Twitter has announced the introduction of a new Tor onion service, a move that has been in the works for years but came into an effort as Russian President Vladimir Putin cracks down on demonstrations and independent media in the aftermath of his invasion of Ukraine.
“On behalf of @Twitter, I am delighted to announce their new @TorProject onion service,” tweeted Alec Muffett, a security researcher who developed the Enterprise Onion Toolkit. EOTK, as it’s also known, allows websites to quickly add onion services.
“This is possibly the most important and long-awaited tweet that I’ve ever composed,” he added.
Tor Onion address to access Twitter:
twitter3e4tixl4xyajtrzo62zg5vztmjuricljdp2c5kshju4avyoid.onion
It can be accessed using a Tor-compatible browser, such as the Tor Browser or Brave, which supports Tor in private browsing mode.
Neither Twitter nor Muffett linked the announcement to the invasion of Ukraine. Russians may be able to use the social networking platform as a result of the shift. The site was reportedly restricted inside the country last week, according to reports. Twitter hasn’t confirmed whether Roskomnadzor, Russia’s Internet censorship agency, has been able to completely block the service, but it has stated that users within the nation are having trouble accessing it.
Muffett’s EOTK is designed to work with non-Tor websites that already have a public presence. Using EOTK, administrators can quickly and easily add a.onion address. In the case of Twitter, though, Muffett said he and the company’s engineers had to make “significant but fair modifications” to fulfill the company’s production requirements.
The Onion Router operates by routing Internet traffic through at least three relays, with data encrypted at each step, forming layers of encryption like an onion. There are currently over 7,000 relays and almost 3,000 bridges on the network, which are concealed relays designed to help avoid censorship.
Facebook has had an onion service since 2014 when the company announced the address was published as a test. It’s still available nearly eight years later, and it’s been improved to satisfy the new rules for v3 onion services.
