[tor-dev] The case with Tor2Web

[George Kadianakis]

Hello!

It's a semi-secret that tor2web traffic has been blocked from the Tor
network when we introduced the DoS subsystem this March [0]. The reason
is that a big part of the DoS traffic was coming from one-hop clients
continuously hammering onion services.

This is something that we've been considering doing for a while (for
security and code-complexity reasons), and it just happened naturally
during the DoS incident.

As part of this, and since the DoS subsystem is going to stick around,
we are planning to permanently kill the Tor2Web subsystem of Tor, in an
effort to simplify our codebase and our feature list.

If you've been relying on tor2web for something, please consider
switching to a normal 3-hop client indeed. This is a heads up so that
you can let us know if that won't work for you, or you need help
transitioning out.

Cheers and hope we are not making you sad.

[0]: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/24902
https://blog.torproject.org/new-stable-tor-releases-security-fixes-and-dos-prevention-03210-03110-02915

[Keifer Bly]

To be 100% clear, “dos” as in “denial of service” correct? Thx.

Post by George Kadianakis
Hello!
It's a semi-secret that tor2web traffic has been blocked from the Tor
network when we introduced the DoS subsystem this March [0]. The reason
is that a big part of the DoS traffic was coming from one-hop clients
continuously hammering onion services.
This is something that we've been considering doing for a while (for
security and code-complexity reasons), and it just happened naturally
during the DoS incident.
As part of this, and since the DoS subsystem is going to stick around,
we are planning to permanently kill the Tor2Web subsystem of Tor, in an
effort to simplify our codebase and our feature list.
If you've been relying on tor2web for something, please consider
switching to a normal 3-hop client indeed. This is a heads up so that
you can let us know if that won't work for you, or you need help
transitioning out.
Cheers and hope we are not making you sad.
[0]: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/24902
https://blog.torproject.org/new-stable-tor-releases-security-fixes-and-dos-prevention-03210-03110-02915
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[Giovanni Pellerano]

Hello George!

no problem exists at all and an thank you so much for letting us know.

definitely the safety of Tor has always to come first with no compromises :)

take care,

Giovanni

Hey George,
not a problem if the Tor2webMode goes away, as it was an optimisation introduced years ago.
Nowadays performance of Tor has greatly improved, so I really feel it will not be an issue for Tor2web use-case, especially now that the one-hop server-side is optimizable for Onion sites that wish to have such an performance improvement! :-)
Fabio

Post by George Kadianakis
Hello!
It's a semi-secret that tor2web traffic has been blocked from the Tor
network when we introduced the DoS subsystem this March [0]. The reason
is that a big part of the DoS traffic was coming from one-hop clients
continuously hammering onion services.
This is something that we've been considering doing for a while (for
security and code-complexity reasons), and it just happened naturally
during the DoS incident.
As part of this, and since the DoS subsystem is going to stick around,
we are planning to permanently kill the Tor2Web subsystem of Tor, in an
effort to simplify our codebase and our feature list.
If you've been relying on tor2web for something, please consider
switching to a normal 3-hop client indeed. This is a heads up so that
you can let us know if that won't work for you, or you need help
transitioning out.
Cheers and hope we are not making you sad.
[0]: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/24902
https://blog.torproject.org/new-stable-tor-releases-security-fixes-and-dos-prevention-03210-03110-02915