Curious -- Do Mirrors for a hidden service make it more/less/no impact vulnerable to de-anonymization? : DarkNetMarkets | Torhoo darknet markets
I am only semi-technical and have a basic idea of how Tor works but something I was thinking about. When a hidden service has mirrors (like every market does), does this impact its safety at all? I guess mostly in terms of potential deanonymization.
Assumption: The mirrors are on servers with zero connection to the actual core hidden service. Like mirrors aren't using the same hosting provider as the core service.
In terms of de-anon, does having a mirror increase the risk given I guess that the "attack surface" has increased somewhat. Is it safer not having a mirror system at all? Or does a mirror system potential delay deanon efforts? I'd assume that if LE was working at deanon'ing and they did this with whatever Tor attack (like correlation attack), if the deanon was successful, I'd assume that they'd only deanon that particular mirror? Or I misunderstanding how these mirrors work? I'm making the assumption that the mirrors point to the core hidden service via another onion and obviously not linked directly with an ip address.
Or am I thinking about this wrong and the mirror doesn't really impact these deanon techniques? At the end of the day, are these attacks still looking at the eventual endpoint (the core hidden service) and the mirror being in the middle really doesn't factor at all?
Do these mirrors get a request to its onion, then with a brand new request, makes a whole different Tor connection from the mirror to the hidden service? Or does the hand off look different than that?
Like this:
Tor Browser --> TOR Network --> Hops --> Mirror --> TOR Network --> Hops --> Hidden service
or does it look more like this?
Tor Browser --> TOR Network --> Hops --> Mirror --> Hidden Service
I'm just curious given the recent seizure of Archetyp and wondering if they got the servers identified first. I was wondering if mirrors played any role at all in terms of helping or hurting a hidden service? Or perhaps making zero difference. On the one hand, I'd think the mirror would delay de-anon of the hidden service b/c if they did, they'd just get the mirror and that'd not be too helpful. But maybe i'm thinking about this all wrong.
