Exploring HTTPS Certificates for Onion Services: Enhancing Security and Functionality

2025-08-28

This document explores various methods for integrating and validating TLS/HTTPS certificates for Onion Services to enhance their security and functionality. While Onion Services inherently provide end-to-end encryption, HTTPS certificates unlock features like HTTP/2 and payment processing, bolstering security. The article details the pros and cons of existing CA validation, ACME for .onion, self-signed certificates, and innovative approaches such as self-validating certificates using the .onion private key and PKCS#11 modules. The ultimate goal is to seamlessly integrate Onion Services with modern web development.

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