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Comment on How does "DNS" work on the dark web?

chaospatterns@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

On Tor dark web domains, you use the .onion domain. Tor is configured as a SOCKS proxy, so it doesn’t perform a DNS query. Instead, Tor itself sees you’re trying to connect to an onion domain name. Then it takes the URL and translates that into a public key that it knows how to find in its own hidden service directory.

Only the actual hidden service has a valid private key corresponding to that public key in the URL so cryptography (and the assumption that quantum computers don’t exist) ensures you’re talking to the right server.

Tl;dr effectively no DNS for onion hidden services

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LeapSecond@lemmy.zip ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
From the link, since I think this is the part most equivalent to DNS.

The Onion Service assembles an Onion Service descriptor, containing a list of its introduction points (and “authentication keys”), and signs this descriptor with the Onion Service’s identity private key.

The Onion Service upload that signed descriptor to a distributed hash table, which is part of the Tor network, so that clients can also get it.

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trolololol@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
What prevents me from doing all of that with a pre existing domain that belongs to a competitor?

If you get a state sponsored actor could it overtake things by brute force?

I am imagining this distributed nature of tor is similar to crypto currencies, where if you convince a big enough part of the network that an event did happen, for all practical purposes it’s as if it did happen.

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