I’ve heard it explained a million times but it never clicked. Perhaps it’s the cryptography part im struggling with. It’s pretty easy for me to get overwhelmed by the technical terms.
To be clear, im talking about how a client running the tor browser manages to anonymously connect to a .onion webserver.
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Think of a Russian doll that has a bunch of smaller dolls stacked inside. Now, let’s say you want to send a message to Dave. You write your message on a piece of paper, place it inside the smallest doll and lock it with a special lock that only Dave has the key for.
Then you decide that Dave will get this doll from Charlie. So, you place the locked doll inside the next doll, along with a note that says “Please deliver to Dave”. Then you lock that doll with a special lock that only Charlie has the key for.
Then you decide that Charlie will get his doll from Bob, so you place it inside the next one with another note and lock it with Bob’s key, and then you do the whole thing once more for Alice.
The message is now ready to be sent. Because each recepient can only open one layer of the doll, none of them can know how many layers are left, or how many layers have already been peeled off. Therefore, when you pass the doll to Alice, she has no way of knowing if you are the original sender, or if you are simply passing on the doll just like everyone else.
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