Onion.Live Tor Browser Extension

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Onion.Live Tor Browser Extension

It’s the year 2020 and the darknet remains full of phishing mirrors and DDoS attacks on popular marketplaces as we have seen this January.

Phishing on the dark web has, for a long time, been a problem that popular hidden services on the Tor Network have faced. Many hidden services such as Empire Market and Apollon Market are targeted daily with countless phishing attempts. Leading to many users complaining of missing funds, and no one is coming up with a solution to the problem.

Meanwhile, the folks at Onion.Live announced earlier this week https://onion.live/forum/top that they are releasing a Firefox plugin that’s designed to work with Tor Browser aiming to combat phishing attempts and provide a safer browsing experience using their public database. A first of its kind in the history of the Tor network as the Tor Browser doesn’t have many extensions developed specifically for use on the Tor network.

The Onion.Live extension V0.0.1 works by using the public RESTful API at https://onion.live/ to verify the visited website; it checks if the visited site in their directory. If it’s on their directory, the extension will let the user know that they are visiting a genuine, safe mirror and not a phishing site by displaying a pop-up stating that the mirror is trusted.

Alternatively, a user visits a phishing website that is on Onion. Live Trust DB. the extension will instantly warn the user that they have visited a phishing website by displaying a red banner that reads “WARNING: Phishing Mirror !!!” and provide the correct URL below in yellow for the site the user is trying to access. The Onion.live extension will work for both hidden services that are on the Tor Network and also clear-net websites that are engaged in phishing campaigns against Tor Network as long as it listed on the Onion.Live Trust DB.

The extension will also provide suggestions for popular websites listed on Onion.Live. It also allows you to search for websites listed on Onion. Live index directly from the extension and also provides multiple alternative mirrors for the desired site along with statistics such as mirrors uptime and connection time.

Installation of the Onion.Live extension is quite easy and fast as it listed on the Tor Browser | Firefox add-ons store. Users can open the menu on the browser, then click on “add-ons” and use the find more extensions search bar to search for “Onion.Live”. Alternatively, you can download from Mozilla website at

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/onion-live/.

The plugin is Freesoftware / Opensource, distributed under The GNU General Public License (GPLv3) to maintain clarity on what the plugin actually does and what network requests it performs. So kudos to the developers at Onion.live for sharing the source code which can be obtained from here

https://github.com/OnionDotLive/onionliveplugin

After giving the extension a try we think it’s very prominent if gained wide userbase as it has the ability to stop all phishing attempts directly from the browser with no way of overriding that by the phishing site. Finally putting an end to the phishing attacks that have always been the major issue facing popular hidden .onion services resulting in thousands of victims that lost their funds and trust in these markets.

STATUS: UP