Understanding Tor Onion Services and Their Use Cases

Presented at The Eleventh HOPE (2016), July 23, 2016, noon (60 minutes).

In the last few years, we've seen more and more interest in Tor onion services (aka Tor hidden services). They are used by press to host whistleblowing platforms, by activists who want to set up a website that authorities want to shut down, by service providers to offer more security to their users, and for tons of other uses as well. This panel will be presenting the technical aspects of Tor onion services as well as interesting use cases. As the onion service protocol aged, weaknesses started to appear in its design. For this reason, the speakers have been working since 2013 on the next generation onion service protocol. You'll get a status update on their progress, an explanation of the improvements it brings, and also why it is greatly needed.

Presenters:

• Nima Fatemi
  Nima Fatemi is an Iranian independent security researcher, focused on encryption, anonymity, privacy, and censorship circumvention technologies. He is a core member of The Tor Project and the chief technologist of Library Freedom Project.
• asn
  asn is a Tor developer and designer of high tech systems.
• David Goulet
  David Goulet is a Tor developer and a developer of Off-the-Record (OTR), which provides end-to-end encryption for IM.

Links:

• https://xi.hope.net/schedule.html#-understanding-tor-onion-services-and-their-use-cases- (Conference Schedule)
• https://infocon.org/cons/2600/The Eleventh HOPE (2016)/The Eleventh HOPE (2016) Understanding Tor Onion Services and Their Use Cases.srt (subtitles)
• https://infocon.org/cons/2600/The Eleventh HOPE (2016)/The Eleventh HOPE (2016) Understanding Tor Onion Services and Their Use Cases.mp4
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLmaazrA0AE

Similar Presentations:

• 32C3 (2015) / Tor onion services: more useful than you think
• NorthSec 2017 / Deep Dive Into Tor Onion Services
• VB2016 / The Tor Project