2

I could generate a torrc like this:

HiddenServiceDir /Library/Tor/var/lib/tor/hidden_service0/
HiddenServicePort 80 127.0.0.1:8080

HiddenServiceDir /Library/Tor/var/lib/tor/hidden_service1/
HiddenServicePort 80 127.0.0.1:8080

HiddenServiceDir /Library/Tor/var/lib/tor/hidden_service2/
HiddenServicePort 80 127.0.0.1:8080

...

HiddenServiceDir /Library/Tor/var/lib/tor/hidden_service99999999999/
HiddenServicePort 80 127.0.0.1:8080

I could get a few VPS to do this at the same time. Hey would be bussy generating public keys and uploading them, but would this also hurt the Tor network?

Anon.
  • 21
  • 1
  • http://tor.stackexchange.com/questions/1337/how-many-hidden-services-can-i-run-on-a-single-tor-instance related (not at all duplicate) question. just saying that this should be possible – puser May 19 '14 at 09:09
  • justs setting them up should not really cause much of a problem, as they are lots of circuits, but no data being passed between them (except during initial setup) – puser May 19 '14 at 09:11
  • Sure, but setting up a hidden service means that some node is storing some information in order for tor users to be able to reach the hidden service, right? Then could generating enough hidden services mean that the network has to store too much information? Or would an attack on the tor network be easier/cheaper by generating a lot of bandwidth? I guess my question is if this could be used to attack the tor network in some way – Anon. May 19 '14 at 09:22
  • yeah, they have to store the location and session key of whatever it is connected to, this seems like a relatively small amount of data stored over a few entry guards. – puser May 19 '14 at 09:40
  • essentially, things like this need physical testing rather than theoretical – puser May 19 '14 at 09:40
  • Although they could share the server address:port (127.0.0.1:8080), I don't believe that they could share the hidden service port (80). Do onion URLs point to specific hidden service ports (such as 80, 8080, 9080,10080, etc)? – mirimir May 20 '14 at 03:07
  • @mirimir multiple servers can be on one server address:port, but the http request will have a different hostname, allowing people to connect to different ones. e.g. stackoverflow and stackexchange are on the same address:port, but in the http request, one requests GET stackoverflow.com and the other would request GET stackexchange.com – puser May 20 '14 at 09:30
  • @puser Oh. I didn't realize that .onion hostnames worked like that too. Thanks. – mirimir May 21 '14 at 03:28

1 Answers1

2

This would generally hurt you more than the Tor network. Directory Authorities will receive your request to create a metric bajillion hidden services, let's say, but this is basically just a half of a hash - a very tiny file. This, plus the fact that any node has the ability to to be a mirror and therefore offload this value makes it difficult to see a problem in this case.

The case where it could theoretically become an issue (and by theoretically I do mean a case where you have almost infinite bandwidth, cpu, and memory) is if clients start connecting to those services. Because so many parties would need to be involved in facilitating the connection to the hidden service (I think 9 nodes if I'm adding correctly) this would cause a dramatic increase in traffic.

So no, this specific issue would not take down the network in some way.

antitree
  • 86
  • 3