Onion Version of Wikipedia Launched on the Darknet

In many countries, access to Wikipedia is taken for granted. However, in some nations, such as Syria and Turkey, the popular online encyclopedia is banned. In certain places, using Wikipedia is not just restricted but can even be life-threatening. For example, in Turkey, the site was blocked following a failed political coup. Additionally, it is believed that Syrian-Palestinian internet activist and Wikipedia editor Bassel Khartabil was executed by the Syrian government.

To help protect Wikipedia readers in countries where using the encyclopedia could pose a risk, former Facebook engineer Alec Muffett launched an experimental Wikipedia site on the darknet. Currently, the project is unofficial and is being developed without Wikipedia’s direct involvement.

The site can be accessed through the Tor browser. While Wikipedia’s official site is already accessible via Tor, users must exit the private Tor network to reach it. Muffett’s site, however, is hosted in the .onion domain, meaning traffic never leaves the encrypted Tor network. The site uses a self-signed certificate, so browsers may display security warnings. In such cases, users need to manually add the site’s address to their whitelist.

While working as an engineer at Facebook in 2014, Muffett created an onion version of the social network. This year, The New York Times also launched a darknet site using the open-source Enterprise Onion Toolkit (EOTK) developed by Muffett, which is specifically designed for creating such sites.