Slightly off topic but when did they move off ".com" and why? Or were they always on ".ac"?
For some reason, domains and TLDs seem to get shot out from under Sci-Hub periodically. I cannot possibly begin to imagine why.
Click around the header, you can find a link to sci-hub.cc
The same reason why we encrypt traffic using TLS, even if it's "mundane" traffic like tweets.
Targeted attacks might be possible based on the file contents or using a side-channel to ID the downloader; meaning only specific targeted users would get the malicious files.
Either way, being able to hold Sci-Hub accountable as this source would be important.
How can you exclude that case that Alice does care where she gets the paper from, but she simply cannot afford it from the original source?
Or how can you exclude the possibility that Alice wants a version of the paper that does not embed a watermark that makes her or at least the setting (e.g. university, IP address) that she downloaded the paper from identifiable. I can witness myself that Elsevier embeds such information into paper downloads.
Chrome gets through.