Tox over Tor
With the ever increasing need for anonymity online, Toxcore now supports TCP-only communications to be used through services such as Tor. Tunneling Tox over Tor allows the user to still communicate with non-Tor contacts, unlike I2P, providing the best of both worlds. The following guide will explain how to setup ToT with the various Tox clients.
Installing Tor
Tor must be installed prior to tunneling Tox. To keep resource usage low, we recommend installing just Tor itself, and avoiding the use of the Tor Browser Bundle. You may use the TBB if you wish, but the following directions are how to install Tor itself as a tunnel only.
Debian, Ubuntu, Knoppix, etc.
Install Tor by running sudo apt-get install tor.
Start Tor by running sudo service tor start.
Fedora, CentOS, RHEL, etc.
Paste the following into
/etc/yum.repos.d/torproject.repo
:
[tor]
name=Tor repo
enabled=1
baseurl=http://deb.torproject.org/torproject.org/rpm/DISTRIBUTION/$basearch/
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=http://deb.torproject.org/torproject.org/rpm/RPM-GPG-KEY-torproject.org.asc
[tor-source]
name=Tor source repo
enabled=1
autorefresh=0
baseurl=http://deb.torproject.org/torproject.org/rpm/DISTRIBUTION/SRPMS
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=http://deb.torproject.org/torproject.org/rpm/RPM-GPG-KEY-torproject.org.asc
Confirm the GPG repo key: 3B9E EEB9 7B1E 827B CF0A 0D96 8AF5 653C 5AC0 01F1
Run sudo yum install tor
to install Tor
Start Tor by running sudo service tor start
Windows
Download the Tor Expert Bundle and install, located here.
When you run Tor, you should see a window similar to the one shown on the right.
Take note of the line saying
Opening Socks listener on Address:Port
Android
Orbot required. Available on F-Droid.
Tunneling
Tunneling aka routing your Tox data over the Tor network.
Clients
Toxic
Verify Tor is running
Run toxic –force-tcp –SOCKS5-proxy 127.0.0.1 9050
qTox
Verify Tor is running.
Launch qTox, and navigate to settings by clicking on the cogwheel in the lower left-hand corner.
Look under the General tab in settings and scroll down to the bottom to, Connection Settings.
Uncheck UDP option to set it off.
Uncheck IPv6 option to set it off.
Set the Proxy type to SOCKS5.
Address to 127.0.0.1 and Port 9050 (Port 9150 if you use Tor Browser).
If you don't connect to the Tox network immediately, restart qTox and it should automatically connect to the Tox network via Tor.
µTox
Verify Tor is running
Launch uTox, and navigate to settings by clicking on the cogwheel in the lower left-hand corner
Switch to the Network tab
Set the IPv6 option to no
Set the UDP option to no
Set the Proxy to “Always Use”, and input the value 127.0.0.1 for the IP and 9050 for the port (9150 if you use Tor Browser).
If you don't connect to the Tox network immediately, restart uTox and it should automatically connect to the Tox network via Tor.
TRIfA
Make sure
Orbot is installed and started first.
Launch TRIfA, and navigate to Settings by tapping the three lines in the upper left-hand corner
In General, move the slider of enable Tor proxy
to enabled position.
Shut down the TRIfA client and start it again.