GoKawiilThis will be a quick tutorial on how to configure an Exit Node for the Tor Network. Doing this comes with some inherent risks for the operator but exit nodes are essential for bridging Tor with the ‘clear net’. Without exit nodes, anyone suffering from ISP filtering or those not wishing to have their Internet activity logged (BBC Article) couldn’t utilise Tor to access the Internet.
Unlike bridges, exit nodes (and normal relays) are publicly known devices, for which their IP address and configuration is available for anyone to see. They effectively make the final connection to the destination on behalf of the originating (anonymous) client. The Tor network is drastically short of exit nodes, but for good reason. Because they are the final hop in the chain, they will be making hundreds of outbound connections to whatever website or service Tor users request. It is therefore easy for the powers who be to blame an exit node operator for ‘doing bad things’ when in fact their node is merely participating in a network, much like a traditional router would in any network. Anyway, assuming you have balls of steel and willing to run an exit node I’ll take a look at how to do this with least hassle as possible.
Before we begin, let me make it clear running this from home is possibly dangerous, due to harassment from ISPs and the powers that be. Although you are not breaking any law by doing this you are acting as the exit point for Tor traffic and you have no control over what any of the 2.5 million Tor users across the world are going to be doing. If you do experience harassment, stay calm and know you have done nothing wrong. There is lots of information out there to help you if required.
Another issue you may face is one of reputation. Some websites block exit nodes and others make Captcha a requirement (such as cloudflare CDN & Google if it sees lots of traffic).
First up lets assume you have a working Linux machine, I’ll go with Ubuntu 14.04 (Trusty). Secondly lets assume you are NAT’ed behind a bog standard router.
We need to install tor and tor-arm. To do we need to add the Tor repos:
echo 'deb http://deb.torproject.org/torproject.org trusty main' >> /etc/apt/sources.list echo 'deb-src http://deb.torproject.org/torproject.org trusty main' >> /etc/apt/sources.list
Next, install the GPG keys for the repo:
gpg --keyserver keys.gnupg.net --recv 886DDD89 gpg --export A3C4F0F979CAA22CDBA8F512EE8CBC9E886DDD89 | sudo apt-key add -
Now install tor, tor-arm, curl, vnstat, nginx and socat:
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