On 04/03/2017 05:01 PM, Jeremy Rand wrote:
Maybe this topic has already been brought up, but in case it hasn't, I'll do so. I notice that Prop279 (onion naming API) defines its own API rather than using DNS. I guess that this is because of security concerns about the centralization of the DNS.
Hi Jeremy,
I believe that the general idea with prop279 is simply to introduce an API for resolving pseudo-TLDs before they were sent through the Tor network. How that is done is entirely dependent on the naming system.
For example, if a user typed in example.bit into a Namecoin-enabled Tor browser, the software could then perform your proposed DNS lookup and rewrite the request before turning it over to the tor binary. In my case, my OnioNS software rewrites .tor to .onion, since the tor binary knows how to handle .onion. At the moment, this is a bit hacky because the software has connect with tor's control port, manually review and process each lookup, rewrite the the request, and then tell tor to connect it with a circuit. Prop 279 is designed to make this much easier and avoid hacky solutions.