sure Andrew, i'm glad of your interest in knowing more. Tor2web is basically a proxy for Tor Hidden Services designed by Aaron Swarz and Virgil Griffith. The software was designed in order to support freedom of speech and amplify the visibility/reachability of the contents onto the public internet surface by making possible normal web users to visit hidden services resources by means of a common browser and without the need for the user to install Tor/TBB.
from end-user point of view, every hidden service is reachable this way: http://antani123.onion is mapped onyo https://antani123.tor2web.org In addition depending on the software configuration there are various use cases possible: 1) one can setup an independent generic proxy like for example tor2web.org and provide access to whatever content of the darknet to normal web users by means of a common browser. you find more info about current nodes part of the let me say official network or totally independent on the github wiki page [1] [2]. 2) one can setup a specific proxy for a single or few hidden services. e.g. we use it in Globaleaks [3] where, depending on the threat model of the whistleblowing initiative [4], a Tor2web setup can be instantiated in order to provide reachability for anonymous whistleblowing initiatives and the reasons may vary: - the initiative want to provide a landing page for the whistleblower accessing the initiative while still not accepting submissions over Tor2web (e.g. https://secure.publeaks.nl); - the initiative is runned by anonymous that protects the real infrastructure behind an hidden service but they user Tor2web want to amplify their reachability on the internet: e.g. mafiealeaks runs this way (https://secure.mafialeaks.org) [1] https://github.com/globaleaks/Tor2web-3.0/wiki [2] https://github.com/globaleaks/Tor2web-3.0/wiki/Infrastructure [3] https://github.com/globaleaks/GlobaLeaks/wiki [4] https://docs.google.com/document/d/1niYFyEar1FUmStC03OidYAIfVJf18ErUFwSWCmWBhcA/pub best, evilaliv3 -- tor-talk mailing list - [email protected] To unsubscribe or change other settings go to https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-talk
