Source
r/TOR•
HackerAndCoder

PSA: v2 onions will not work in TB 10.5, set to launch the 15th of June

Pinned

You hopefully already know this, but if you don't: v2 onions (the short ones, like facebookcorewwwi.onion) will be deprecated following the deprecation timeline in tor 0.4.6.x, which Tor Browser 10.5 will be using.

If you are a site administrator, UPDATE!

Current alpha versions of Tor Browser also cannot access v2 onions, if you are experiencing any problems accessing them, check if you are using an alpha version.

Edit: The launch date has been moved to the 29 of June. You can always check the current date here

Posted May 27, 2021, 10:17 PM UTC · edited

6515
ssoreerf•

An era has passed

5
signofzeta•

Will Tor (not the Browser) also be removing support for v2 addresses?

4
torrio888•

Yes.

3
signofzeta•

That’s what I assumed. Thanks!

2
HackerAndCoderOP•

There are still some versions/series of it that will support v2 (and no I am not talking about older versions), until October.

1
x1y2•

u/protonmail

3
ProtonMail•

Hi! We are in the finishing stages re: supporting v3, and we will definitely announce this before Tor stops supporting v2.

8
x1y2•

Great. Thanks for the update!

2
[deleted]•

[removed]

1
[deleted]•

[deleted]

1
hemojiz•

You better have a cool v3 URL

1
Molire•

For any users who might be unfamiliar with them, each of the following Tor Project links go to a list of sixty-one onion services run by the Tor Project. The list includes the https, onion v2, and onion v3 addresses for each one (presently, one or more onion v3 addresses in the list might fail to connect because it is not online):

https://onion.torproject.org/

http://yz7lpwfhhzcdyc5y.onion/

http://xao2lxsmia2edq2n5zxg6uahx6xox2t7bfjw6b5vdzsxi7ezmqob6qid.onion/

2
Pro2ALib•

I have a question. Ive never used Tor but I downloaded it today and got to the hidden wiki. Nothing else was done. Im just curious to see what some of its contents are. Is this safe or shall I learn to use Tails as well? My apologies if Im in the wrong subreddit.

1
Molire•

"...there is no longer one single official Hidden Wiki." — Wikipedia: The Hidden Wiki.

The r/onions sidebar has a list of search engines for onion sites.

Alex Muffet's list of onion services: https://github.com/alecmuffett/real-world-onion-sites#civil-society-and-community

I think most Users of Tor use Tor Browser as their primary browser for surfing the web and for connecting to their favorite https sites, including users connecting from Antarctica, Vatican City, Greenland, and about 248 other countries and territories.

This academic report (chapter: "Into the dark") describes what types of content was found on onion sites, which I think are mostly boring and of little or no interest for most Tor users. The clear web is richer in content and offers more variety than onionspace.

On June 1, 2021, Tor Metrics reported 162,432 unique .onion addresses (version 2 only), which amount to about 0.013% times the 1,218,423,991 web sites responding to the Netcraft May 2021 Web Server Survey.

Tor is safe See: Sponsors, Reports, and Question 10. It's safe to visit any .onion address, but don't download content unless you 100% trust the site, which is a rule of thumb that applies as well to any https site. It's legal to visit any .onion address and look, as long as you don't order, purchase, or receive illegal products or services. Caveat, if you accidentally land on a child porn site, leave the site immediately. Simply looking at such depraved and disgusting material is a serious crime that causes traumatic harm and injury for child victims.

Tails is good. It is safe. You can read about its advantages at https://tails.boum.org/. I don't know the exact number of TAILS users, but standalone Tor Browser arguably has many more users than TAILS. In a high-risk environment, some users might need to use TAILS to protect themselves from arrest, imprisonment, or execution, i.e., a CIA covert operative working undercover in Russia, an investigative journalist working undercover in Iran to expose the crimes of corrupt Iranian government leaders, and whistleblower Edward Snowden, etc.

2
Pro2ALib•

I appreciate such a response as you did here! Very informative and detailed. I understand the slight risks of inadvertently landing on some unintended photo sites as well. Im glad I asked. Thank you.

1
Molire•

You're welcome.

2
M7MD11XD•

Makes sense :)

1
0xggusTor Project•

Actually, v2 onions will work in the June release (TB 10.5), but users will see a warning when they try to visit a v2 onion site. But yeah, onion operators, please update to v3 ASAP!

1
HackerAndCoderOP•

So, will it work or not?

1
arturaso•

Is this the reason why almost all of the .onion webpages I try to enter don't give me a response and continue loading until the infinite?

1
HackerAndCoderOP•

No. If you can access both short and long onion links from https://onion.torproject.org your TB is working and is of stable version.

1
Responsible_Skill820•

Is there large benefit of using v3 onions?

1
HackerAndCoderOP•

There are quite a few benefits. One of them is that v3 use newer and better encryption/cryptographic algorithms thereby being more secure.

2
Responsible_Skill820•

An onion revolution The Mozilla mega disaster

Finally, there are some changes I'm wishing for and much more for the upcoming future. I hope that the Tor project and the main developers can somehow find a way to keep the browser updated, since Mozilla laid off 250 employees this August. This of course is something really terrible for each individual developer who was affected by this, but it's even worse if you look how much everybody else is affected.

First off, Mozilla basically got no security team anymore and as far as I know, nobody anymore doing DFIR. They basically screwed over their entire security team, even though it's so important to have one.

Secondly, Chromium is becoming the standard. This is yet another terrible thing to happen. Chromium basically already has a monopoly, but since this incident it will most likely become even worse than what we ever imagined. I think nobody wants a chromium only web. We basically all want to have more diversity in the ecosystem and have a choice to choose between different things. This to me is basically the nail in the coffin to that idea.

Thirdly, Tor is dependent on Firefox. It's a disaster really, because since Mozilla has essentially no security team anymore, the people over at the Tor project will have to make up for that in their browser. While Tor is used by many, it unfortunately doesn't have "a lot" of contributors, at least not enough in my opinion to do all this extra work.

This is very worying.

Perhaps its better to run chrome and turn the tor dameon

1
Responsible_Skill820•

https://www.secjuice.com/tor-in-2020-what-changed/

1
HackerAndCoderOP•

Yes. It's not great, if you want it to change it'd suggest: donating to Mozilla and/or the Tor Project, so that they can get developers to increase the security (e.g. in Tor's case, change to using chromium) and helping out with the programming if you can.

If you don't care about anonymity, sure.

1
Responsible_Skill820•

I don't know your background except for your name, but there is a large fud around Chrome, Chr. You can turn off a lot of things send data to Chrome. Or with chrome.Check your record. You will find out. However, some skills / knowledge are required.

I don't know your background, except for your name

1