Happy Saturday everyone,

At long last, 310 commits later, I am pleased to present a release of the Onion 
Name System (OnioNS), a DNS for Tor hidden services. This release is a 
usability test; it offers reliable behind-the-scenes integration with the Tor 
Browser, a friendly command-line dialog for claiming domain names and 
subdomains, and many options for hosting and configuring a server. The system 
utilizes two servers: a single Quorum node which hidden services upload their 
claims to and another server which clients query against. I am looking for 
feedback as to how usable the system is and areas where it could be improved. 
Most of the changes going forward will be behind-the-scenes.

The software is divided into three primary pieces, OnioNS-client, OnioNS-HS, 
and OnioNS-server. These all have OnioNS-common (a shared library) as a 
dependency. You can install whichever one you'd like, or all of them. This 
software is currently Linux-only, and Debian 7 and 8, Ubuntu 14.04 - 15.10, 
Mint 17 - 17.2, and Fedora 21 - 23 are supported. I provide packages for Debian 
7 and a software repository for currently-supported versions of Ubuntu and Mint 
on 32-bit, 62-bit, and ARM systems. If possible, please use the repository.

Please see the READMEs in the following repositories for more information, 
including installation, initialization, and configuration procedures. Manpages 
are also included for your convenience.
https://github.com/Jesse-V/OnioNS-common
https://github.com/Jesse-V/OnioNS-client
https://github.com/Jesse-V/OnioNS-HS
https://github.com/Jesse-V/OnioNS-server
Please star the repository if it works well for you.

I have claimed "example.tor" for my project's HS and claimed the 
"arma.example.tor" subdomain that points to Roger's site, so you can test this 
from the client. Please open a ticket if you find a new bug, or contact me if 
you don't have a Github account.

A brief FAQ:

Q: How does one pronounce "OnioNS"?
A: As one would pronounce the lowercase form: "onions", the plural of "onion".

Q: It only takes a couple of minutes to claim a domain name, isn't that too 
easy?
A: In this release, I have set a very small difficulty level. It will certainly 
be harder in the future and more counter-measures are being considered. Also, 
since the claims are not yet saved to disk, I offer no guarantee of their 
long-term survival.

Q: Should I use this on production hidden services?
A: No, this software is not ready. This release introduces _features_, not 
security. Tor circuits are used on both the client and HS side, but I can't 
guarantee that my SOCKS use is leak-proof, for example. I'm asking for help 
with finding bugs that may compromise anonymity.

Q: I'm running Windows/OSX/BSD/Arch/Gentoo/LFS/etc, can I test OnioNS?
A: Yes, but I'm not currently supporting that environment, so you're mostly on 
your own. However, if you can give me compilation instructions, I may be able 
to. I am also looking to coordinate with anyone familiar with RPM or Windows 
development.

Q: Is there security on your network communications?
A: Client and HS communication occurs over Tor circuits, and there are some 
integrity checks, but simply getting everything to work is the priority here. 
Most of the infrastructure is set up so adding signatures and such will be 
easy, but that is next on the list. Once that occurs, the name server (Mirror) 
the client uses can be malicious with no significant impact.

Q: Where can I learn more about this project?
A: The normal project page, onions55e7yam27n.onion, is currently being 
rewritten. A simple page is in its place, so "example.tor" is still there. 
Literature on this project may be found at 
https://github.com/Jesse-V/OnioNS-literature. Please see the PDFs under the 
respective folders. Note that the distributed design will be changing to use 
George's commit-and-reveal scheme.

Q: Are the servers reliable enough to run under Comcast?
A: I have not tested them in production or otherwise under 
https://github.com/tylertreat/comcast, but I may in the future. I welcome help 
in this area.

Enjoy,
Jesse V.




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