Can onion directories find my address?

Question

I know most onion directories use crawlers to collect onion addresses.

If I never share my onion address publicly or with anyone, can onion directories still find ways of discovering the address?

EDIT: And if directories can locate my onion address, can they also discover the port number it's listening on (eg. mysuperlameonion.onion:43155)?

i'm not sure how discovery of onion-addresses is done, but if your address is known, the port is no problem: a simple port scan and that's it. — DJCrashdummy, Mar 05 '19 at 10:56
hopefully you're asking this out of curiosity resp. for research purposes and not because you want to "hide" your server?! - this would be "Security through obscurity" which is considered to be really bad practice, rather follow "Kerckhoffs's principle" which will provide real security. — DJCrashdummy, Mar 05 '19 at 11:03
...or simply have a "predecessor" of "Murphy's law" in mind: whatever can happen will happen. — DJCrashdummy, Mar 05 '19 at 11:11
regarding that (although i don't know exactly how it is done technically - hence no answer) i would say: yes, your server and port can be found, and sooner or later it will be found. — DJCrashdummy, Mar 05 '19 at 11:17

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 05 '19 at 13:09

As far as I know, only Hidden Service Directories knows the rendezvous point and public key of your hidden service, which they can obtain Onion address from your public key.

However, if you never publish your onion address, no one can find your address unless they use bruteforce search over onion addresses.

Can onion directories find my address?

1 Answers1