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# TOR SUPPORT IN BITCOIN
It is possible to run Bitcoin Core as a Tor onion service, and connect to such services.
The following directions assume you have a Tor proxy running on port 9050. Many distributions default to having a SOCKS proxy listening on port 9050, but others may not. In particular, the Tor Browser Bundle defaults to listening on port 9150. See [Tor Project FAQ:TBBSocksPort](https://www.torproject.org/docs/faq.html.en#TBBSocksPort) for how to properly
configure Tor.
## How to see information about your Tor configuration via Bitcoin Core
There are several ways to see your local onion address in Bitcoin Core:
- in the debug log (grep for "tor:" or "AddLocal")
- in the output of RPC `getnetworkinfo` in the "localaddresses" section
- in the output of the CLI `-netinfo` peer connections dashboard
You may set the `-debug=tor` config logging option to have additional
information in the debug log about your Tor configuration.
## 1. Run Bitcoin Core behind a Tor proxy
The first step is running Bitcoin Core behind a Tor proxy. This will already anonymize all
outgoing connections, but more is possible.
-proxy=ip:port Set the proxy server. If SOCKS5 is selected (default), this proxy
server will be used to try to reach .onion addresses as well.
-onion=ip:port Set the proxy server to use for Tor onion services. You do not
need to set this if it's the same as -proxy. You can use -noonion
to explicitly disable access to onion services.
-listen When using -proxy, listening is disabled by default. If you want
to run an onion service (see next section), you'll need to enable
it explicitly.
-connect=X When behind a Tor proxy, you can specify .onion addresses instead
-addnode=X of IP addresses or hostnames in these parameters. It requires
-seednode=X SOCKS5. In Tor mode, such addresses can also be exchanged with
other P2P nodes.
-onlynet=onion Make outgoing connections only to .onion addresses. Incoming
connections are not affected by this option. This option can be
specified multiple times to allow multiple network types, e.g.
ipv4, ipv6, or onion.
In a typical situation, this suffices to run behind a Tor proxy:
./bitcoind -proxy=127.0.0.1:9050
## 2. Run a Bitcoin Core hidden server
If you configure your Tor system accordingly, it is possible to make your node also
reachable from the Tor network. Add these lines to your /etc/tor/torrc (or equivalent
config file): *Needed for Tor version 0.2.7.0 and older versions of Tor only. For newer
versions of Tor see [Section 3](#3-automatically-listen-on-tor).*
HiddenServiceDir /var/lib/tor/bitcoin-service/
HiddenServicePort 8333 127.0.0.1:8334
HiddenServicePort 18333 127.0.0.1:18334
The directory can be different of course, but virtual port numbers should be equal to
your bitcoind's P2P listen port (8333 by default), and target addresses and ports
should be equal to binding address and port for inbound Tor connections (127.0.0.1:8334 by default).
-externalip=X You can tell bitcoin about its publicly reachable addresses using
this option, and this can be an onion address. Given the above
configuration, you can find your onion address in
/var/lib/tor/bitcoin-service/hostname. For connections
coming from unroutable addresses (such as 127.0.0.1, where the
Tor proxy typically runs), onion addresses are given
preference for your node to advertise itself with.
You can set multiple local addresses with -externalip. The
one that will be rumoured to a particular peer is the most
compatible one and also using heuristics, e.g. the address
with the most incoming connections, etc.
-listen You'll need to enable listening for incoming connections, as this
is off by default behind a proxy.
-discover When -externalip is specified, no attempt is made to discover local
IPv4 or IPv6 addresses. If you want to run a dual stack, reachable
from both Tor and IPv4 (or IPv6), you'll need to either pass your
other addresses using -externalip, or explicitly enable -discover.
Note that both addresses of a dual-stack system may be easily
linkable using traffic analysis.
In a typical situation, where you're only reachable via Tor, this should suffice:
./bitcoind -proxy=127.0.0.1:9050 -externalip=7zvj7a2imdgkdbg4f2dryd5rgtrn7upivr5eeij4cicjh65pooxeshid.onion -listen
(obviously, replace the .onion address with your own). It should be noted that you still
listen on all devices and another node could establish a clearnet connection, when knowing
your address. To mitigate this, additionally bind the address of your Tor proxy:
./bitcoind ... -bind=127.0.0.1
If you don't care too much about hiding your node, and want to be reachable on IPv4
as well, use `discover` instead:
./bitcoind ... -discover
and open port 8333 on your firewall (or use -upnp).
If you only want to use Tor to reach .onion addresses, but not use it as a proxy
for normal IPv4/IPv6 communication, use:
./bitcoind -onion=127.0.0.1:9050 -externalip=7zvj7a2imdgkdbg4f2dryd5rgtrn7upivr5eeij4cicjh65pooxeshid.onion -discover
## 3. Automatically listen on Tor
Starting with Tor version 0.2.7.1 it is possible, through Tor's control socket
API, to create and destroy 'ephemeral' onion services programmatically.
Bitcoin Core has been updated to make use of this.
This means that if Tor is running (and proper authentication has been configured),
Bitcoin Core automatically creates an onion service to listen on. This will positively
affect the number of available .onion nodes.
This new feature is enabled by default if Bitcoin Core is listening (`-listen`), and
requires a Tor connection to work. It can be explicitly disabled with `-listenonion=0`
and, if not disabled, configured using the `-torcontrol` and `-torpassword` settings.
To show verbose debugging information, pass `-debug=tor`.
Connecting to Tor's control socket API requires one of two authentication methods to be
configured. It also requires the control socket to be enabled, e.g. put `ControlPort 9051`
in `torrc` config file. For cookie authentication the user running bitcoind must have read
access to the `CookieAuthFile` specified in Tor configuration. In some cases this is
preconfigured and the creation of an onion service is automatic. If permission problems
are seen with `-debug=tor` they can be resolved by adding both the user running Tor and
the user running bitcoind to the same group and setting permissions appropriately. On
Debian-based systems the user running bitcoind can be added to the debian-tor group,
which has the appropriate permissions. Before starting bitcoind you will need to re-login
to allow debian-tor group to be applied. Otherwise you will see the following notice: "tor:
Authentication cookie /run/tor/control.authcookie could not be opened (check permissions)"
on debug.log.
An alternative authentication method is the use
of the `-torpassword=password` option. The `password` is the clear text form that
was used when generating the hashed password for the `HashedControlPassword` option
in the tor configuration file. The hashed password can be obtained with the command
`tor --hash-password password` (read the tor manual for more details).
## 4. Privacy recommendations
- Do not add anything but Bitcoin Core ports to the onion service created in section 2.
If you run a web service too, create a new onion service for that.
Otherwise it is trivial to link them, which may reduce privacy. Hidden
services created automatically (as in section 3) always have only one port
open.
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