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Hi,

I just started Tor hidden service running Electrum server on 4lhnnupincd3gyda.onion:50001. Now you can use Electrum client without revealing your real identity and without a need of Tor exit nodes.

1. Install Tor
2. Run electrum 1.0 as: "electrum -p socks5:localhost:9050" (point Electrum client to your local Tor node)
3. View->Pro mode
4. Click to "Network" icon in right bottom corner and put "4lhnnupincd3gyda.onion:50001:t" into "Connect to" field.

Good work slush ... I'll be checking this out. Should be no need for polipo or privoxy, since electrum doesn't use http traffic right ... or?

Exactly, Tor itself is enough.

Did you see my suggestion in the Electrum thread of maybe having onion server urls show up when the user has selected SOCKS5 mode in the network dialog? I think that could work.

Or possibly when you choose the onion address it auto-selects SOCKS5 mode for you with correct port. Although in that case it should put a msg that you actually need Tor to use this server. It could list the onion url with "[Tor Required]" appended into the line to be clear.

I could make this change and submit it as a pull request if that's what you had in mind.

The available server list is propagated thru IRC. I haven't looked at that but I believe it would work as well for onion urls and then it's just a matter of making it user friendly. If your server isn't announcing itself thru IRC maybe there is some issue with onion addresses.

Having looked now at the electrum-server code (server.py) I see that the problem is the config "host" variable is used both for publishing the host address and also for binding the server listen processes.

In order to get onion names to be published a small change would be needed. Host can still be used for publishing and would have the onion name, but a new one, perhaps called "bind", would need to be set to the local host value to use.

It appears this would be easy to do but since I'm not all set up to test this it's really better someone else makes the change, tests and sends a pull request.

It also occurred to me as a workaround that you could probably put your onion name in your hosts file and map it to your public IP. That may allow the gethostname lookup to bind it correctly to your public IP. Then you would put the onion name for host and it would get published as desired.

It seems to me that if you want both a Tor and non-Tor service as well then the code needs to be able to publish two host values for the one server. That would be another good change IMO.

(Is the onion name operable right now? I tried using it a few times and it never seems to work, for me anyway. But connecting to regular servers via Tor works fine.)

Yes, that's my problem. I'm running the same node over standard network and over Tor network, but Electrum server don't give me a chance to propagate alternative URLs. Maybe that won't be so hard to add, simply add new config directive and publish these URLs in IRC details?


Binding to multiple interfaces isn't necessary. If somebody want to run Electrum over multiple external IPs, it can be achieved by firewall/router configuration. No need of direct support in server for this...


I prefer to publish more URLs for one IRC nick, just to make clear that all URLs are pointing to the same node. This solution will be also cleaner for backward compatibility. I'm not sure how will old (=existing) Electrum clients handle URLs poining to ".onion" domain. But they'll surely ignore additional information in IRC details...


It works for me now. You can try "torify telnet 4lhnnupincd3gyda.onion 50001"...

I was thinking more about this later and thought perhaps a good solution would be to make the hosts config item a list. Then the first one could be used for binding and any additional URLs could be passed thru as aliases to IRC.
eg.
"hosts": [ "california.stratum.bitcoincz:50001", "4lhnnupincd3gyda.onion:50001" ]

This would be fairly minor code changes as far as I can see. It could auto-detect string or list to be compatible with any existing install. In order for me to test changes I think I would have to install and run Bitcoin-Abe again as I wiped it some months ago. I can do that but it will take quite some time to fill the database.

From my brief reading of the code it seems the client just adds whatever URL is given to the list. But if a list of URLs was used the code would have to be updated to detect it and iterate.

Will try this again.

Edit: I forked electrum-server and was going to work on changes but see now that it'll take a lot more effort to get it up and running and I'll have to do it on one of my other servers, not my laptop. I'll have to rebuild bitcoind with a patch and have a mysql db available. So this will be delayed. I'm willing to make code changes now that someone else (slush?) can test to see if we can get support for publishing the onion name.

Also, see now that the format for config isn't correct. Not the same as electrum client. So it would actually need to be more like,

hosts = california.stratum.bitcoincz:50001, 4lhnnupincd3gyda.onion:50001

but should still be workable.

Tested using onion name just now and it worked fine.

Strange thing is the client doesn't have any way to show what server is currently connected. So I'll fix that soon. It seems when you open the network dialog it chooses a new random server but doesn't say which one is active. You can get an indication in the Lite mode menu list but that doesn't show any server entered manually, only the predefined listed ones.

IMO the server status should be in the tooltip for the Network config, and indicated in the dialog once opened.

"electrum -p socks5:localhost:9050" doesn't work for me.
gives : electrum: error: no such option: -p  :-\

Are you using latest electrum?

electrum/precise uptodate 1.0

Unless I didn't hear of an update to available Ubuntu packages I don't think they currently have the latest version.

You would have to install from github using the master branch.
On this page,

http://electrum-desktop.com/download.html

You should follow the "build from source" instructions. It looks more complicated but should only takes a minute or less. It uses "git clone" to pull from the current master branch.

yeah you're right. github's updated version works fine and is more cool also. Thanks.

Is your hidden service down?

I just put one up at "k3m4jg4irk7duq2q.onion" and was trying to use yours to test.  It's running on a small ec2 instance.

Hm, Tor service freezed for some reason. It should work again.

So whats the difference between connecting to a hidden service and connecting to a default server over SSL/HTTPS via tor?

When connecting to a hidden service, the connection never leaves the Tor network.

one more electrum hidden service  : 56ckl5obj37gypcu.onion
Enjoy!

I'll see whether I can set up some monitoring for the .onion addresses...

Which Tor Electrum still works? The only one that I can connect to is 56ckl5obj37gypcu.onion, and even that one only says "Syncrhonizing" and hasn't yet.

I am using 1.73.

it works well for me.

Server : TCP 56ckl5obj37gypcu.onion 50001

Proxy : SOCKS5 localhost 9050  <-- the port tor daemon listens to.

I'm using 1.7.4 but i don't think that it matters.

Yes, thank you. It was really just synchronizing, but I don't know what that means since electrum doesn't store a local block chain.

BTW, on the new Tor portables the daemon listens on 9150.

Can anyone confirm .onion addresses currently working as electrum servers?

I've got electrum using TOR as a PROXY fine (SOCKS5, localhost,9150), but none of the .onion nodes in this thread seem to connect for me.

I am running Electrum OSX 1.9.7

What protocol should it be (TCP,HTTP,SSL,HTTPS)?

(And yes, I put new settings in, quit, and restart, which gets the PROXY working but I haven't managed to connect to a .onion TOR service at all)

thanks,

Hm, strange. 56ckl5obj37gypcu.onion is up, but I can't connect to it. Haven't got much time to track the problem at the moment, but will update as soon as possible.

I had 5 onion addresses for electrum from a few months ago. None of them work for me now. Anyone have a working address?

I did set up the server from scratch. I'm using the newest db verstion. I've also setup the hidden service, and seems to work. Check it out : TCP : 56ckl5obj37gypcu.onion:50001

hmmm .... still not working  for me, but its ok, just wanted to 'try it out'

I tried with both version 1.9.8 and version 2.0 of electrum client, on Linux. And it works. Can someone else check to help us track the problem?

I'm still on 1.9.7. Will wait for 1.9.8 binary release on OSX and try again. Be useful to know if other OSX users have it working already on 1.9.7

Still connects with 1.9.7 on Linux.

One point worth noticing : since some time now (don't remember version), electrum client doesn't connect to a single server, but to more. That's for getting block headers and notify the user if a certain server lags some blocks. In that context I don't know if it worths connecting to a hidden service, since your client will further connect to different "normal" nodes.

Observe :


Of course your subscriptions will be sent to the hidden service you selected. Don't know. I guess it depends on your threat model.

thanks for the good info. so far, Electrum 1.9.8 works with <uname -a>
Linux amnesia 3.12-1-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 3.12.9-1 (2014-02-01) x86_64 GNU/Linux

56ckl5obj37gypcu.onion is pretty reliable, haven't tried many so far. the -v switch is very helpful, if it doesn't try to sync within 60 seconds, best to Ctl-C and try again.

i see that it does try to talk to others.

Today, neither 4lhnnupincd3gyda.onion or 56ckl5obj37gypcu.onion seem to be working. 56ckl5obj37gypcu.onion was working about 18hours ago.

Edit: 56ckl5obj37gypcu.onion is working now.

Solution?
1) How can you strictly use only ".onion" servers?
2) Can you use multiple .onion servers simultaneously? By default, you can only enter one in the box. :(
3) Can you disable the "normal" servers somehow?

If you use the -1 (number one) flag, it should only try to connect to 1 server.

Also, I have a server that should be running on this address: electrumupzx5w5f.onion

Let me know if it's not working, I think it may have been unresponsive on tor for the last week or two.

Edit, also you should probably turn off the exchange rate plugin to remain truly anonymous.  Since the exchange rate plugin queries several api's depending on the currency.

Thanks for the tip on the -1 switch. Sure enough, there it was in electrum -h.

I can't seem to operate on electrumupzx5w5f.onion  I get a synced message:

synchronizer: connected to electrumupzx5w5f.onion:50001:

But it never seems to connect. It looks like if I don't get a 'synchronizing' message in lower left corner of 1.9.8, and a swirly icon on the right, it never will connect. It can take some time synching chunks, but it needs that message before it will ever happen. the -v switch is my friend! Thanks for the suggestions.

Hi

All Servers in this Thread are down. I got no connect. Last month all fine but now all dead. Using electrum 1.9.8 works fine with listet normal servers. 56ckl5obj37gypcu.onion electrumupzx5w5f.onion don´t work.

56ckl5obj37gypcu.onion is working for me today, fully synched.

looks like electrumupzx5w5f.onion was down for a while. I think my tor daemon quit and I don't have a monitor on it. It should be up now and I'll try to find a way to monitor if it goes down so I can restart it.

Is 56ckl5obj37gypcu.onion down now? I can connect, but can't seem to sync.

Any of these working, or any others?

TCP : 56ckl5obj37gypcu.onion:50001  does work as of yesterday.

Here is my electrum server on tor

Old not working TCP 4rwpmjwjfocguylj.onion:50001
 
New tor address is
TCP 3smoooajg7qqac2y.onion:50001


Donate to 1ErbiuMtm7CpgtCGSekWcH4y8cRD9LG5jE

I've been using the tor servers mentioned in this thread with an electrum client in Tails OS for a while now. Some servers connect no problem but obviously not all seem to be available constantly.

I use the same seed every time and my list of receive and change addresses is growing rather large; so much that sometimes when I connect to a hidden service only the first 8 addresses/keys are generated and I can't see the full balance of my wallet.

I then have to exit elecrum, delete ~/.electrum/wallet/default-wallet and restart using either a different server and/or a different Tor node. I sometimes have to do this up to 10 times and it can get annoying before I get my full wallet recovered.

I'm not sure is this is because of the Tor node I'm using (sometimes if I click Vidalia to get a new IP address it works) or if my wallet is just getting too large for these SOCKS5 servers to handle.

Anyway I'm thinking of starting a with a new electrum seed and transferring my funds across to see if the new wallet loads more efficiently. I will then forget my old seed.

Will this help?
Is it a bad idea to keep on using a large, complicated electrum wallet containing lots of keys/change addresses on an anonymous server?

hello. zero of these hidden servers work for me. somebody know some other servers (hidden) please?

or where i find more?

 try:
drp4pvejybx2ejdr.onion:50001


If you like to donate:
1CDyfBsAWMheiSvASzaVEQxhYkc39Qk3Zx

Here's another hidden service supporting TCP and SSL connections on the standard ports.

tv5ajsstuovkutzn.onion:50001
tv5ajsstuovkutzn.onion:50002

mf62jtjj6kuruprd.onion:50001

hogh5oq2zu5sd6fo.onion:50001
hogh5oq2zu5sd6fo.onion:50002 (SSL)
sbow7bnje2f4gcvt.onion:50001
sbow7bnje2f4gcvt.onion:50002 (SSL)
dioq2yg3l5ptgpge.onion:50001
dioq2yg3l5ptgpge.onion:50002 (SSL)
3ffk7iumtx3cegbi.onion:50001

if you like, donate:

1JSsQ2wH7xZV8oe6LY3S1Ntt847aRhTXgW

guys thank you very much for hosting these hidden services!
i'm curious to test this and hope they are still online.

i have some questions because my knowledge is only dangerous sciolism ;)

the only advantage for using this is that the ssl connection between exit node and electrum can not been attacked by a man in the middle attack?
right, or did i forget something else?

what does it mean when fr00p uses ssl for his hidden service electrum server (hogh5oq2zu5sd6fo.onion:50002 (SSL))?
does this have any benefits?

thanks!

this is from the electrum documentation -
but the list seem to be down at the moment  :(

list of active .onion servers:
http://electrumserv.noip.me/onionservers.txt