Tor2web (pronounced "Tor to Web") is a software project to allow

Tor hidden services Tor, short for The Onion Router, is free and open-source software for enabling anonymous communication. It directs Internet traffic through a free, worldwide, volunteer overlay network, consisting of more than seven thousand relays, to con ...

to be accessed from a standard browser without being connected to the

Tor network Tor, short for The Onion Router, is free and open-source software for enabling anonymous communication. It directs Internet traffic through a free, worldwide, volunteer overlay network, consisting of more than seven thousand relays, to conc ...

. It was created by

Aaron Swartz Aaron Hillel Swartz (November 8, 1986 – January 11, 2013) was an American computer programmer, entrepreneur, writer, political organizer, and Internet hacktivist. A prolific programmer, Swartz helped develop the web feed format RSS, the tech ...

and

Virgil Griffith Virgil Griffith (born 1983), also known as Romanpoet, is an American programmer. He worked extensively on the Ethereum cryptocurrency platform, designed the Tor2web proxy along with Aaron Swartz, and created the Wikipedia indexing tool WikiScan ...

History

Tor is a network which enables people to use the Internet anonymously (though with known weaknesses) and to publish content on "hidden services", which exist only within the Tor network for security reasons and thus are typically only accessible to the relatively small number of people using a Tor-connected web browser.

and

developed Tor2web in 2008 as a way to support

whistleblowing A whistleblower (also written as whistle-blower or whistle blower) is a person, often an employee, who reveals information about activity within a private or public organization that is deemed illegal, immoral, illicit, unsafe or fraudulent. Whi ...

and other forms of anonymous

publishing Publishing is the activity of making information, literature, music, software and other content available to the public for sale or for free. Traditionally, the term refers to the creation and distribution of printed works, such as books, newsp ...

through Tor, allowing materials to remain anonymous while making them accessible to a broader audience. In an interview with ''

Wired ''Wired'' (stylized as ''WIRED'') is a monthly American magazine, published in print and online editions, that focuses on how emerging technologies affect culture, the economy, and politics. Owned by Condé Nast, it is headquartered in San Fra ...

'' Swartz explained that Tor is great for anonymous publishing, but because its focus is not user-friendliness and thus not many people would install it, he wanted to "produce this hybrid where people could publish stuff using Tor and make it so that anyone on the internet could view it". The software developed by Swartz and Griffith is today considered version 1.0. Since then, it has been maintained and developed by Giovanni Pellerano from the Hermes Center for Transparency and Digital Human Rights as part of the GlobaLeaks Project, with financial support from the

Open Technology Fund The Open Technology Fund (OTF) is an American nonprofit corporation that aims to support global Internet freedom technologies. Its mission is to "support open technologies and communities that increase free expression, circumvent censorship, and ...

. Version 2.0 was released in August 2011, and version 3.0 is in beta .

Operation and security

Rather than typical

top-level domain A top-level domain (TLD) is one of the domains at the highest level in the hierarchical Domain Name System of the Internet after the root domain. The top-level domain names are installed in the root zone of the name space. For all domains in ...

s like .com, .org, or .net, hidden service URLs end with

.onion 



.onion is a special-use  top level domain name designating an anonymous  onion service, which was formerly known as a "hidden service", reachable via the  Tor network. Such addresses are not actual  DNS names, and the .onion TLD is not in the  I ...

and are only accessible when connected to Tor. Tor2web acts as a specialized

proxy Proxy may refer to: * Proxy or agent (law), a substitute authorized to act for another entity or a document which authorizes the agent so to act * Proxy (climate), a measured variable used to infer the value of a variable of interest in climate ...

or middleman between hidden services and users, making them visible to people who are not connected to Tor. To do so, a user takes the URL of a hidden service and replaces .onion with .onion.to. Like Tor, Tor2web operates using servers run voluntarily by an open community of individuals and organizations. Tor2web preserves the anonymity of content publishers but is not itself an anonymity tool and does not offer any protection to users beyond relaying data using

HTTP Secure Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) is an extension of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). It is used for secure communication over a computer network, and is widely used on the Internet. In HTTPS, the communication protocol is enc ...

(HTTPS). Since version 2.0, a privacy and security warning is added to the header of each web page it fetches, encouraging readers to use the

Tor Browser Bundle Tor, short for The Onion Router, is free and open-source software for enabling anonymous communication. It directs Internet traffic through a free, worldwide, volunteer overlay network, consisting of more than seven thousand relays, to con ...

to obtain anonymity.

List of active tor2web-like services

* onion.foundation / onion.re * onion.moe * onion.ly * onion.pet * onion.ws * onion.dog * tor2web.to

References

External links

* {{Tor hidden services Dark web Tor (anonymity network) Free software Software using the GNU AGPL license

History

Operation and security

List of active tor2web-like services

See also

References

External links