[tor-talk] Need a stable .onion address hosted by the Tor project.

[Rob van der Hoeven]

On Wed, 2017-10-25 at 13:27 +0000, nusenu wrote:
> 
> Rob van der Hoeven:
> > I'm currently working on a small Linux utility that does single-
> > program 
> > transparent proxying. My utility tests if Tor handles all Internet
> > traffic by requesting an .onion address. If the address gets
> > resolved,
> > and if a HTTP HEAD request to the resolved address gets a response,
> > it's assumed that all Internet traffic is routed through Tor.
> 
> Isn't it better to check if your are exiting from an exit IP? (or how
> do you authenticate the response?)

That's a good question. I want to know if the Tor network handles all
TCP and DNS traffic. Only the Tor network can resolve an .onion
address, and only the Tor network can reach an .onion address. So, if
both resolve and requesting work, I am quite confident that Tor handles
all TCP traffic.

> 
> Isn't it a bad idea to potentially cause a DNS request everytime you
> start that utility?
> 
> Either way it is probably very noisy having that check by default.

A DNS requests is cheap, and the test only involves two small ping-pong 
HTTP messages (both headers). If you compare the bandwidth needed for
the test with the bandwidth used by a targeted program (e.g. Firefox)
you will find it insignificant.

If you really don't like the testing, you can simply change a switch
variable in the program code before compiling.

Rob.
https://hoevenstein.nl