exactly the opposite of Tor's mission statement.
  - saurik 5y ago
    > It is a shame that links will be broken, and it sucks that you feel like something you built up is being torn down. FWIW, your comment is confusing either identities or motives: I have never myself built a .onion site, in no small part because I saw clearly a long time ago that the ecosystem was doomed: I carefully consider all of the tech I use for "sustainability". I am merely someone who is sitting on the sidelines, attempting to--and apparently succeeding, based on your sibling comment--at providing some context and translation in a disagreement. > Tor is not trying to be a community or be the next geocities. ... This was never the goal of Tor, and may be the source of your frustrations. I even have a lot of sympathy for your attempt here to seemingly agree with me that the .onion ecosystem could never be taken seriously for a "world wide web"-like ecosystem... but, then you seem to fail to realize the context of me responding to someone who was willing to believe that .onion could work and felt that the websites in question merely should have somehow updated sooner (forgetting that the web is, well, a "web" <- a mistake I actually think is understandable as it isn't necessarily immediately obvious). > But arguing that it should be kept insecure because of the friends you've made along the way is exactly the opposite of Tor's mission statement. I absolutely did no such thing, and it is disingenuous to claim such after literally quoting me providing and admitting the opposite argument in my comment. If you re-read my point, I even sketch out a potential securable transition plan for a "road not taken" that doesn't involve Tor being "kept insecure". The real travesty, frankly, is that Tor failed to understand the implications of what they had built and prepare people for the future.

superkuh 5y ago

Because tor v2 and v3 are not compatible. You can't just make all the links everyone ever made on any site, or entries in any search index, suddenly point to a new URL. You can announce v2 is going to disappear and say that everyone should try to port what they can, but most don't. Only the big sites and their users actually have any pseudo-continuity through their efforts. And even then all the links stop working.

ziddoap 5y ago
The fact that people didn't port is not an argument that they shouldn't have ported. Tor is primarily a security and privacy project. Arguing that they should keep an insecure version because people decided to ignore the security implications of that insecure version is an awful argument. Especially when those people had well over a year to execute. Your use case for Tor seems to be unrelated to the projects goals.