March 13th Update: Dread is being DDoSed Again
Paris posted a message on Dread addressing the attack:
Oh hey. Maybe you are viewing this using the private URLs passed around by market admins or I started burning lots of funds to get things back online.
Needless to say. We are getting DDOSED. But now we have daunt. In the next few days there will be rotational links posted on daunt. Use your daunt static keys (found on /account/generator/) to get custom links that probably have a lot more uptime.
Soon we will be releasing an entirely new system to help manage endgame and the mirror management. Look forward to that as well as endgame v3.
I'm heading back to work, hoping the tor network doesn't start dying, to get things back online on the main addresses as quickly as possible.
Paris
Paris's signed message can be found here.
March 8th Update: Dread's up-time is improving
HugBunter posted a re-launch announcement on Dread. Due to it's length, here are some key points:
We missed Dread's 5th Birthday on February 15th, YES 5 YEARS, I can't believe I have been doing this for half a decade of my life now and honestly, having to work so hard again the last few months has been a huge motivator to push me in working through everything else that I have had planned for a long time.
To quickly touch on what is new, aside from the entire new platform launch... just some minor features I was able to port over from my rewrite work such as the Context Ads on the homepage, monthly filtering for the Donation Leaderboards, bug fixes and quality of life improvements in various places.
Recon will not be returning just yet, it is undergoing its own separate rewrite still which went on the backburner over the last few months. We'll probably discuss this in an announcement post in /d/Recon some time in the next week or so.
I suggest you read the full announcement. Find it here.
End Update
After 3 months of downtime and big promises, Dread is back "online", and it's administrator, HugBunter, has launched a "solution" to the on-going DDoS of darknet sites.
If you noticed, online is in quotes. That's because Dread is still being heavily DDoSed, and inaccessible to most people. Although, if you manage to get onto Dread you will find yourself past the maintenance page and on the forum.
The Solution
Solution is in quotes because for months HugBunter has made claims like:
Announcing the launch of Daunt: DoS attacks end here.
The good news is that when we are ready to relaunch, my DoS solution should ensure accessibility over Tor, not just for Dread but for any attacked service.
As I've briefly touched on previously, we'll have the DoS attacks "solved" too
So the entire darknet community has been patiently waiting for this solution. Unfortunately, to many peoples disappointment, the solution is: Daunt - A link directory.
DDoS attacks are not going anywhere, until The Tor Project implements a fix.
Not to discredit Dread's work on Daunt, but hyping up a solution for months when most services are already doing the exact same thing (rotating mirrors) is a bit of a letdown.
Daunt's unique feature is private links hidden behind a login, that uses your Dread account for authentication. Daunt's FAQ says:
we have the statistics of every user with a Dread account. That data is extremely useful in determining legitimate users and filtering out unproven anons. This is very beneficial when it comes to discretion of sharing mirror links within the community
The idea associating your Dread account with the markets and links you browse doesn't sit well with me.
HugBunter provided more information about the authentication key needed to access private links:
Every value is rounded to the nearest 10 (I think), so it will put you into a certain pool of users which narrows it down minorly, however, we did consider this for accounts with extreme stats and capped it to make the top level group into a larger overall pool.
The info is not passed to anyone, the Daunt server decrypts the rounded values and the only actual identifier is the PGP fingerprint from your Dread account. This is SEPARATELY encrypted inside the key. The Daunt onion server can decrypt this so that service owners can manage their page. The clearnet server does not have the decryption key for this, it is not a proxy to the onion server, it is a standalone clone of the application minus the decryption key and simply syncs the mirror and tier data from the onion.
This means if you don't have a PGP key on your Dread account, theoretically, you can't be linked to the links you browse. Although, you would need to take Dread's word that they don't track you.
Not Every Service will have Access to the Solution. As long as your site follows the rules of Dread; Daunt is a link directory for it.
Daunt's signed announcement can be found here.
Man tor is taking forever to fix this