Twitter Launches New ‘Dark Web’ Service To Bypass Russia’s Block

Synopsis – Users in Russia can avail services using the Tor anonymity to access Twitter. The announcement was made by Alec Muffett, who is the cybersecurity expert and designer of Enterprise Onion Toolkit that makes Tor Onion services much more accessible.

Twitter has launched its ‘Dark Web’ services for users in Russia. Although, other organizations like Facebook and BBC are already doing the same for some years now. The announcement of the services comes in the wake of the Russia-Ukraine conflict following which the Russian Government is barring several United States (US) and ally countries from operating their platforms and sites in the country.

Users in Russia can avail services using the Tor anonymity to access Twitter. The announcement was made by Alec Muffett, who is the cybersecurity expert and designer of Enterprise Onion Toolkit that makes Tor Onion services much more accessible. Stating that his tweet is the ‘most important’ and ‘long awaited’ he had ever composed, Muffet tweeted, “On behalf of @Twitter, I am delighted to announce their new @TorProject onion service“

What is ‘Dark Web?

The dark web is the World Wide Web content that needs darknet to exist. It uses the internet however requires special software, configurations, or authorization to access. The dark web can be used for private computers to communicate and conduct business meetings anonymously.

Apart from that, he furthermore added in the thread of the tweet, “I’m delighted to have assisted @Twitter engineers in their adoption of #OnionServices & #OnionNetworking from @TorProject – providing greater privacy, integrity, trust, & “unblockability” for people all around the world who use @Twitter to communicate.”

Muffet also mentioned in the tweet that Twitter has opted for EOTK (the Enterprise Onion Toolkit) in order to enhance its onion platform’ however it is done with some modification as per the requirement of the microblogging platform. He also informed that in 2014 he had led the team that was tasked to launch the ‘Facebook Onion’. Later in the tweets, Muffet clarified that he is not an employee at Twitter rather helps large organizations willing to adopt ‘Onion Service’.

What is ‘Onion Service’?

Servers that are configured to access inbound connections through Tor are termed as ‘Onion Services’ that were previously known as ‘Hidden Services’. Accessed through its onion address Onion Services work via Tor Browser. It provides anonymity to websites or platforms that even include hiding the location details of the user.

Notably, Users will be able to access the microblogging giant using ‘.onion’ instead of ‘.com’. However, Twitter.com will also be accessible on Tor but onion versions are specially modified for Tor in order to prevent the site from any spoofing. Such services are offered by companies to people living in countries of heavy surveillance.

Russia has been on spree to block services coming from the US and other US ally nations since its plans to the invasion of Ukraine. Prominent websites that are currently facing the consequences of the Russian Government’s restrictions are CIA, Deutsche Welle, the Brave, and DuckDuckGo.