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Popular dark-web hosting provider hacked, 6,500 sites down

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101–110 of 160 posts

Re: Popular dark-web hosting provider hacked, 6,500 sites down

#101

> there are no backups. Interesting. If I were into this kind of activity I would love to have backups designed, implemented and maintained the "dark" way. It seems to me that by just running the services you are not 100% into this business. You'd have to come up with the whole "dark ops" approach.

What would you define as a "dark" way.

The "dark" way is to assure that any and all traffic and interactions are anonymous as possible. Keeping a record of communications/behaviors is the direct antithesis of this.

The "dark" way is to never backup

Re: Popular dark-web hosting provider hacked, 6,500 sites down

#102
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just xor bit by bit against real random noise,embed it in a massive stream of other pure random, remember the offset, if it's really that important..

Don't roll your own crypto. If that was much better encryption, everyone would be using it.

I agree with not rolling your own crypto for your primary mechanism, layering it (in the correct order!) is guaranteed to be at least as secure as your strongest crypto.

That's what google did with CECPQ1, they use "new hope" which is a quantum resistant algorithm with traditional methods (X25519). That way if new hope is cracked, they are still using an industry standard you'd have to crack as well.

Re: Popular dark-web hosting provider hacked, 6,500 sites down

#103
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OnionShare is a good choice.[0] However, Tor is vulnerable to traffic analysis. And running a server, adversaries can easily modulate/fingerprint the traffic, which facilitates traffic analysis. If you can see the signal, and have taps on major AS, you can drill down to the server. 0) https://onionshare.org/

A way I would pinpoint a hidden server would be to monitor different data center regions / networks for outages or congestion, while at the same time looking at the hidden server's ping reply. The response times alone can reveal a lot of information. Once I have the data center, I'm sure the data center admins can see which servers are using Tor, and help with pinpointing it further. No need for taps.

Yeah, that too :(

One can route Tor traffic for .onion servers through VPNs, or even through nested VPN chains. That makes it a little harder, because the hosting provider can't easily tell that it's Tor traffic. Also, one can run a private obfsproxy, which isn't listed or indexed by Tor.

Re: Popular dark-web hosting provider hacked, 6,500 sites down

#104
post #93
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Tor Hidden Services" are services hosted on the tor network and inaccessible outside it. Hosts are assigned a dns name .onion so clients can connect to that service.

OK, I'm being picky, I know. But the .onion hostname has no relation to DNS. It's just the hash of the site's private key, truncated to 16 characters.

Absolutely fine to be!

I actually gave it a quick thought that I was curious how the hostnames were assigned but posted right before bed.

Re: Popular dark-web hosting provider hacked, 6,500 sites down

#105
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, I'm being picky, I know. But the .onion hostname has no relation to DNS. It's just the hash of the site's private key, truncated to 16 characters.

Absolutely fine to be! I actually gave it a quick thought that I was curious how the hostnames were assigned but posted right before bed.

Hey :)

Many would love having DNS for .onion addresses. And there's been much talk of a .onion domain.

Re: Popular dark-web hosting provider hacked, 6,500 sites down

#106

I guess that all of the private keys for the onion services will be gone too. Even if they aren't, they can't be used anymore anyway as they should be assumed to be compromised. I hashed for a month to get a vanity one, others have done longer. Did this hosting service allow custom private key uploads?

Is it wise to have a vanity private key in this circumstance?

Re: Popular dark-web hosting provider hacked, 6,500 sites down

#108

My bad. I signed up for my Free Dark Web Scan, and said my name was Philip'); DROP TABLE customers;--

I've done that to sms spammers. I don't know if it worked but I tried ten or so variations. I stopped receiving those messages. I was getting 10 a day at the time. I doubt I actually did any damage but I really hope I did.

Re: Popular dark-web hosting provider hacked, 6,500 sites down

#109
post #93
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Tor Hidden Services" are services hosted on the tor network and inaccessible outside it. Hosts are assigned a dns name .onion so clients can connect to that service.

OK, I'm being picky, I know. But the .onion hostname has no relation to DNS. It's just the hash of the site's private key, truncated to 16 characters.

To be more picky, it's the SHA-1 hash of the public key, truncated to 10 bytes, then base 32'd which makes 16 chars. That's only for v2, v3 is a bit different.

Re: Popular dark-web hosting provider hacked, 6,500 sites down

#110
post #4

Man, why do people insist on using others to host their tor hidden services? It seems like the last thing you'd want or need to do. It's super simple to set up a hidden service from your home computer and host. I've been putting all my clear web sites on tor as well for years. Lots of bot traffic but never any problems and plenty of real traffic too.

Isn't it extremely obvious that getting someone else to hold the bag for you reduces your own risk?
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