DOC - Decentralized Onion Communication

[Stefan Claas]

Hi all,

a while ago I said that I like to set-up a Nym requester
for YAMN and Mixmaster users. This requires a paid
server from my side and I do not gain nothing from
that, while the Nym Network made already a lot of
money.

I am currently investigating in running an own Tor
Hidden Service on my local Windows PC, where
users can do the same and then communicate
with their friends, without needing to use third
party servers, like Remailers, Tor email services etc.

This shoud have the advantage that every a.p.a-s
user can theoretically run a cheap Raspberry Pi
at home 24/7 while having his own .onion URL
and no need to purchase a VPS or Domain.

I am currently looking around what services
one can run on his own server at home.

If you visit:

wwfokt2ttwfbjfwlei25ue37mkemzgepxtmqb4axgecoculgzbqdwhad.onion

you can see that I have there software installed on my
local Windows PC which would allow you to exchange
messages. There is also client software available for this
so that users could via socat send files between each other.

I will let run this server a little while until I go to bed so
that you get an idea.

Please, if you run also .onion sites on the Internet,
share what else we can do to have decentralized
.onion comms, without no middleman servers, besides
the Tor nodes.

Regards
Stefan

[Stefan Claas]

The software I use under Windows 10:

The Tor Expert Bundle.

https://www.torproject.org/download/tor/

Configuration tips:

https://miloserdov.org/?p=1839

and the Golang server:

https://github.com/schollz/cowyo

And you need to open your firewall port.

Regards
Stefan

[Stefan Claas]

The Tor Hidden Service is running again on my PC and people can
try out with a socat configuration to use the cowyo clent, to see if
they can do a file transfer. I may later set up the software on a VPS,
with a regular domain, so that people have a permanent solution.

[Stefan Claas]

For Windows 10 users, it may be a good idea to run this set-up in a
Windows 10 Sandbox environment, so that you can use other
programs, like simple Golang ftp server/client, which can show
the whole directory structure of a Sandbox, but no other environment,
thus making also file transfers via local hidden services possible.

I could have also suggested OnionShare, but I do not like that it is
an installer and with my rig suggestion, it is also portable.

Regards
Stefan

[Stefan Claas]

On Sunday, January 9, 2022 at 6:22:25 PM UTC+1, Stefan Claas wrote:

> Configuration tips:
>
> https://miloserdov.org/?p=1839

Actually, this can be done much easier.

After downloading the Tor Expert Bundle for Windows,
simple extract, for example, the folder on your Desktop
and then create a torrc file with content like this:

HiddenServiceDir "C:/Tor/hidden_service/"
HiddenServicePort 80 127.0.0.1:9475

and then start tor.exe with 'tor -f 'path/to/torrc

Once done, you have a tor hidden service folder with
the required key pair and a host file which shows
you the .onion address of your local service, your
friends can connect to.

Regards
Stefan