150 lines
6.5 KiB
Markdown
150 lines
6.5 KiB
Markdown
*** Warning: Do not assume Tor support does the correct thing in Zcash; better Tor support is a future feature goal. ***
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TOR SUPPORT IN ZCASH
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====================
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It is possible to run Zcash as a Tor hidden service, and connect to such services.
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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
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configure Tor.
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1. Run Zcash behind a Tor proxy
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-------------------------------
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The first step is running Zcash behind a Tor proxy. This will already make all
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outgoing connections be anonymized, but more is possible.
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-proxy=ip:port Set the proxy server. If SOCKS5 is selected (default), this proxy
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server will be used to try to reach .onion addresses as well.
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-onion=ip:port Set the proxy server to use for Tor hidden services. You do not
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need to set this if it's the same as -proxy. You can use -noonion
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to explicitly disable access to hidden service.
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-listen When using -proxy, listening is disabled by default. If you want
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to run a hidden service (see next section), you'll need to enable
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it explicitly.
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-connect=X When behind a Tor proxy, you can specify .onion addresses instead
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-addnode=X of IP addresses or hostnames in these parameters. It requires
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-seednode=X SOCKS5. In Tor mode, such addresses can also be exchanged with
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other P2P nodes.
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In a typical situation, this suffices to run behind a Tor proxy:
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./zcashd -proxy=127.0.0.1:9050
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2. Run a Zcash hidden server
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----------------------------
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If you configure your Tor system accordingly, it is possible to make your node also
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reachable from the Tor network. Add these lines to your /etc/tor/torrc (or equivalent
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config file):
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HiddenServiceDir /var/lib/tor/zcash-service/
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HiddenServicePort 8233 127.0.0.1:8233
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HiddenServicePort 18233 127.0.0.1:18233
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The directory can be different of course, but (both) port numbers should be equal to
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your zcashd's P2P listen port (8233 by default).
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-externalip=X You can tell Zcash about its publicly reachable address using
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this option, and this can be a .onion address. Given the above
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configuration, you can find your onion address in
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/var/lib/tor/zcash-service/hostname. Onion addresses are given
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preference for your node to advertize itself with, for connections
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coming from unroutable addresses (such as 127.0.0.1, where the
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Tor proxy typically runs).
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-listen You'll need to enable listening for incoming connections, as this
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is off by default behind a proxy.
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-discover When -externalip is specified, no attempt is made to discover local
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IPv4 or IPv6 addresses. If you want to run a dual stack, reachable
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from both Tor and IPv4 (or IPv6), you'll need to either pass your
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other addresses using -externalip, or explicitly enable -discover.
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Note that both addresses of a dual-stack system may be easily
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linkable using traffic analysis.
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In a typical situation, where you're only reachable via Tor, this should suffice:
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./zcashd -proxy=127.0.0.1:9050 -externalip=zctestseie6wxgio.onion -listen
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(obviously, replace the Onion address with your own). It should be noted that you still
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listen on all devices and another node could establish a clearnet connection, when knowing
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your address. To mitigate this, additionally bind the address of your Tor proxy:
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./zcashd ... -bind=127.0.0.1
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If you don't care too much about hiding your node, and want to be reachable on IPv4
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as well, use `discover` instead:
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./zcashd ... -discover
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and open port 8233 on your firewall (or use -upnp).
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If you only want to use Tor to reach onion addresses, but not use it as a proxy
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for normal IPv4/IPv6 communication, use:
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./zcashd -onion=127.0.0.1:9050 -externalip=zctestseie6wxgio.onion -discover
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3. Automatically listen on Tor
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--------------------------------
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Starting with Tor version 0.2.7.1 it is possible, through Tor's control socket
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API, to create and destroy 'ephemeral' hidden services programmatically.
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Zcash has been updated to make use of this.
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This means that if Tor is running (and proper authentication has been configured),
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Zcash automatically creates a hidden service to listen on. Zcash will also use Tor
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automatically to connect to other .onion nodes if the control socket can be
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successfully opened. This will positively affect the number of available .onion
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nodes and their usage.
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This new feature is enabled by default if Zcash is listening (`-listen`), and
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requires a Tor connection to work. It can be explicitly disabled with `-listenonion=0`
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and, if not disabled, configured using the `-torcontrol` and `-torpassword` settings.
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To show verbose debugging information, pass `-debug=tor`.
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Connecting to Tor's control socket API requires one of two authentication methods to be
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configured. For cookie authentication the user running zcashd must have write access
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to the `CookieAuthFile` specified in Tor configuration. In some cases this is
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preconfigured and the creation of a hidden service is automatic. If permission problems
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are seen with `-debug=tor` they can be resolved by adding both the user running tor and
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the user running zcashd to the same group and setting permissions appropriately. On
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Debian-based systems the user running zcashd can be added to the debian-tor group,
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which has the appropriate permissions. An alternative authentication method is the use
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of the `-torpassword` flag and a `hash-password` which can be enabled and specified in
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Tor configuration.
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4. Connect to a Zcash hidden server
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-----------------------------------
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To test your set-up, you might want to try connecting via Tor on a different computer to just a
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a single Zcash hidden server. Launch zcashd as follows:
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./zcashd -onion=127.0.0.1:9050 -connect=zctestseie6wxgio.onion
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Now use zcash-cli to verify there is only a single peer connection.
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zcash-cli getpeerinfo
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[
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{
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"id" : 1,
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"addr" : "zctestseie6wxgio.onion:18233",
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...
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"version" : 170002,
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"subver" : "/MagicBean:1.0.0/",
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...
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}
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]
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To connect to multiple Tor nodes, use:
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./zcashd -onion=127.0.0.1:9050 -addnode=zctestseie6wxgio.onion -dnsseed=0 -onlynet=onion
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