A Third of All Dark Web Domains Are Now V3 Onion Sites (therecord.media) 20
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Record: Throughout 2020 and 2021, the Tor anonymity network has gone through a major change as the Tor software team has released a new version of its software that updated how .onion domains look and work. More specifically, the Tor Project has done away with 16-character-long .onion domains, also known as v2 addresses, and replaced them with 56-character-long domains, known as v3. The move, driven by a need to improve the Tor network's privacy, security, and resilience to deanonymization attacks, was announced years in advance, and the entire process took more than a year to complete.
But despite the Tor team's best efforts to announce the move in advance, new numbers compiled and released by dark web monitoring company DarkOwl show that the Tor network is still made up in large part of servers running older v2 domains. "In the last six weeks, DarkOwl's Vision platform has observed an average of 104,095 active .onion services across both address schemes of which: 62% are v2 addresses and 38% are v3 addresses," the company said last week. DarkOwl says it detected a spike in new v3 domains in July 2021, which coincided with the Tor team adding a fullscreen warning before accessing v2 domains in preparation for the browser's v11 release this fall. This resulted in more than 2,900 v3 domains being registered in the last two weeks of July alone. However, as the Tor team noted in its own v2-to-v3 analysis in September, the number of v3 domains is trending up. The report adds that v2 sites are expected to go extinct in the coming year. "The reason is that as most Tor node operators will update their servers to versions that will not support v2 domains, there will be no Tor relays capable of routing the traffic to these old-gen domains," report The Record.
But despite the Tor team's best efforts to announce the move in advance, new numbers compiled and released by dark web monitoring company DarkOwl show that the Tor network is still made up in large part of servers running older v2 domains. "In the last six weeks, DarkOwl's Vision platform has observed an average of 104,095 active .onion services across both address schemes of which: 62% are v2 addresses and 38% are v3 addresses," the company said last week. DarkOwl says it detected a spike in new v3 domains in July 2021, which coincided with the Tor team adding a fullscreen warning before accessing v2 domains in preparation for the browser's v11 release this fall. This resulted in more than 2,900 v3 domains being registered in the last two weeks of July alone. However, as the Tor team noted in its own v2-to-v3 analysis in September, the number of v3 domains is trending up. The report adds that v2 sites are expected to go extinct in the coming year. "The reason is that as most Tor node operators will update their servers to versions that will not support v2 domains, there will be no Tor relays capable of routing the traffic to these old-gen domains," report The Record.
Re: (Score:2)
To Hell with half the world living the dream of a boot stepping on their face, forever.
The West has crooks to catch!
Mapping old to new (Score:4, Interesting)
Governments don't want v3... (Score:3, Interesting)
If I were a paranoid geek, I might conclude that that up to 62% of tor servers are actually run by governments that are happy with the current (traceable) security provided by v2 addresses...
Re: (Score:2)
If I were a paranoid geek, I might conclude that that up to 62% of tor servers are actually run by governments that are happy with the current (traceable) security provided by v2 addresses...
Guess you missed the part where those domains won't be reachable shortly.
Pointless (Score:2, Interesting)
Is there anything on there besides illegal materials? What exactly is the point of this in non-authoritarian countries?
Re:Pointless (Score:5, Insightful)
"Authoritarian" is a term that very much lies in the eye of the beholder ;).
Re: (Score:2)
Try China or Russia or Saudi Arabia amd say that again.
Re: (Score:2)
In China, Russia or Saudi Arabia. they very likely not agree with my definition of "totalitarian" which proves my point nicely.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
No point unless:
a) You are a very special person that warrants others scrutiny, like an actual criminal.
b) You have enveloped yourself in a fantasy about being a very special person that warrants others scrutiny. This is much more common.
Re: (Score:2)
No point unless: a) You are a very special person that warrants others scrutiny, like an actual criminal. b) You have enveloped yourself in a fantasy about being a very special person that warrants others scrutiny. This is much more common.
Ah.. A typical mouth-breather in the wild....
Re: (Score:1)
So I get a troll mod and an ad-hominem attack? No actual debate/discussion here anymore then?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Is there anything on there besides illegal materials? What exactly is the point of this in non-authoritarian countries?
Name a non-authoritarian country.
Re: (Score:2)
Antarctica :) /joke /preventative-whoosh
Re: Pointless (Score:2)
"104,095 active .onion services..." (Score:5, Interesting)
More are needed. If there were a million or a billion .onion services it might be more difficult to track individual users. As it stands, Big Brother, whether government or corporate, can somewhat easily observe user activities.
Freedom loving citizens of the world should all create .onion services if for no other reason than to help protect those who desperately need a private place to store and share information. Journalists and whistleblowers, for example, are subject to torture and death worldwide.
Criminal uses of .onion are less of a concern. They deal in the real world of money, drugs, sex trade, etc and while they may do business on the dark web, they can be caught by the trail of their physical real world activities.
Look around you; is there any place you can see where you can have privacy? Your home? Your Facebook page? Your cell phone? Any place where you and I can have a private chat where nobody can intrude? And what if we were Chinese or Turkish citizens? It is a small miracle that there can be a private place on the internet- let's encourage that.
Re: (Score:3)
Freedom loving citizens of the world should all create .onion services if for no other reason than to help protect those who desperately need a private place to store and share information. Journalists and whistleblowers, for example, are subject to torture and death worldwide.
Those interested can take a look here:
https://community.torproject.o... [torproject.org]
re (Score:1)