[jontro]

They write the following reason in the article: But as the web and other internet technologies mature, certificates are starting to be a requirement in order to unleash functionalities, especially in web browsers, such as the faster connection protocol HTTP/2 and payment processing.

[xg15]

This seems really sad. But I guess it depends what the goal is. If you want to integrate onion purely on a DNS resolver and network interface level and then use a stock browser for accessing the services, yes, you'd need that.

(Then you'll also have to fight with the stock browser for using your special DNS resolver, not leaking info to Google, Cloudflare or whoever else, etc etc, tho)

But don't most people use custom browsers with built-in support for onion anyway? If that's the case, the easiest solution would seem to just declare .onion a "secure origin" like localhost and patch the browser accordingly.

[rnhmjoj]

> But don't most people use custom browsers with built-in support for onion anyway? If that's the case, the easiest solution would seem to just declare .onion a "secure origin" like localhost and patch the browser accordingly.

Indeed, the use of the onion TLD has been standardised in RFC 7686 [1], so browsers should really treat it as secure and stop the usual plaintext HTTP shenanings.

[1]: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc7686

[Thorrez]

The article has a long list of reasons for certificates. Here's another reason:

>4. It also opens up new opportunities such as payment processing, "as current PCI DSS requirements do not allow non-standard TLS"2 and may only work with certificates having some sort of validation3. Payments card networks require HTTPS for a payment to be taken. So if someone wants to do that over an onion site they would need a TLS certificate.