Tor connections to hidden services could be easy to de-anonymize
Identifying users who access Tor hidden services—websites that are only accessible inside the Tor anonymity network—is easier than de-anonymizing users who use Tor to access regular Internet websites.
Security researchers Filipo Valsorda and George Tankersley showed Friday at the Hack in the Box security conference in Amsterdam why Tor connections to hidden services are more vulnerable to traffic correlation attacks.
One of Tor’s primary goals is to provide anonymity for Internet users. This is achieved by routing their Web traffic through a series of randomly chosen nodes or relays before passing it back onto the public Internet. The nodes that make up the Tor network are run by volunteers and they can have specialized roles. There are nodes called entry guards that serve as the first hops onto the network and there are also exit relays that pass the traffic back onto the Internet.
