Ask HN: Would People Utilise a Digital Ocean for Tor? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Would People Utilise a Digital Ocean for Tor?

5 pointsatdrummond4 comments

The objective would be to provide an extremely straight forward admin panel to launch Tor sites. Users could choose their preferred VM image. There would additionally be the ability to use Bitnami-like packages for quick creation of forums, blogs, shops.

VM costs would be kept minimal. Additional fees would be charged for securing special .onion names, as FB did with their Tor address. Likewise a small premium would be charged for the use of full-stack installers; the premium would be directed to creators and maintainers of such packages.

Traditional payment processing would be provided, alongside crypto payments.

Am I missing any obvious issues or competitors?

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One issue is many hosting providers simply don't allow it, you'd be a facilitator. I'm not saying all onion sites are shady but you will have to deal with some, more than the average provider of services. Police isn't always knowledgeable and rather goes after you than somebody who is hiding behind anonymous payment (which you have no record of).

https://blog.torservers.net/20180704/coordinated-raids-of-zw...

I've seen a service that provides scripts for setting up a VPN server. Flat fee and the user will have to get their own VM and start the script. That might be an option, it's not regular revenue though.

If you mean "like digital ocean" but you are starting your own VPS company and buying your own hardware, then that depends on how much you have to invest in a legal team and liaison to the various law enforcement agencies. They will want lawful intercept access.

If you mean reselling DO resources, first get in writing from them that this is ok and that they will deal with all the legal issues. I am certain they will not be ok with it. There was a similar setup in Ireland that predictably went horribly sideways and the admin was arrested for facilitating CP and drug sites.

How about something simpler; Onion gateway as a service. Customer is company with a clearnet website who wants an onion address, like facebook did with facebookcorewwwi.onion.

You could add value with vanity URL generation, scaling and automation. You can give customers an onion version of their existing website with one click of a button. And since you cater to legitimate customers, you can willfully and openly comply with lawful intercept requests without losing core business.

I would expect Cloudflare to offer something like this.

Aside from the legal issues, the fact that the hosting provider would have my Hidden Service keys would also be a problem. Unless you can find a solution to this using some fancy crypto, allowing the customer to keep hold of their key, whilst your service still serves the Hidden Service?

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