The Tor Project announces a more secure generation of onion services

[midian182]

While some people still associate the Tor anonymity network solely with the criminal elements of the dark web, it’s increasingly being used by publishers such as Facebook and the New York Times to avoid censorship in certain countries, along with everyday users wishing to protect their privacy. But the technology is over ten years old now, and more governments and hackers are targeting its systems, which is why a next generation of onion services is being added.

The Tor Project—the group behind Tor—has been working on the update, which will strengthen security and keep data anonymized, for the last four years. It’s now available in an alpha release.

On the cryptography side, we are looking at cutting-edge crypto algorithms and improved authentication schemes. On the protocol end, we redesigned the directory system to defend against info leaks and reduce the overall attack surface. For example, did you know that in the legacy onion system, the network could learn about your onions? However, with this next-generation design, your onion address is completely private and only known to you and whoever you choose to disclose it to.

Most Tor users are unlikely to notice any of the changes, though the new .onion domain names will be longer. The Tor Project said that as the current code stabilizes, more features will be added in the future, including advanced client authorization, improved guard algorithms, and offline service keys.

As the bugs are ironed out and extra features are added to the new iteration, the legacy onion system will remain the default option, though the plan is to phase out the older technology in a few years’ time.

Back in February, a vigilante hacker associated with hacktivist group Anonymous took down about 20 percent of the Dark Web, apparently a reaction to discovering gigabytes of child pornography

If you want to find out everything about the Dark Web and learn how to access it, check out this feature.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/71731-tor-project-announces-more-secure-generation-onion-services.html

 

[davislane1]

Back in February, a vigilante hacker associated with hacktivist group Anonymous took down about 20 percent of the Dark Web, apparently a reaction to discovering gigabytes of child pornography

Encryption and network security are outside of my area of expertise, so I'm hoping someone can explain this to me.

Tor has claimed to be one of the most secure networks publicly available. If this is the case, how come random hackers can take out large portions of it seemingly at will?

As a side note... Why does law enforcement not do the same re: things like child pornography and illegal drug/weapon sales etc.?

 

[avioza]

As a side note... Why does law enforcement not do the same re: things like child pornography and illegal drug/weapon sales etc.?

They can catch the bastards...

 

[Puiu]

Back in February, a vigilante hacker associated with hacktivist group Anonymous took down about 20 percent of the Dark Web, apparently a reaction to discovering gigabytes of child pornography

Encryption and network security are outside of my area of expertise, so I'm hoping someone can explain this to me.

Tor has claimed to be one of the most secure networks publicly available. If this is the case, how come random hackers can take out large portions of it seemingly at will?

As a side note... Why does law enforcement not do the same re: things like child pornography and illegal drug/weapon sales etc.?

Law enforcement can't use "hacking" to gather evidence (they would be breaking the law themselves and the evidence would be thrown out of court). But they do catch such criminals/websites from time to time that are using Tor.
As for "most secure" doesn't mean "100% secure". Just a few days ago an update was issued for a critical flaw that could reveal your IP address for Mac and Linux when you visited certain types of addresses.

 

[TheBigT42]

Back in February, a vigilante hacker associated with hacktivist group Anonymous took down about 20 percent of the Dark Web, apparently a reaction to discovering gigabytes of child pornography

Encryption and network security are outside of my area of expertise, so I'm hoping someone can explain this to me.

Tor has claimed to be one of the most secure networks publicly available. If this is the case, how come random hackers can take out large portions of it seemingly at will?

As a side note... Why does law enforcement not do the same re: things like child pornography and illegal drug/weapon sales etc.?

The "Dark Web" and "TOR" are not interchangeable terms.

 

[davislane1]

The "Dark Web" and "TOR" are not interchangeable terms.

Of course, captain.