Tor Network Is Now Using Bitcoin-Like Security to Guard Against Attacks

Since mid-2022, the privateness preserving Tor community has been suffering from denial of service assaults, making the community sluggish and—at instances downright inconceivable to make use of.

In its newest software program launch,Tor is aiming to “defend” towards these assaults with proof of labor, the identical cryptographic mechanism that underpins and secures Bitcoin. Utilizing proof of labor in some method to forestall assaults has been an thought within the Tor neighborhood for a few years. Now it’s lastly in place.

The purpose of this roll out is to require attackers to make use of extra computational assets to execute their assaults.

Tor is a community that privatizes the IP addresses of people that use it. It is also utilized by Bitcoin and different cryptocurrency advocates to enhance their privateness, hiding the IP deal with of Bitcoin nodes or the place transactions are coming from, as an example. 

Although Bitcoin and Tor now each use proof of labor, know-how by the identical identify, the privateness community’s implementation is kind of completely different since its builders have crafted it particularly to protect towards assaults on Tor.

“There are algorithmic similarities, however there are a couple of necessary distinctions. Tor’s proof-of-work system is dynamic: as an alternative of forcing shoppers to go after a static goal, we ask shoppers to ‘bid’ utilizing their proof-of-work effort,” The Tor Challenge director of strategic communications Pavel Zoneff instructed Decrypt.

“Onion providers” are web sites or providers that run over Tor, shielding the web site’s ip deal with. The community’s algorithm is ready to detect when a web site is receiving a bunch of site visitors directly — say from an attacker. When that occurs, proof of labor kicks in, requiring customers to make use of extra computational effort to go to the web site. 

Regular customers should not discover this variation, however attackers will, since they’ll have to make use of far more computational influence to have the identical influence.

“We consider that the introduction of a proof-of-work mechanism will disincentivize attackers by making large-scale assaults pricey and impractical whereas giving precedence to reputable site visitors,” Zoneff defined within the submit asserting the discharge.