A proposal recently made by Cristian Consonni, who was previously the Vice President of Wikimedia Italy, calls for bringing Wikipedia to the darknet by hosting the online encyclopedia as a hidden service on the Tor network. The proposal calls for the Wikimedia Foundation to host the hidden service proxy. Wikipedia has faced censorship of its site from governments around the world, including Russia, China, Iran, the United Kingdom, and France, among others. Cosonni hopes that by bringing Wikipedia to Tor, the Wikimedia Foundation can help raise awareness about the Tor Project and spread the use of Tor to more average internet users. Previously, Wikimedia enabled HTTPS for all of its projects in 2014.
Making Wikipedia available through a Tor hidden service would allow Tor users to avoid having to access the site through a Tor exit node. Exit nodes are one of the weakest links in Tor, as a malicious exit node can interfere and manipulate certain sites accessed through it. Fortunately, Wikipedia is already mitigating that problem through the use of HTTP Strict Transport Security. Sites which do not implement HTTP Strict Transport Security are vulnerable to downgrade attacks, allowing exit nodes to force users to receive the insecure HTTP version of a site. With HTTP Strict Transport Security and browser add-ons such as HTTPS Everywhere (which is already bundled with the Tor Browser), downgrade attacks can be prevented.
The proposal does not call for any changes to Wikipedia’s current policy of blocking Tor users from editing pages. Wikipedia users who have registered an account on the site cam request an IP block exemption so that they can edit Wikipedia from Tor. Wikipedia’s policy was implemented because abusive users who had their IP blocked would use Tor to circumvent the block.
Consonni’s proposal notes that Wikimedia’s servers have been subjected to mass surveillance by the NSA’s Upstream bulk collection of traffic from the internet backbone. Wikimedia is currently a party to a lawsuit against the NSA’s Upstream program in the case of Wikimedia Foundation vs. NSA, which was originally filed in 2015. In May of this year, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Wikimedia Foundation does have standing to sue the NSA and the Department of Justice. While the appeals court vacated a lower court’s ruling that Wikimedia did not have standing to sue, it also ruled that the other eight co-plaintiffs in the case did not have standing to sue the NSA. The Wikimedia Foundation’s case against the NSA has been remanded back to the United States District Court for the District of Maryland.
“It can be argued that the privacy gain of having an onion service over visiting Wikipedia with HTTPS over Tor is minimal, but I think it is worth having this option. I think that all major websites should serve a version over Tor,” Cosonni told Motherboard in a message over Twitter. Users connecting to hidden services never leave the Tor network, and so do not access the site through an exit node connected to the clearnet. On the Wikimedia-l listserv many editors agreed with Cosonni’s proposal. “I think that’s an excellent idea and very much aligned with our commitment to provide free information also for those who are living under unfavorable conditions. I personally endorse it,” editor David Cuenca Tudela replied to Cosonni’s post revealing the hidden services proposal.
If the proposal is accepted, Wikipedia would join other mainstream websites in offering the option of accessing the site through a Tor hidden service. In 2014, Facebook launched its own hidden service on Tor. The Internet Archive is currently experimenting with offering their site through a Tor hidden service, and have launched a public beta version of their onion site. Cosonni mentions that Wikimedia could use some of the software created for The Internet Archive’s hidden service. HackerFactor, who has been assisting The Internet Archive in moving to Tor, is also listed as an adviser on the Wikimedia proposal.
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