• Don't Use Web2Tor/Tor2Web (especially Onion.cab)

    Web2Tor and Tor2Web are reverse proxies which allows clearnet users to access Tor Onion Sites (AKA Hidden Services), and there are a variety of services available online (such as onion.to, onion.cab, onion.city and onion direct) running this service.

    This post details why using these is such a bad idea, as well as detailing some of the changes I'm making to the site to help discourage use of these services.

  • Generating a vanity .onion address

    Tor Hidden Services are accessed through a web address ending in .onion. Generally speaking these appear to be random strings of letters and numbers, though they're actually a representation of the public key generated when the operator created their hidden service.

    It is possible, however, to attempt to generate a keypair which will allow you to generate a desired vanity URL, though the process is essentially a brute-force of key combinations, so may take some time.

  • Hosting TOR Hidden Services (.onions)

    The level of effort required to set up a TOR Hidden Service (known as a .onion) largely relates to the amount of paranoia you need to exercise regarding your anonymity.

    Whilst the ins and outs of Operational Security (Op-Sec) are a little too intricate for a single post, this documentation will take you through the steps required to configure a Debian server to host a .onion site with reasonable protections in place.