  Tor is a communications infrastructure widely used for unfettered and
anonymous access to Internet websites. Tor is also used to access sites on the
.onion virtual domain. The focus of .onion use and discussion has traditionally
been on the offering of hidden services, services that separate their
reachability from the identification of their IP addresses. We argue that Tor's
.onion system can be used to provide an entirely separate benefit: basic
website authentication. We also argue that not only can onionsites provide
website authentication, but doing so is easy, fast, cheap, flexible and secure
when compared to alternatives such as the standard use of TLS with
certificates.
