Private Tor Network on Docker

An isolated, private tor network running entirely in Docker containers

Quickstart

The easiest way to get a tor network up and running is to use the docker-compose create and then scale function

docker-ccompose create
docker-compose scale da=3 relay=5 exit=3 client=1

Uses

If you're going "Why do I want this?" here's a few examples:

tor research: learn how tor interacts with nodes, make modifications to settings and see what happens, understand how the Tor Network operates without affecting real people. (Originally this project was part of a class I wrote to teach about how tor works)

tor development: in the case you're working on a patch that is more complex and requires seeing what happens on the tor network, you can apply the patches to the containers.

traffic analysis: Test out the latest tor exploit and pretend to be a nation state adversary.

Network Settings

All of the requisit information that other nodes need to know about on the network are stored in a mapped volume: ./tor:/tor. NOTE: This folder must exist on the host and allow the debian-tor user to create files in this directory.

Running Individual Roles

This is building a base tor relay container and then modifying it based on ROLE environment variable you give it. For example, this would make a directory authority (DA) docker run -e ROLE=DA antitree/tor-private-server

Available roles right now are:

• DA - directory authority
• RELAY - non-exit relay
• EXIT - exit relay
• CLIENT - exposes the tor socks port on 9050 to the host

Tor configuration

This configuration is based on the Tor documentation for how to run a private tor network. You should also check out Chutney1 which does something similar with separate processes instead of containers. If you need to make a modification (such as changing the timing of the DA's) edit the config/torrc and/or config/torrc.da files. You may need to modify the Dockerfile as well.

Debugging

Here are a few things to try if you're runing into issues:

• Check the tor logs sent to stdout docker logs -f torserver_da_1
• Check all the logs with docker-compose logs
• Enable verbose logging by changing the ./config/torrc
• Check permissions for your ./tor folder
• Delete the files in your ./tor folder so you can start from scratch (or specifically the torrc.da file)
• To cleanup the environment and start over you can use docker-compose kill and docker-compose rm -ra to remove them all.

TODO

• Use an environment variable to choose which version of tor to compile
• Get rid of apt-get from docker container
• Wait for someone to yell at me about using scale like this and then move to the new networking

Dislaimer

This project is in no way associated with the Tor Project or their developers. Like many people I'm a fan of Tor and recommend considering ways you can help the project. Consider running a relay, donating, or writing code.

References

• https://github.com/chriswayg/tor-server
• https://www.torproject.org/docs/tor-relay-debian.html.en