[tor-bugs] #28005 [HTTPS Everywhere/EFF-HTTPS Everywhere]: Officially support onions in HTTPS-Everywhere

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#28005: Officially support onions in HTTPS-Everywhere
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 Reporter:  asn                                  |          Owner:  legind
     Type:  defect                               |         Status:  new
 Priority:  Medium                               |      Milestone:
Component:  HTTPS Everywhere/EFF-HTTPS           |        Version:
  Everywhere                                     |
 Severity:  Normal                               |     Resolution:
 Keywords:  tor-hs https-everywhere tor-ux       |  Actual Points:
Parent ID:  #30029                               |         Points:  20
 Reviewer:                                       |        Sponsor:
                                                 |  Sponsor27-must
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Description changed by asn:

Old description:

> Onion rulesets can currently be encoded in HTTPS-Everywhere, but this is
> not really officially supported by the UX.
>
> We should work forward into providing onion rulesets as update channels
> for HTTPS-Everywhere.

New description:

 The plan:

 A major UX issue for onion services is their huge addresses. We want to
 fix this issue because an address with 56 random characters confuses
 people, it makes it harder to pass the address around, and it also makes
 it much harder to verify it.

 There is a field of literature called "secure name systems" but none of
 the candidates are good enough for us right now. Hence, we present a
 hotfix that might offer a situational relief for users for the medium-term
 future, until we come up with something better, or while we experiment
 with more solutions. I suggest we keep this ticket focused to this idea,
 instead of debating why this and not that since we've already been doing
 this for far too long.

 The plan is to use the HTTPS-Everywhere extension that we already have in
 Tor Browser, and encourage people to write their own rulesets for onions.
 We are talking about community-maintained rulesets and nothing that is
 officially maintained by The Tor Project or by HTTPS-Everywhere. This
 ticket is about making it easier for people to create, import and use this
 rulesets. We are talking about UI/UX improvements, writing blog posts and
 doing Q&A.

 Here are some example of community rulesets we can imagine:

  * The SecureDrop ruleset: where securedrop makes a ruleset with their
 whole directory. People can download that to quickly visit securedrop
 destinations, by going to securedrop-nyt.tor.onion .

  * The Torproject ruleset: where torproject makes a ruleset with all their
 onions. We developers can use that to quickly visit Tor sites over onion,
 by going to tor-trac.tor.onion instead of remembering the onion.

  * The Bitcoin ruleset: where a "trusted" bitcoin entity publishes a
 ruleset with various cryptocurrency-related rules that allow people to
 quickly visit them.

 This approach has both positives and negatives (I assure you this is the
 case with every "secure naming" project out there):

  * Positives: Good security if the ruleset is taken from a trusted source.
 No state keeping. Reachable engineering effort. No global names, hence no
 fear of name squatting. Easy to understand tradeoffs.

  * Negatives: Terrible security if the ruleset is evil. No global names:
 If you want people to use your shorten onion name, you need to persuade
 them to use your ruleset.



 Here are some HTTPS-Everywhere issues we need to solve based on my Mexico
 notes:

  * Be able to stop update channels per-channel.
  * Need good UI to easily look and understand rules.
  * Need to implement file extension to install ruleset with one-click from
 web button.

 Here are some issues we need to think about:

  * We need good user text to make sure that people don't shoot themselves
 in the foot too often by installing bad rulesets and whatnot (they already
 do it daily when they open onions from "search enginers" or reddit).

  * Which tld to use? If we use .tor we open ourselves to DNS leaks in
 normal browsers. If we use .tor.onion that might be confusing to people.

  * Are there any issues with SSL?

 More resources:

 https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/meetings/2018MexicoCity/Notes/OnionV3ux
 https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/meetings/2018MexicoCity/Notes/HTTPSEverywhereNotes
 https://blog.torproject.org/cooking-onions-names-your-onions

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Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/28005#comment:6>
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