What’s the Point of This?
Recently, schools across the US were hit by a breach of the education software Canvas by the ShinyHunters. The group’s ransom note included an interesting .onion url:
Normally a .onion address is randomly generated characters with no meaning. The site’s name being tied to the keys generated when the node joins the network. However, ShinyHunters and the CIA have been able to generate custom TOR keys to at least get a partially human readable url.
ciadotgov4sjwlzihbbgxnqg3xiyrg7so2r2o3lt5wz5ypk4sxyjstad.onion
So Can I have One?
Yes.
How?
Using a tool built by cathugger on github - we can generate vanity keys for a tor site.
See the tor site post for details on getting the site up and running. Using mkp224o to generate the new site keys.
Requirements:
Follow the build guide from the github readme.
Take a look at the optimization.txt too for some good tips to increase speed (generating the keys you want can take a while).
Usage:
Run the binary using ./mkp224o [YOUR CUSTOM FILTER]. The longer your string, the longer it will take to find a matching key.
Example:
./mkp224o shnyhnt
Take the generated keys and move them into your torrc folder. You’ll likely have to update the file permissions (see Tor Hidden Services).