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- <title>Tor Documentation</title>
- <meta name="Author" content="Roger Dingledine">
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- <h1><a href="http://tor.freehaven.net/">Tor</a> documentation</h1>
- <p>Tor provides a distributed network of servers ("onion routers"). Users
- bounce their communications (web requests, IM, IRC, SSH, etc.) around
- the routers. This makes it hard for recipients, observers, and even the
- onion routers themselves to track the source of the stream.</p>
- <a name="why"></a>
- <h2>Why should I use Tor?</h2>
- <p>Individuals need Tor for privacy:
- <ul>
- <li>Privacy in web browsing -- both from the remote website (so it can't
- track and sell your behavior), and similarly from your local ISP.
- <li>Safety in web browsing: if your local government doesn't approve
- of its citizens visiting certain websites, they may monitor the sites
- and put readers on a list of suspicious persons.
- <li>Circumvention of local censorship: connect to resources (news
- sites, instant messaging, etc) that are restricted from your
- ISP/school/company/government.
- <li>Socially sensitive communication: chat rooms and web forums for
- rape and abuse survivors, or people with illnesses.
- </ul>
- <p>Journalists and NGOs need Tor for safety:
- <ul>
- <li>Allowing dissidents and whistleblowers to communicate more safely.
- <li>Censorship-resistant publication, such as making available your
- home-made movie anonymously via a Tor <a href="#hidden-service">hidden
- service</a>; and reading, e.g. of news sites not permitted in some
- countries.
- <li>Allowing your workers to check back with your home website while
- they're in a foreign country, without notifying everybody nearby that
- they're working with your organization.
- </ul>
- <p>Companies need Tor for business security:
- <ul>
- <li>Competitive analysis: browse the competition's website safely.
- <li>Protecting collaborations of sensitive business units or partners.
- <li>Protecting procurement suppliers or patterns.
- <li>Putting the "P" back in "VPN": traditional VPNs reveal the exact
- amount and frequency of communication. Which locations have employees
- working late? Which locations have employees consulting job-hunting
- websites? Which research groups are communicating with your company's
- patent lawyers?
- </ul>
- <p>Governments need Tor for traffic-analysis-resistant communication:
- <ul>
- <li>Open source intelligence gathering (hiding individual analysts is
- not enough -- the organization itself may be sensitive).
- <li>Defense in depth on open <em>and classified</em> networks -- networks
- with a million users (even if they're all cleared) can't be made safe just
- by hardening them to external threat.
- <li>Dynamic and semi-trusted international coalitions: the network can
- be shared without revealing the existence or amount of communication
- between all parties.
- <li>Networks partially under known hostile control: to block
- communications, the enemy must take down the whole network.
- <li>Politically sensitive negotiations.
- <li>Road warriors.
- <li>Protecting procurement patterns.
- <li>Anonymous tips.
- </ul>
- <p>Law enforcement needs Tor for safety:
- <ul>
- <li>Allowing anonymous tips or crime reporting
- <li>Allowing agents to observe websites without notifying them that
- they're being observed (or, more broadly, without having it be an
- official visit from law enforcement).
- <li>Surveillance and honeypots (sting operations)
- </ul>
- <p>Does the idea of sharing the Tor network with
- all of these groups bother you? It shouldn't -- <a
- href="http://freehaven.net/doc/fc03/econymics.pdf">you need them for
- your security</a>.</p>
- <a name="client-or-server"></a>
- <h2>Should I run a client or a server?</h2>
- <p>You can run Tor in either client mode or server mode. By default,
- everybody is a <i>client</i>. This means you don't relay traffic for
- anybody but yourself.</p>
- <p>If your computer doesn't have a routable IP address or you're using
- a modem, you should stay a client. Otherwise, please consider being
- a server, to help out the network. (Currently each server uses 20-500
- gigabytes of traffic per month, depending on its capacity and its rate
- limiting configuration.)</p>
- <p>Note that you can be a server without allowing users to make
- connections from your computer to the outside world. This is called being
- a middleman server.</p>
- <p> Benefits of running a server include:
- <ul>
- <li>You may get stronger anonymity, since your destination can't know
- whether connections relayed through your computer originated at your
- computer or not.
- <li>You can also get stronger anonymity by configuring your Tor clients
- to use your Tor server for entry or for exit.
- <li>You're helping the Tor staff with development and scalability testing.
- <li>You're helping your fellow Internet users by providing a larger
- network. Also, having servers in many different pieces of the Internet
- gives users more robustness against curious telcos and brute force
- attacks.
- </ul>
- <p>Other things to note:
- <ul>
- <li>Tor has built-in support for rate limiting; see BandwidthRate
- and BandwidthBurst config options. Further, if you have
- lots of capacity but don't want to spend that many bytes per
- month, check out the Accounting and Hibernation features. See <a
- href="http://wiki.noreply.org/wiki/TheOnionRouter/TorFAQ">the FAQ</a>
- for details.</li>
- <li>It's fine if the server goes offline sometimes. The directories
- notice this quickly and stop advertising the server. Just try to make
- sure it's not too often, since connections using the server when it
- disconnects will break.</li>
- <li>We can handle servers with dynamic IPs just fine, as long as the
- server itself knows its IP. If your server is behind a NAT and it doesn't
- know its public IP (e.g. it has an IP of 192.168.x.y), then we can't use it
- as a server yet. (If you want to port forward and set your Address
- config option to use dyndns DNS voodoo to get around this, feel free. If
- you write a howto, <a href="mailto:tor-volunteer@freehaven.net">even
- better</a>.)</li>
- <li>Your server will passively estimate and advertise its recent
- bandwidth capacity.
- Clients choose paths weighted by this capacity, so high-bandwidth
- servers will attract more paths than low-bandwidth ones. That's why
- having even low-bandwidth servers is useful too.</li>
- </ul>
- </p>
- <p>You can read more about setting up Tor as a
- server <a href="#server">below</a>.</p>
- <a name="installing"></a>
- <h2>Installing Tor</h2>
- <p>Win32 users can use our Tor installer. See <a
- href="tor-doc-win32.html">these instructions</a> for help with
- installing, configuring, and using Tor on Win32.
- </p>
- <p>You can get the latest releases <a
- href="http://tor.freehaven.net/dist/">here</a>.</p>
- <p>If you got Tor from a tarball, unpack it: <tt>tar xzf
- tor-0.0.9.1.tar.gz; cd tor-0.0.9.1</tt>. Run <tt>./configure</tt>, then
- <tt>make</tt>, and then <tt>make install</tt> (as root if necessary). Then
- you can launch tor from the command-line by running <tt>tor</tt>.
- Otherwise, if you got it prepackaged (e.g. in the <a
- href="http://packages.debian.org/tor">Debian package</a> or <a
- href="http://packages.gentoo.org/packages/?category=net-misc;name=tor">Gentoo
- package</a>), these steps are already done for you, and you may
- even already have Tor started in the background (logging to
- /var/log/something).</p>
- <p>In any case, see the <a href="#client">next section</a> for what to
- <i>do</i> with it now that you've got it running.</p>
- <a name="client"></a>
- <h2>Configuring a client</h2>
- <p>Tor comes configured as a client by default. It uses a built-in
- default configuration file, and most people won't need to change any of
- the settings.</p>
- <p>After installing Tor, you should install <a
- href="http://www.privoxy.org/">privoxy</a>, which is a filtering web
- proxy that integrates well with Tor. Add the line <br>
- <tt>forward-socks4a / localhost:9050 .</tt><br>
- (don't forget the dot) to privoxy's config file (you can just add it to the
- top). Then change your browser to http proxy at localhost port 8118.
- (In Mozilla, this is in Edit|Preferences|Advanced|Proxies.)
- You should also set your SSL proxy to the same
- thing, to hide your SSL traffic. Using privoxy is <b>necessary</b> because
- <a href="http://tor.freehaven.net/cvs/tor/doc/CLIENTS">Mozilla leaks your
- DNS requests when it uses a SOCKS proxy directly</a>. Privoxy also gives
- you good html scrubbing.</p>
- <p>To test if it's working, go to <a
- href="http://peertech.org/privacy-knoppix/">this site</a> and see
- what IP it says you're coming from. (If it's down, you can try the
- <a href="http://www.junkbusters.com/cgi-bin/privacy">junkbusters</a>
- site instead.)</p>
- <p>
- If you have a personal firewall, be sure to allow local connections to
- port 8118 and port 9050. If your firewall blocks outgoing connections,
- punch a hole so it can connect to TCP ports 80, 443, and 9001-9033.
- <!--If you're
- using Safari as your browser, keep in mind that OS X before 10.3 claims
- to support SOCKS but does not. -->
- For more troubleshooting suggestions, see <a
- href="http://wiki.noreply.org/wiki/TheOnionRouter/TorFAQ">the FAQ</a>.
- </p>
- <p>To Torify an application that supports http, just point it at Privoxy
- (that is, localhost port 8118). To use SOCKS directly (for example, for
- instant messaging, Jabber, IRC, etc), point your application directly at
- Tor (localhost port 9050). For applications that support neither SOCKS
- nor http, you should look at
- using <a href="http://tsocks.sourceforge.net/">tsocks</a>
- to dynamically replace the system calls in your program to
- route through Tor. If you want to use SOCKS 4A, consider using <a
- href="http://www.dest-unreach.org/socat/">socat</a> (specific instructions
- are on <a href="http://6sxoyfb3h2nvok2d.onion/tor/SocatHelp">this hidden
- service url</a>).</p>
- <p>(Windows doesn't have tsocks; see the bottom of the
- <a href="tor-doc-win32.html">Win32 instructions</a> for alternatives.)
- </p>
- <a name="server"></a>
- <h2>Configuring a server</h2>
- <p>We're looking for people with reasonably reliable Internet connections,
- that have at least 20 kilobytes/s each way. If you frequently have a
- lot of packet loss or really high latency, we can't handle your server
- yet. Otherwise, please help out!
- </p>
- <p>
- To read more about whether you should be a server, check out <a
- href="#client-or-server">the section above</a>.
- </p>
- <p>To set up a Tor server, do the following steps after installing Tor.
- (These instructions are Unix-centric; if you're excited about working
- with the Tor developers to get a Tor server working on Windows, let us
- know and we'll work with you to fix whatever bugs come up -- currently
- there are some known bugs that keep Tor from working as a server on
- native Win32.)
- </p>
- <ul>
- <li>1. Edit the bottom part of your torrc (if you installed from source,
- you will need to copy torrc.sample to torrc first. Look for them in
- /usr/local/etc/tor/). Create the DataDirectory if necessary, and make
- sure it's owned by the uid/gid that will be running tor. Fix your system
- clock so it's not too far off. Make sure name resolution works.
- <!--Make sure each
- process can get to 1024 file descriptors (this should be already done
- for everybody but some BSD folks). -->
- <li>2. If you are using a firewall, open a hole in your firewall so
- incoming connections can reach the ports you configured (i.e. ORPort,
- plus DirPort if you enabled it). Make sure outgoing connections can reach
- at least ports 80, 443, and 9001-9033 (to get to other onion routers),
- plus any other addresses or ports your exit policy allows.
- <li>3. Start your server: if you installed from source you can just
- run <tt>tor</tt>, whereas packages typically launch Tor from their
- initscripts. If it logs any warnings, address them. (By default Tor
- logs to stdout, but some packages log to /var/log/tor/ instead.)
- <li>4. One of the files generated in your DataDirectory is called
- 'fingerprint'. Send mail to tor-ops@freehaven.net including a)
- this key fingerprint, b) who you are, so we know whom to contact if
- there's any problem, and c) what kind of connectivity the new server
- will have. If possible, PGP sign your mail.
- </ul>
- <p>
- Optionally, we recommend the following steps as well:
- </p>
- <ul>
- <li>5. Make a separate user to run the server. If you
- installed the deb or the rpm, this is already done. Otherwise,
- you can do it by hand. (The Tor server doesn't need to be run as
- root, so it's good practice to not run it as root. Running as a
- 'tor' user avoids issues with identd and other services that
- detect user name. If you're the paranoid sort, feel free to <a
- href="http://wiki.noreply.org/wiki/TheOnionRouter/TorInChroot">put Tor
- into a chroot jail</a>.)
- <li>6. Decide what exit policy you want. By default your server allows
- access to many popular services, but we restrict some (such as port 25)
- due to abuse potential. You might want an exit policy that is
- less restrictive or more restrictive; edit your torrc appropriately.
- If you choose a particularly open exit policy, you might want to make
- sure your upstream or ISP is ok with that choice.
- <li>7. You may find the initscripts in contrib/tor.sh or
- contrib/torctl useful if you want to set up Tor to start at boot. Let
- the Tor developers know which script you find more useful.
- <li>8. Consider setting your hostname to 'anonymous' or
- 'proxy' or 'tor-proxy' if you can, so when other people see the address
- in their web logs or whatever, they will more quickly understand what's
- going on.
- <li>9. If you're not running anything else on port 80 or port 443,
- please consider setting up port-forwarding and advertising these
- low-numbered ports as your Tor server. This will help allow users behind
- particularly restrictive firewalls to access the Tor network. See <a
- href="http://wiki.noreply.org/wiki/TheOnionRouter/TorFAQ#ServerForFirewalledClients">the
- FAQ</a> for details of how to set this up.
- </ul>
- <p>You can click <a href="http://moria.seul.org:9031/">here</a> or <a
- href="http://62.116.124.106:9030/">here</a> and look at the router-status
- line to see if your server is part of the network. It will be listed by
- nickname once we have added your server to the list of known servers;
- otherwise it is listed only by its fingerprint.</p>
- <a name="hidden-service"></a>
- <h2>Configuring a hidden service</h2>
- <p>Tor allows clients and servers to offer <em>hidden services</em>. That
- is, you can offer an apache, sshd, etc, without revealing your IP to its
- users. This works via Tor's rendezvous point design: both sides build
- a Tor circuit out, and they meet in the middle.</p>
- <p>If you're using Tor and <a href="http://www.privoxy.org/">Privoxy</a>,
- you can <a href="http://6sxoyfb3h2nvok2d.onion/">go to the hidden wiki</a>
- to see hidden services in action.</p>
- <p>To set up a hidden service, copy torrc.sample to torrc (by default it's
- in /usr/local/etc/tor/), and edit the middle part. Then run Tor. It will
- create each HiddenServiceDir you have configured, and it will create a
- 'hostname' file which specifies the url (xyz.onion) for that service. You
- can tell people the url, and they can connect to it via their Tor client,
- assuming they're using a proxy (such as Privoxy) that speaks SOCKS 4A.</p>
- <a name="own-network"></a>
- <h2>Setting up your own network</h2>
- <p>
- If you want to experiment locally with your own network, or you're cut
- off from the Internet and want to be able to mess with Tor still, then
- you may want to set up your own separate Tor network.
- <p>
- To set up your own Tor network, you need to run your own directory
- servers, and you need to configure each client and server so it knows
- about your directory servers rather than the default ones.
- <ul>
- <li>1: Grab the latest release. Use at least 0.0.9.
- <li>2: For each directory server you want,
- <ul>
- <li>2a: Set it up as a server (see <a href="#server">"setting up a
- server"</a> above), with a least ORPort, DirPort, DataDirectory, and Nickname
- defined. Set "AuthoritativeDirectory 1".
- <li>2b: Set "RecommendedVersions" to a comma-separated list of acceptable
- versions of the code for clients and servers to be running.
- <li>2c: Run it: <tt>tor --list-fingerprint</tt> if your torrc is in
- the default place, or <tt>tor -f torrc --list-fingerprint</tt> to
- specify one. This will generate your keys and output a fingerprint
- line.
- </ul>
- <li>3: Now you need to teach clients and servers to use the new
- dirservers. For each fingerprint, add a line like<br>
- <tt>DirServer 18.244.0.114:80 719B E45D E224 B607 C537 07D0 E214 3E2D 423E 74CF</tt><br>
- to the torrc of each client and server who will be using your network.
- <li>4: Create a file called approved-routers in the DataDirectory
- of each directory server. Collect the 'fingerprint' lines from
- each server (including directory servers), and include them (one per
- line) in each approved-routers file. You can hup the tor process for
- each directory server to reload the approved-routers file (so you don't
- have to restart the process).
- </ul>
- <!--<h2>Other doc resources</h2>
- <ul>
- <li>Design paper
- <li>Spec and rend-spec
- <li>others
- </ul> -->
- </body>
- </html>
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