[tor-relays] Combined relay and hidden service, good idea or not?

tortilla at mantablue.com tortilla at mantablue.com
Fri Jan 5 03:08:48 UTC 2018


When operating a hidden service and a relay in one tor instance, tor
currently warns:

[warn] Tor is currently configured as a relay and a hidden service. That's
not very secure: you should probably run your hidden service in a separate
Tor process, at least -- see https://trac.torproject.org/8742

First, that issue has been fixed and closed.

Second, I had read in the past opinions stating:

When operating a hidden service, running a relay helps mix traffic so that
anyone observing traffic from the machine cannot easily run an analysis
targeted at a hidden service that might exist on that machine.

The text of the startup warning seems to contradict that belief.  Is there
more to know, or is the warning only applicable to the now-closed
information leak?

Can someone kindly clarify the current best practice in this regard and
address whether or not that warning should be removed from tor's startup
diagnostics?



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