> It appears that somebody has made their own Tor client implementation and it fetches its dir info in a very rude way. If anybody knows details of it, please do let us know.

How is it possible for a "rude client" to cripple TOR in this way?

If I were to attack the Tor project that's one of the cards I'd want in my quiver to mix metaphors with a blender; assume there's a deficiency in v2 addresses; having a weakness in the protocol that allows someone to "crash" v3 addresses and force everyone back to v2 for a period of time might be a one-time shot; but it could be worth playing the card if the stakes were high...

The coincidence of this with Parler and all the hoopla going on right now is interesting. Nothing to see, citizen, move along.

>The coincidence of this with Parler and all the hoopla going on right now is interesting. Nothing to see, citizen, move along.

Are you suggesting if there's a credible threat to the president elect at the inauguration that our 3-letter agencies shouldn't do everything in their power to stop it?

Yes. If "do everything in their power" includes crippling global resources. Of the US did this to the regular internet, the rest of the world would be pissed.

Directory servers, the DNS of Tor iirc, are a central point of failure I believe. I would guess it's hard to distribute this and keep queriers anonymous. Can do a DHT over Tor, but you still need known address list to bootstrap.

bittorrent uses DHT with hardcoded bootstrap nodes. Has that ever been taken down?

Why does this affect only v3 onions, and not v2 onions or "exiting to the regular internet" connections?

DDOS theory here - https://darknetdaily.com/?p=1030

using TOR to open this link I get ...

"Access denied. Your IP address is blacklisted. If you feel this is in error please contact your hosting provider's abuse department."

Archive.org link works: https://web.archive.org/web/20210110154350/https://darknetda...

Internet Archive donate link: https://archive.org/donate/

Seems like this might be more related to Bitcoin (it recently hit an all-time high of $40k) than plots against right-wing groups:

``` I am aware of at least 2 markets that have paid for attacks against other markets within the last few weeks. I also know of one wishing to pay for retaliation attacks.

This behavior from market admins is absolutely unacceptable and it will not be tolerated. You have [b]no idea[/b] of the ramifications this has, it is way beyond just taking your competitor offline, inadvertadly, but you are causing a problem that is a great deal worse without even knowing it, if market admins wish me to disclose these other issues to them, they can contact me directly and you will soon rethink your poor business strategy.

– From here, there will be extreme consequences for any Market admin found to be funding attacks against any other service, market or not. You know who you are and I won’t publicly out you here for it, for the time being. ```

when we want, we can track everyone right

A lot of people confuse pseudo anonymity with true anonymity.

With tracking someone, "when there's a will, there's a way." The same thing applies to platforms like tor: If there's a will to track someone down, something like tor is mainly a speed bump; not a guarantee.

Just look at how the Silk Road was brought down: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silk_Road_(marketplace)#Arrest...

It's a pretty steep speed bump. Roberts was caught because he was sloppy.

Centralizing the world under one ISP and legal jurisdiction would truly enable tracking anyone through Tor via timing analysis (but even then people would be able to use fancy, time-delayed mixnets). Outlawing/enforcing/banning any suspicious traffic from anyone ever would be a solid solution too. Mounting AI-monitored cameras behind every monitor or on everyone's forehead would be even better. Doing those things are even steeper speed bumps.

Or was it that he didn't have the know-how?

You need to have some pretty advanced knowledge to operate on the internet and not leave a trace.

It was literally because he used the same username in multiple places and, early on, he used an email address containing his full real name.[0]

If it's advanced not to do that, the bar isn't very high. :p

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Ulbricht#Arrest

I hope not. I have actual need for free speech since I'm not a fascist.

If you're not a fascist then simply be quiet, because the Non-Fascists in control who agree with all truly decent people are going to limit themselves to censoring fascists and you have nothing to worry about.

> First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—

> Because I was not a socialist.

> [...]

> Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

Be careful in the application of your apathy.

It's pretty clear he was being sarcastic!

> It's pretty clear he was being sarcastic!

Yeah…

> Poe's law is an adage of Internet culture stating that, without a clear indicator of the author's intent, it is impossible to create a parody of extreme views so obviously exaggerated that it cannot be mistaken by some readers for a sincere expression of the views being parodied.[1][2][3]

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law

It's increasingly difficult to tell what's sarcasm and parody.

No, it wasn't clear. It's not that different from views I've seen expressed on here before.

Don't be ridiculous. Only fascist enemies of the state are ever sarcastic.

You just watch yourself, sarcastic twits are fourth down on today's list. And you just outed one.

Hard not to speculate this as part of the coordinated purge of right wing media right now, as they were conceivably going to move to darknets, except suddenly new onion addresses aren't available. This would be consistent with the level of attack a state would use.

The when always matters more than the what.

What happend to good ol validations? Can we build a bit harder these servers.. These services are cornerstone to many people. These days you have to be so so carefull with everything. Critical thinking seems to be crime these days to our police state lovers.