Forcing .onion on Project

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Whonix Onion Website - How to consistently access the Whonix website through its Tor Onion Service

Introduction[edit]

Info Note:

Consistent use of the Whonix onion service affords several benefits. It provides alternative end-to-end encryption which is independent from Kicksecure logo TLS Onion Version certificate authorities and the mainstream Domain Name System and it also reduces the load on Tor exit nodes.

The onion domain of Whonix is dds6qkxpwdeubwucdiaord2xgbbeyds25rbsgr73tbfpqpt4a6vjwsyd.onion.

dds6qkxpwdeubwucdiaord2xgbbeyds25rbsgr73tbfpqpt4a6vjwsyd.onion

Or in machine readable format (API), here is a raw link that only shows the onion: raw The Web Archive Onion Version

To use .onion services when browsing whonix.org follow the links below to the Whonix homepage, forums, download, debian repository, issue tracker, or the Whonix Debian repository.

Onion-Locationarchive.org: Tor Browser 9.5 and later features, an opt-in for using onion sites automatically for participating websites. The system administrator of individuals websites can choose to configure this. [1] Direct connects to onion services are harder to track than the Onion-Location opt-in method, which must make DNS requests and web server connections from an exit node before being able to switch to the onion service. The whonix.org is participating, setting the Onion-Location header.

Forcing onion[edit]

There is currently no known method. This remains undocumented.

  • A) One way might be to configure the browser to block DNS requests to whonix.org. But this is browser specific.
  • B) Another way might be to configure the operating system to block DNS requests to whonix.org. For example on Linux based operating systems using the /etc/hosts file. But this is operating system dependent as well as browser dependent because some browsers such as Firefox in USA use DNS over HTTPS (DoH) or Tor Browser using Tor which results in the browser not asking the operating system to resovle the DNS.

It not using special precautions: Some resources from the clearnet whonix.org address might be utilized when navigating the onion address. [2] Also note that on a few occasions in the past it was not possible to log in to the Whonix forums using the onion address. [3] [4]

Forum Discussion[edit]

Footnotes[edit]

  1. The reason is MediaWiki and discourse are using the primary Whonix https domain. These webapps do not support multiple domains for the same website. See also Web Application Shortcomings and Privacy on the Whonix Website.
  2. https://forums.whonix.org/t/onion-forum-site-redirects-to-clearnet/197archive.org
  3. This suggests the Whonix forums onion address could become (temporarily) inaccessible in the future.

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