Title: TUTORIAL: How To Setup PC for Namecoin & TOR --> .onion domains via .bit domains Post by: Michael_S on October 23, 2014, 09:40:09 PM I was searching for an All-In-One Tutorial about how to setup your PC for surfing *.onion addresses via TOR and surfing Namecoin *.bit addresses that may point to *.onion or to regular web addresses or IP addresses.
Since I did not find such a tutorial, I collected all information, tried it out and wrote a tutorial myself. I am now sharing this tutorial: TUTORIAL: Setting Up Your Linux PC for Browsing *.bit Domains and *.onion Domains (How to Combine Namecoin and TOR Features for your Web Browser) This tutorial has been created for Linux Ubuntu 14.04 (or more precisely: Linux Mint 17 with default Cinnamon Desktop) in October 2014 But Windows users should find it useful as well, most parts are OS independent. 1. Introduction TOR is a protocol and a software by which you can surf the web anonymously, and also other programs that access the internet, like Bitmessage, Bitcoin clients, chat programs etc. can access the internet anonymously via TOR. In terms of web browsing, you can surf normal websites, but you can also surf websites that are only available through TOR. These websites have the domain name *.onion and have rather cryptically looking sequences before the ".onion", like e.g. "http://3g2upl4pq6kufc4m.onion". Namecoin is a cryptocoin that is working very similarly to Bitcoin, but it's main purpose is to register internet domain names in its ledger, the so-called blockchain, in a completely decentralized manner. These domain names have the domain name extension *.bit and are used as "pointers" to the actual web site. A *.bit address can for example point to an IP address, to a normal web address, or to a TOR web address (*.onion). The combination of Namecoin and TOR is particularly useful. This way, a host of a website in the TOR network can register a meaningful *.bit domain which points to his *.onion web address. The web site's visitors only need to remember the *.bit domain name. Summary overview: ------------------- ----------- --------------- NAMECOIN Blockchain TOR Network Public Internet ------------------- ----------- --------------- name1.bit ----------------> 3g2upl4pq6kufc4m.onion name2.bit ---------------------------------------------> some-domain-name.com name3.bit ---------------------------------------------> 123.45.678.90 To make use of these features and domain names, you as the end-user and web-surfer have to set-up a few things on your PC, and there might be different solutions how to achieve this. This tutorial explains one such solution, probably the most common one. It will explain how to enhance the capabilities of your normal "everyday" firefox browser! WARNING:
2. Overview The following has to be installed: Mandatory:
Optional (recommended):
3. Installation Mandatory:
Optionally, you can also install these two firefox Add-Ons, they will improve your surfing experience and are therefore warmly recommended:
4. Configuration 4.1 Configure Firefox Preferences --> Advanced --> Network --> Connection - "Settings..." button --> Configure the following Manual Proxy:
NOTE:
4.2 Configure Firefox "FreeSpeechMe" Add-On Place the Add-On's button to the menu bar, if not already there. Then click the little "down-arrow" of that button and select "Options". Make the following settings:
IMPORTANT: The first time that firefox with freespeechme Add-On is active it takes several hours to download the complete Namecoin blockchain which is the ledger of the registered *.bit domain names. This is currently about 2 GByte in size and will be located at /home/<username>/.convergence-namecoin/ FreeSpeechMe does NOT work before that process has finished, so give it some time, e.g. leave your PC on over night the first time. In the "Status" tab of the FreeSpeechMe options, the field "Output from namecoind" should look something like this: {"version":37200,"balance":0,"blocks":202187,"timeoffset":-3, "connections":8,"proxy":"","generate":false,"genproclimit":-1, "difficulty":20963602995.997684,"hashespersec":0,"testnet":false,"keypoololdest": 1413601214,"keypoolsize":101,"paytxfee":0,"mininput":0.0001,"errors":""} Only then the Add-On is operational to browse *.bit domains. Moreover, every time you start firefox, the Add-On needs some time to download the latest part of the blockchain, so also then it may take some seconds or minutes until it is operational. 4.3 Configure the Two Further Firefox Add-Ons (optional, recommended) For the two optional Add-Ons, add the corresponding buttons to your menu bar e.g. next to the address field (via right-click on the menu etc...): Add-On "Toggle Proxy": There is only one button to select. Via "Menu -> Extras -> Add-ons" go to the settings of "Toggle Proxy" Add-On and set as follows:
Add-On "QuickJava": I recommend to select these two buttons:
4.4 Configure TOR Start "tor" from a terminal window or type "tor <Enter>" after pressing Alt-F2. For the future, you may want to put "tor" to the autostart group so you do not have to care about it every time you start your PC. With Linux Mint 17 and its default "Cinnamon" desktop manager this can be found via Menu -> "Startprogramme" (in case of the German language version ;)) There you click "Add" and just put tor (three small letters) in the "command" field and any descriptive text of your choice in the other fields. 5. Enjoy Surfing Now test if everything works as desired: 5.1 Test 1: Check TOR 5.1.1 Toggle TOR On/Off Use the button from the "Toggle Proxy" Add-On to toggle your proxy settings. This way you can switch between browsing normally, or browsing via TOR. Surf to the following web-site to check if your are surfing "normally" or via TOR: "https://check.torproject.org" Hint:
You may also want to deactivate cookies sometimes. Of course these buttons can also be used when surfing the "normal" web without TOR. 5.1.2 Check TOR *.onion Addresses Go to a list of *.onion addresses, click them and see if it works. You can find such a list e.g. here: "http://thehiddenwiki.org" Example link: "http://3g2upl4pq6kufc4m.onion" (DuckDuckGo Search Engine) 5.2 Test 2: Check Namecoin *.bit Addresses One example address that should normaly work: "https://dot-bit.bit" A list of *.bit addresses that should work to the most part can be found for example here: "http://www.meowbit.com/list-of-working-dot-bit-websites/" Further addresses can be found here "https://dotbit.me/" --> choose the "Surf .Bit" tab. Note that quite a lot of *.bit addresses generally do not work, so try several different links before assuming that something is wrong with your computer's configuration. If it does not work, ... ...make sure you have not accidently disabled the FreeSpeechMe Add-On via its menu button. ...make sure that the complete Namecoin blockchain was downloaded and the status is ok, compare section 4.2 above --> "Status" tab of the FreeSpeechMe options. 6. Supplemental Info
Title: Re: TUTORIAL: How To Setup PC for Namecoin & TOR --> .onion domains via .bit domains Post by: phelix on November 20, 2014, 09:33:51 AM Nice writeup!
Title: Re: TUTORIAL: How To Setup PC for Namecoin & TOR --> .onion domains via .bit domains Post by: xbiv2 on June 25, 2017, 08:59:06 AM https://github.com/zkv1v/tor_namecoin_dns_sock5 Code: Sock5 server with namecoin DNS support. All settings in: sock5_serv_tor.pl ------------------ 1. Name format: "tor/duckduckgo.onion" 2. Value format(JSON): {"ns":["http://3g2upl4pq6kufc4m.onion/ns.php"],"address":["3g2upl4pq6kufc4m.onion"]} 3. NS server request format: http://3g2upl4pq6kufc4m.onion/ns.php?n=some-name 4. NS server response format(JSON): {"some-name":{"ns":["http://3g2upl4pq6kufc4m.onion/ns_some_name.php"],"address":["3g2upl4pq6kufc4m.onion"]}} or {"some-name":{"ns":["http://3g2upl4pq6kufc4m.onion/ns_some_name.php"],"address":["3g2upl4pq6kufc4m.onion"]},"www":{"ns":["http://3g2upl4pq6kufc4m.onion/ns_www.php"],"address":["3g2upl4pq6kufc4m.onion"]}} ------------------ Posible give many address for one name for load balance. Posible give many NS servers for realbility. https://i.stack.imgur.com/vB93s.png |