Re: [tor-talk] on the topic of tor's weaknesses

[Paul Syverson <syverson@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, Mar 01, 2012 at 10:07:43AM -0500, Chris Wheeler wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 29, 2012 at 4:17 PM, grarpamp <grarpamp@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >
> > Though HS is more hops away, I doubt it would affect timing or byte
> > counting all that much.
> >
It wouldn't.

> > That was my first thought too, but then what is the point of making hidden
> services seven hops away? But regular services three hops away? What does
> more hops accomplish in terms of anonymity? And why does it not benefit
> regular services in the same way? (if it did all circuits would be made
> seven hops I  assume)
> 
To protect the hidden service, not just you. You each build an onion
route of three hops (the total hops on Tor relays is actually six not
seven). You build your circuit and give the last hop to the HS as a
rendezvous point. It builds a circuit and connects to that rendezvous
point as the destination after the last hop in it's circuit. The
mated circuit has six hops and neither of you knows anymore about
the network location of the other than, e.g., a regular web server
would know of you if you were building a basic Tor circuit to it.

More description with pictures at
https://www.torproject.org/docs/hidden-services.html.en

And more elaborate details and variants in various papers on anonbib.

HTH,
Paul
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