Onion service for matrix-client.matrix.org & matrix.org & dendrite.matrix.org

[Mikaela]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

When I attempt to use matrix.org over Tor, I often end up being asked for Cloudflare captcha that neither Element or Nheko is able to provide for the client-server API. With Element desktop I only see error about no connection for no reason, with Nheko the terminal output gets flooded by HTML saying it's Cloudflare captcha.

Describe the solution you'd like

I would like matrix.org to provide an onion service, preferably single hop one, that I could mapaddress in torrc and not require client-side changes.

Describe alternatives you've considered

Matrix.org could stop using Cloudflare or stop requiring captchas for https://matrix-client.matrix.org in Cloudflare configuration?

Additional context

• Screenshot will be added when I catch this issue the next time.
• Tor / proxy support with authentication element-hq/element-meta#200

[thibaultamartin]

Element does seem to support captchas? I managed to create an account using Element on Matrix.org using Tor Browser on macOS.

With that said, @laurencegill it looks like CloudFlare supports onion services. Is this something we could enable for matrix.org and matrix-client.matrix.org? We might want to get T&S' opinion on this too

[laurencegill]

It's possible this isn't an issue any more. We had an issue with ToR traffic for the element app that coincidentally I was involved in, and cloudflare fixed an issue on their side with incorrectly blocking/challenging ToR traffic.

[Mikaela]

This is still a feature request for having access to matrix-client.matrix.org via an onion address without going through Cloudflare. Additionally this issue was experienced with Element Desktop, not Element Web in Tor Browser.

I haven't tried using Element+Tor+Matrix.org recently though.

[Mikaela]

I updated the title since dendrite.matrix.org is also apparently suffering this either through NordVPN or Tor.

[Saiv46]

Bumping this issue. By the way, shouldn't Cloudflare's "Onion Routing" solve that?

[Mikaela]

Not really unless all Matrix clients start implementing Alt-Svc and there is no guarantee of Cloudflare not issuing captchas for them.