Verification Standards
Framework Overview
TORDIR's mission is anti-phishing, anti-spoofing, and human-in-the-loop validation for every listed onion service. Our threat model explicitly accounts for typo-squatting, v3 address generation attacks, exit-node manipulation, and rogue mirrors impersonating legitimate organizations.
The Two Verification Tiers
Specification
Live v3 handshake plus at least one independent voucher: an Onion-Location header on the operator’s own clearnet site, a PGP-signed list, the official SecureDrop directory, or multi-source attestation.
Validation frequency: rolling checks on the directory verification cycle.
Specification
Live v3 handshake proof only; no independent voucher collected yet.
Validation frequency: rolling checks on the directory verification cycle.
Specification
Services that cannot be verified are not listed. There is no liveness-only tier.
Validation frequency: rolling checks on the directory verification cycle.
Automated Probing Infrastructure
Our probing architecture is an isolated crawler that passes exclusively through local Tor SOCKS5 proxy instances — it never touches the clearnet to reach an onion address. Each probe collects reachability, HTTP status code, page title hash, TLS certificate (if onion-SSL is used), and response latency.
Dead-link handling: three consecutive failed probes trigger an Unreachable badge; seven consecutive days offline trigger automated quarantine from /browse.
Cryptographic Bundle Verification
Power users can verify the entire directory offline using our signed bundle downloads:
addresses.txt— the signed address list, one .onion per linemanifest.json— build manifest with per-file SHA-256 hashesaddresses.txt.asc— detached PGP signature of addresses.txt
Verification command:
Directory signing key fingerprint: 5115 0EFB 786C 9038 01E2 130F 6FC7 9211 50F9 1809