Concept Example
Last updated
Last updated
Imagine you are browsing with the Tor browser, which employs the onion routing system to remain anonymous on the internet. Imagine you are in China and your government has blocked a website that you wish to visit. For the sake of argument, let's pretend it's YouTube. When you type the YouTube homepage or right-click and select ‘open in a new tab’ using Tor, your PC does not reach the YouTube server, instead, it passes through three nodes staffed by volunteers only. This provides anonymity and makes it nearly impossible for anyone to determine who is on the other end of the connection; there are hundreds of nodes in the Tor network, which gives an added layer of protection.
The client encrypts the message a total of three (GET request) using three encryption keys: key 1, key 2, and key 3. This triple-encrypted message then sent to the first server known as Node 1 which is the Input Node.
Node 1, which knows only Node 2's address and Key 1, decrypts the message with Key 1. Since the message is still encrypted with two layers, Node 1 forwards it to Node 2.
Based on this, node 2 which possesses Key 2 and the address of the input node and the output node can decrypt the message received with Key 2 but the message is still encrypted. ode 2 then forwards the message through the next node or Node 3 in this particular setup as illustrated in the diagram above.
Node 3 (the exit node) is the last step. It leaves the encrypted message, which is a previously mentioned GET request for YouTube. IP to its respective address, and forwards the message to the recipient’s server. In turn, the server becomes aware of the request for the particular web page and provides the caller with the results in the form of a web page back.
The response returns data. travels back by covering through the sequent nodes in the reversed directions of the flowchart and each node encodes the Return data with a layer of encryption applying the key owned by the node. Last, but not least, the information, previously encrypted three times, reaches the client: they will be able to decrypt the message, as they possess all the keys.
