• Home
  • Cyber Crime
  • Cyber warfare
  • APT
  • Data Breach
  • Deep Web
  • Digital ID
  • Hacking
  • Hacktivism
  • Intelligence
  • Internet of Things
  • Laws and regulations
  • Malware
  • Mobile
  • Reports
  • Security
  • Social Networks
  • Terrorism
  • ICS-SCADA
  • POLICIES
  • Contact me
MUST READ

AI for Cybersecurity: Building Trust in Your Workflows

 | 

Taiwan Web Infrastructure targeted by APT UAT-7237 with custom toolset

 | 

New NFC-Driven Android Trojan PhantomCard targets Brazilian bank customers

 | 

Cisco fixed maximum-severity security flaw in Secure Firewall Management Center

 | 

'Blue Locker' Ransomware Targeting Oil & Gas Sector in Pakistan

 | 

Hackers exploit Microsoft flaw to breach Canada ’s House of Commons

 | 

Norway confirms dam intrusion by Pro-Russian hackers

 | 

Zoom patches critical Windows flaw allowing privilege escalation

 | 

Manpower data breach impacted 144,180 individuals

 | 

U.S. CISA adds Microsoft Internet Explorer, Microsoft Office Excel, and WinRAR flaws to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog

 | 

Critical FortiSIEM flaw under active exploitation, Fortinet warns

 | 

Charon Ransomware targets Middle East with APT attack methods

 | 

Hackers leak 2.8M sensitive records from Allianz Life in Salesforce data breach

 | 

SAP fixed 26 flaws in August 2025 Update, including 4 Critical

 | 

August 2025 Patch Tuesday fixes a Windows Kerberos Zero-Day

 | 

Dutch NCSC: Citrix NetScaler zero-day breaches critical orgs

 | 

Chrome sandbox escape nets security researcher $250,000 reward

 | 

Smart Buses flaws expose vehicles to tracking, control, and spying

 | 

MedusaLocker ransomware group is looking for pentesters

 | 

Google confirms Salesforce CRM breach, faces extortion threat

 | 
  • Home
  • Cyber Crime
  • Cyber warfare
  • APT
  • Data Breach
  • Deep Web
  • Digital ID
  • Hacking
  • Hacktivism
  • Intelligence
  • Internet of Things
  • Laws and regulations
  • Malware
  • Mobile
  • Reports
  • Security
  • Social Networks
  • Terrorism
  • ICS-SCADA
  • POLICIES
  • Contact me
  • Home
  • Breaking News
  • Hacking
  • Default conf on Apache Web servers can de-anonymize your hidden service

Default conf on Apache Web servers can de-anonymize your hidden service

Pierluigi Paganini February 02, 2016

A default setting in Apache Web servers can de-anonymize the hidden service allowing an attacker to obtain details on the hosting.

An unknown student has discovered a serious issue in Apache Web Server that could potentially de-anonymize .onion-domains and servers hidden behind the Tor-network. The student already reported the issue to the Tor Project development team for some months
“Tor makes it possible for users to hide their locations while offering various kinds of services, such as web publishing or an instant messaging server. Using Tor “rendezvous points,” other Tor users can connect to these hidden services, each without knowing the other’s network identity. ” is the description provided by the official Tor Project for the hidden service protocol.
Web sites hosted on the Tor Network could run on different web services, including an Apache Web Server, in this case anonymity of users is at risk.
The issue affects the configuration of Apache Web servers that come with the mod_status module enabled by default. The student discovered that the mod_status module could disclose the real IP address of .onion domains, allowing attackers to de-anonymize Onion Servers.

The Apache Status module allows monitoring activities of an Apache Web Server, it displays a sort of cockpit including current server statistics. The current server state includes the following information:

  • The number of worker serving requests
  • The number of idle worker
  • The status of each worker, the number of requests that worker has performed and the total number of bytes served by the worker (*)
  • A total number of accesses and byte count served (*)
  • The time the server was started/restarted and the time it has been running for
  • Averages giving the number of requests per second, the number of bytes served per second and the average number of bytes per request (*)
  • The current percentage CPU used by each worker and in total by Apache (*)
  • The current hosts and requests being processed (*)
Apache Tor mod_status
By enabling the mod_status module, the output produced by the module would be available when accessing the URL:http://website.com/server-status/, this means that in case your .onion domain may result in exposing ‘server-status’ page.
This page would spit the sensitive backend data like server’s settings, uptime, resource usage, total traffic, virtual hosts, and active HTTP requests if enabled by default which is enough to figure out the Server location.

“On most distributions, Apache ships with a handy feature called mod_status enabled. It’s a page located at /server-status that displays some statistics, like uptime, resource usage, total traffic, enabled virtual hosts, and active HTTP requests. For security reasons, it’s only accessible from localhost by default.

This seems fairly reasonable, until you realize the Tor daemon runs on localhost. Consequently, any hidden service using Apache’s default config has /server-status exposed to the world. What could a malicious actor do in that case? They could spy on potentially sensitive requests. They could deduce the server’s approximate longitude if the timezone is set. They could even determine its IP address if a clearnet Virtual Host is present.” reads the blog post about the issue.  

Operators behind hidden services running on the Apache Server need to disable the mod_status to avoid the disclosure of their identity.
To disable to mod_status run the following code:
sudo ap2dismod status

Once disabled the mod_status, users will be displayed a 403 or 404 Error message.

Pierluigi Paganini

 

(Security Affairs – Apache server, Tor network)


facebook linkedin twitter

Apache server Hacking mod_status Tor network

you might also like

Pierluigi Paganini August 18, 2025
AI for Cybersecurity: Building Trust in Your Workflows
Read more
Pierluigi Paganini August 18, 2025
Human resources firm Workday disclosed a data breach
Read more

leave a comment

newsletter

Subscribe to my email list and stay
up-to-date!

    recent articles

    AI for Cybersecurity: Building Trust in Your Workflows

    Security / August 18, 2025

    Taiwan Web Infrastructure targeted by APT UAT-7237 with custom toolset

    APT / August 16, 2025

    New NFC-Driven Android Trojan PhantomCard targets Brazilian bank customers

    Malware / August 15, 2025

    Cisco fixed maximum-severity security flaw in Secure Firewall Management Center

    Security / August 15, 2025

    'Blue Locker' Ransomware Targeting Oil & Gas Sector in Pakistan

    Malware / August 15, 2025

    To contact me write an email to:

    Pierluigi Paganini :
    pierluigi.paganini@securityaffairs.co

    LEARN MORE

    QUICK LINKS

    • Home
    • Cyber Crime
    • Cyber warfare
    • APT
    • Data Breach
    • Deep Web
    • Digital ID
    • Hacking
    • Hacktivism
    • Intelligence
    • Internet of Things
    • Laws and regulations
    • Malware
    • Mobile
    • Reports
    • Security
    • Social Networks
    • Terrorism
    • ICS-SCADA
    • POLICIES
    • Contact me

    Copyright@securityaffairs 2024

    We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. By clicking “Accept All”, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies. However, you may visit "Cookie Settings" to provide a controlled consent.
    Cookie SettingsAccept All
    Manage consent

    Privacy Overview

    This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities...
    Necessary
    Always Enabled
    Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
    Non-necessary
    Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
    SAVE & ACCEPT