3 ms·

Just don't mistake tor onion service addresses for permanent things. The .onions are much less of a priority than the clear web "anonymous" proxy. If onion supp

Just don't mistake tor onion service addresses for permanent things. The .onions are much less of a priority than the clear web "anonymous" proxy. If onion support gets in the way of clear web proxy security it will be removed. Any particular version of Onion addresses will simply cease to exist and stop working in the tor project's software every 10 years or so; completely wiping out the entire tor ecosystem and all links. It's happened before and it will happen again. So yeah, .onion services are secure but they're also transient. Don't try to build a community that relies on .onion links continuing to work over years.

Fred34 3y ago
Or Tor will release another address system. I remember when the Tor team released their v3 onion address a few years back they killed access to the old v2 sites on the network by not making the new browser versions backwards compatible.
- jtvjan 3y ago
  It's not like support for v2 was removed immediately after v3 was released. v2 and v3 coëxisted for over three years, giving 16 months advance warning of the deprecation, ending in a four month period where support was removed from the server but the client could still connect to it. Operators had plenty of time to upgrade their services.
  - mike_hock 3y ago
    Yet, the clear-web DNS entries of major websites haven't changed in 15 years or more. It's not like you can just google an old Onion bookmark that's gone stale to get the current address. Address longevity is especially important if you're trying to re-democratize the internet and give everyone equal opportunity to host content, not just a handful of mega corporations. In that ecosystem, it wouldn't be out of the ordinary to have 5+ year old bookmarks laying around that you haven't visited in a while but want to check out again. It's a pre-Google internet.
    - mtlmtlmtlmtl 3y ago
      In reality though, most onion sites don't even stick around for very long anyway. And the URL scheme has nothing to do with it. Most sites are either illegal in nature and so regularly disappear for various reasons(police, exit scams etc), or they're just onion versions of clearnet sites, which means they'll be easy to find the new URL for. Or they just stop working because they cease to be maintained.
      - mike_hock 3y ago
        What's the cause and what's the effect, though.
Vecr 3y ago
Do you have any reason to think they would get rid of v3 any time soon? They should be able to upgrade the encryption (and some, but not all of their authentication) to post quantum without changing the addresses.
- system33- 3y ago
  v2 were removed because they are insecure. Bad crypto and addresses were discoverable when they shouldn’t need to be (and scanners were always running and discovering them). I don’t think there’s any reason to suspect v3 will be removed because it’s “in the way” of standard clear-web proxying. If they are removed, it’ll be because there’s an issue and a v4 is needed.

Fred34 3y ago

Or Tor will release another address system. I remember when the Tor team released their v3 onion address a few years back they killed access to the old v2 sites on the network by not making the new browser versions backwards compatible.

jtvjan 3y ago
It's not like support for v2 was removed immediately after v3 was released. v2 and v3 coëxisted for over three years, giving 16 months advance warning of the deprecation, ending in a four month period where support was removed from the server but the client could still connect to it. Operators had plenty of time to upgrade their services.
- mike_hock 3y ago
  Yet, the clear-web DNS entries of major websites haven't changed in 15 years or more. It's not like you can just google an old Onion bookmark that's gone stale to get the current address. Address longevity is especially important if you're trying to re-democratize the internet and give everyone equal opportunity to host content, not just a handful of mega corporations. In that ecosystem, it wouldn't be out of the ordinary to have 5+ year old bookmarks laying around that you haven't visited in a while but want to check out again. It's a pre-Google internet.
  - mtlmtlmtlmtl 3y ago
    In reality though, most onion sites don't even stick around for very long anyway. And the URL scheme has nothing to do with it. Most sites are either illegal in nature and so regularly disappear for various reasons(police, exit scams etc), or they're just onion versions of clearnet sites, which means they'll be easy to find the new URL for. Or they just stop working because they cease to be maintained.
    - mike_hock 3y ago
      What's the cause and what's the effect, though.

Vecr 3y ago

Do you have any reason to think they would get rid of v3 any time soon? They should be able to upgrade the encryption (and some, but not all of their authentication) to post quantum without changing the addresses.

system33- 3y ago
v2 were removed because they are insecure. Bad crypto and addresses were discoverable when they shouldn’t need to be (and scanners were always running and discovering them). I don’t think there’s any reason to suspect v3 will be removed because it’s “in the way” of standard clear-web proxying. If they are removed, it’ll be because there’s an issue and a v4 is needed.