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They send a connection request to an IP range (e.g. What if we assume that attackers followed this method to reach your personal data: You might wonder how people can find out your public IP when you’re using Tor. onion domain found in the CN, which is in the ServerHello response given to the ClientHello message. Exposure of the Public IP of the Tor Service You’re UsingĪnyone who tries to reach port 443 from your server’s public, non-Tor IP address will see the certificate and the. Let's look at why in the following section. This will have a catastrophic impact on your web server's anonymity. The Common Name (CN) area in the certificate will state your domain, exampleLet’s say you’re using a web server service such as Apache, Nginx or something similar, and you misconfigure it to listen to all the connections that reach the network interfaces (0.0.0.0), instead of the loopback address (127.0.0.1). Let’s assume that your service URL is exampleWhen someone requests the website, the server sends the encryption data and the certificate in the ServerHello response given to the ClientHello request. onion extension signed by a certificate authority. To do so, you have to get the certificate for your website with the. Let’s assume that you implement TLS/SSL to secure the Tor service. OK, so you’re clearly concerned to maintain anonymity on the internet if you’re using Tor. The vulnerability that we discuss, that will allow anyone to find out the real IP of a hidden service, arises due to a misconfiguration in Tor setup. In order to run such a service, besides adjusting a series of settings for Tor, you also need to set up a web server like Apache or Nginx on the machine you’ll host your website on. This is a big win for privacy and makes it hard to censor or take down a hidden service.
For example, you can access The New York Times through or Facebook through, as long as you are currently using Tor.Īnother advantage, for website owners, is that your users cannot find out the real IP of your server. In fact, many websites that you use on a daily basis can also be accessed using a similar, hidden service, in order to serve users who value anonymity. Contrary to popular belief, these websites aren’t only used for shady activity, but also for legitimate purposes. They can only be reached using the Tor technology and you can recognize them by their use of the. But TOR doesn't only protect its users when they visit websites like or .Īnother option on the Tor network, for users who wish to preserve their anonymity, are the Tor hidden services. Instead, these servers see only the IP address of one of Tor's exit nodes. By doing this Tor users avoid exposing their IP addresses to the servers they visit.
The Onion Router, also known as Tor, is an internet service that provides anonymous internet surfing to users by bouncing the connection on several relays.