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The New York Times Is Now Available as a Tor Onion Service

open.nytimes.com

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Re: The New York Times Is Now Available as a Tor Onion Service

#71

Post by vintageseltzer »

mattdotc wrote: post #68
spodek wrote: post #56

Does anyone know why they posted this story through Medium?

TimesOpen is an engineer-driven blog. Its previous incarnation was self-hosted on a WordPress stack (separate from our main CMS), but for various reasons it was decided to re-platform. There were many discussions before settling on Medium and alternatives were considered (such as dogfooding our own CMS). We have a lot of work in-flight to modernize and simplify our publishing stack, and the timing wasn't right to rel…

How widely is WordPress being used at NYT today? Seems like it was used a lot about five years ago but don’t see it much anymore.

Re: The New York Times Is Now Available as a Tor Onion Service

#72

Post by kzrdude »

colejohnson66 wrote: post #30
belorn wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Extended Validation certificate is when a company go to a CA and provide a bunch of business documents and legal proof that they really own the company behind a name. Its not a technical aspect but human lawyer human lawyer that establish a certificate. At the end if the validation is successful, the company get a technical signed document that in browsers shows up as a green lock and the name in green next to the UR…

So in addition to knowing that your browser is connected to where you want, you now know that the website you want is actually who they say they are?

Of course you also need a browser and/or OS to establish the roots of the trust relations.

Re: The New York Times Is Now Available as a Tor Onion Service

#73

Post by system33- »

nobodyorother wrote: post #44

Does the onion service still serve the same advertisements their website and mobile app do? If so, they're leaving their users-who-want-to-stay-relatively-anonymous open to attack via the advertisement vector. Members of that group would be considered high-value targets simply due to their anonymity desires. I can't see the number of daily users being large enough that they'd lose significant profit by closing that a…

Tor Browser isolates cookies and other browser state into buckets based on URL bar domains.

Re: The New York Times Is Now Available as a Tor Onion Service

#74

Post by nobodyorother »

reaperducer wrote: post #58
nobodyorother wrote: post #44

Does the onion service still serve the same advertisements their website and mobile app do? If so, they're leaving their users-who-want-to-stay-relatively-anonymous open to attack via the advertisement vector. Members of that group would be considered high-value targets simply due to their anonymity desires. I can't see the number of daily users being large enough that they'd lose significant profit by closing that a…

Why not try it and let us know instead of simply making guesses?

I was asking because I'm currently nowhere near a system that I'd trust for this purpose. I'll be near one later and, if you're interested, I'll update the question with my findings.

Re: The New York Times Is Now Available as a Tor Onion Service

#75

Post by jerheinze »

system33- wrote: post #73
nobodyorother wrote: post #44

Does the onion service still serve the same advertisements their website and mobile app do? If so, they're leaving their users-who-want-to-stay-relatively-anonymous open to attack via the advertisement vector. Members of that group would be considered high-value targets simply due to their anonymity desires. I can't see the number of daily users being large enough that they'd lose significant profit by closing that a…

Tor Browser isolates cookies and other browser state into buckets based on URL bar domains.

... i.e. first party isolation, one can read more about it on the Tor Browser design document: https://www.torproject.org/projects/torbrowser/design/

Re: The New York Times Is Now Available as a Tor Onion Service

#76

Post by jstanley »

nobodyorother wrote: post #74
reaperducer wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not try it and let us know instead of simply making guesses?

I was asking because I'm currently nowhere near a system that I'd trust for this purpose. I'll be near one later and, if you're interested, I'll update the question with my findings.

There exists a system that you wouldn't trust to provide a good-enough answer to the question "Does the onion service still serve the same advertisements their website and mobile app do?" ?

What do you think an untrustworthy system is doing that would make it give a not-good-enough answer?

Re: The New York Times Is Now Available as a Tor Onion Service

#78

Post by nobodyorother »

jstanley wrote: post #76
nobodyorother wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was asking because I'm currently nowhere near a system that I'd trust for this purpose. I'll be near one later and, if you're interested, I'll update the question with my findings.

There exists a system that you wouldn't trust to provide a good-enough answer to the question "Does the onion service still serve the same advertisements their website and mobile app do?" ? What do you think an untrustworthy system is doing that would make it give a not-good-enough answer?

That's a clever question and the answer has a few parts, mostly due to the slipperiness of "trust" as a concept: I wasn't specific enough in my description of my own threat model (which makes sense, as my aim wasn't to explain the threat model but to cultivate answers from other folks). In short, I currently only have access to systems that are too costly to replace, if the site is under active attack. That's not to say that HN's comment section isn't also a risk, but it seems less of one.

I considered these actors before deciding to ask the question instead of immediately connecting directly: available computer systems, internet pipes, the NYT website, and the bevy of third party ad-services hosted through the website.

Re: The New York Times Is Now Available as a Tor Onion Service

#79

Post by sova »

nobodyorother wrote: post #44

Does the onion service still serve the same advertisements their website and mobile app do? If so, they're leaving their users-who-want-to-stay-relatively-anonymous open to attack via the advertisement vector. Members of that group would be considered high-value targets simply due to their anonymity desires. I can't see the number of daily users being large enough that they'd lose significant profit by closing that a…

I am curious about this as well. Tor is anonymous insofar as individual entrances and exits cannot be monitored. The advertising and other tracking pixels that would riddle something like the NYT site makes me think this is how some uncareful kingpin will fall, checking the op-eds.

Re: The New York Times Is Now Available as a Tor Onion Service

#80

Post by icebraining »

athenot wrote: post #64
belorn wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Extended Validation certificate is when a company go to a CA and provide a bunch of business documents and legal proof that they really own the company behind a name. Its not a technical aspect but human lawyer human lawyer that establish a certificate. At the end if the validation is successful, the company get a technical signed document that in browsers shows up as a green lock and the name in green next to the UR…

> "a bunch of business documents and legal proof" In my case they just needed me to put an entry in the Yellow Pages...

Which CA?
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