Please do read the how torstorm works post first, before deciding to use torstorm. It has alot of important reminders about torstorm's status as a beta/in-public-testing service, and you need to know that before you decide you want to use it at all, and doubly so for security-intensive applications.

Once you have done that, only two steps are required:

1. Connect to cryptostorm, via any nodes or clusters, using either full-capacity token-based service or capped cryptofree.me free service. You must be connected to cryptostorm (or cryptofree) in order to make use of torstorm, and to receive the full security of the service itself.

2. Enter into your browser's address bar the .onion site you want to visit, with the following format:

Whenever you see a URL like http://randomhiddenservicesite.onion, that's a Tor hidden Web service.
Just replace "onion" with "torstorm.org"

For example:
http://randomhiddenservicesite.torstorm.org

That's it. If you see any bugs or unexpected responses, please do let us know!

Thanks,

cryptostorm_support

@OP

Many thanks for making this service available. I've just tried connecting to the Onion URL Repository at 32rfckwuorlf4dlv.torstorm.org, while connected to both Brisa and Cantus, and the connection simply hangs. Connecting directly using Tor only works fine. I assume there's maintenance being carried out.

parityboy wrote:Many thanks for making this service available. I've just tried connecting to the Onion URL Repository at 32rfckwuorlf4dlv.torstorm.org, while connected to both Brisa and Cantus, and the connection simply hangs. Connecting directly using Tor only works fine. I assume there's maintenance being carried out.

It's not actually, officially launched yet

We put the forum post up so a few folks we know could poke at it and make sure we aren't missing bit bit of needed info, before the "official" rollout of the beta. We'll make that clearer, so folks aren't frustrated - apologies for that.

Should be any hour now, from what I've heard.

Cheers,

~ pj

These project logo ideas were submitted, but are unlikely to end up with any official status,

Always an adventure, around here.

Thanks team! This is really cool and interesting. I'll test it out when it's live.

Seems like it's up now. https://32rfckwuorlf4dlv.torstorm.org/ works :-E

@df

Not for me it doesn't. I'm currently connected to Brisa, and it's doing nothing. I assume it's down again?

@PJ

This is the case because, absent end-to-end Tor session mechanics, traffic coming through the Tor-internet gateway comes across a plane that requires protocol transition. During that transition, it is definitionally possible for root to have access to plaintext surreptitiously, if it so chooses. Of course, we are not doing this - however this cannot be formally proven to an outside observer, and that is different than end-to-end Tor sessions.

Agreed. Changing this would require a secure version of the SOCKS protocol (the interface presented to a client - like a web browser - by the local Tor relay) to be implemented into the Tor relay software; I found this, but it's a draft spec for SSL 3.0, as opposed to TLS 1.x.

Since most Tor client mode installations are local and under the control of the user, this work will no doubt remain a long way off, at least until services like torstorm and tor2web become more popular.

Didn't do nothing for me either, I am on Chili... maybe the hidden service is too controversial?

It doesn't work for me either, I belived that this kind of "service" would be easy to configure if CS deploy their own DNS server...

Or maybe I'm wrong, but I've done something like this in OpenWRT with dnsmasq

@Tealc

Deploying their own DNS server would make no difference in this case. As you know, Tor Hidden Services end in ".onion". From what I can see, HTTP requests going to the tor2web proxy get the FQDN from the HTTP request stripped of the "torstorm.org" domain and then appended with ".onion" before being passed on to the local Tor relay (running in client-only mode) via the SOCKS interface.

I may build one of these proxies myself in a VM just to see how to do it...whether it would ever go into production is another matter...

Yea, the box is back up, went down (along with the IPMI) probably due to hardware issues. After much tweaking it seems functional right now, but while I'm in here, I'm gonna try to use nginx's sub_filter to have it where if a .onion page has any .onion links, it'll automagically replace them with .torstorm.org.

Otherwise you'll be able to goto any .onion site but if that place has absolute URLs then you'll have to manually put .torstorm.org in your address bar to get there (same goes for images), which is lame.

If I can't get that working tho, I'll just release it as-is.

meh, I suck at filtering. It kinda half works right now, probably non-functional just on gzip encoded sites. But webmasters who want to support torstorm.org or tor2web.org or any other place using tor2web should stop using absolute URLs on their HS pages. That'll mean visitors using one of these torstorm-like services will have to manually edit links as they go, annoying!

Anyways, the service should be back up. I redid most of the services under separate accounts with alot of limitations just to keep the damn box from crashing again. If it does, it's definitely a hardware issue and we'll just load this onto a different server.

If it dies again by the time parityboy tries it, it's because he broke it! =P

@df

Well, I didn't (completely) break it, but i take your point about the filtering; the pages look as if they're are half-finished, as opposed to browsing directly using Tor. Perhaps the CSS is being stripped?

Oh and if you're finished monkeying with the filters, can you fix Brisa (again)?

We ditched the python Tor2web and went with something else that we can use alongside nginx for more flexibility & stability, and since I strongly suspect hardware problems on torstorm.org, I moved it to a free IP on emerald. Seems fine for the last 12 or so hours.

Oh and doing it this way DOES correctly replace .onion links in pages to .torstorm.org. So going to a place like that TORCH search engine @ https://xmh57jrzrnw6insl.torstorm.org/c ... cmd=Search! will no longer show a bunch of .onion links that you have to manually change, they'll be automagically changed to .torstorm.org.

@df

What's the "something"? Last night I spun up an Ubuntu VM and installed I2P, then tried putting Apache in front of it with mod_rewrite and mod_proxy; admittedly my regex-fu isn't good, but I'm wondering if those modules will at all let me achieve the same thing as tor2web...

Something = a LUA script that does the same thing as tor2web :-)

I forget the exact syntax for Apache, but in nginx it's a simple proxy_pass to get it to access the backend Tor2web server. Apache can do the same thing with a similar directive (google around for "apache reverse proxy").

@df

Yeah, I got the proxy stuff working, that was easy enough. That LUA script must then strip the hostname and then append ".onion" before passing it to the proxy. I can only assume that mod_rewrite can do the same before passing it to the proxy. Will have to experiment further.

Cheers.


UPDATE

After testing torstorm from the various raw exit nodes to DuckDuckGo (https://3g2upl4pq6kufc4m.torstorm.org), these are my findings:

89.26.243.109 (Brisa) . IP address rejected.
46.165.222.248 (Cantus). Works but is very slow.
212.129.34.154 (Cryptofree). Works, and much more responsive than other working nodes, although that might be a lucky Tor circuit selection.
23.19.35.14 (Emerald). IP address rejected.
79.134.235.133 (Fenrir). Works.
212.83.167.81 (Onyx). Works.

@staff

I've just tried to use torstorm and every Tor address redirects to the torstorm landing page. Can you confirm that the site is in maintenance mode, or is this a misconfig?

parityboy wrote:I've just tried to use torstorm and every Tor address redirects to the torstorm landing page. Can you confirm that the site is in maintenance mode, or is this a misconfig?

When you visit this test onion, do you get redirected?

https://allcatmmbyhbvihr.torstorm.org/

We're going thru to make sure all the new IPs from new nodes are wrapped in the torstorm service; that's most likely what folks are seeing in terms of loads that act as if they're off-net (off-net folks wildcard redirect to the landing page of torstorm.org from any torstorm URL the enter).

Cheers,

~ pj

@PJ

Nope, I get connected correctly to the target site, along with the DuckDuckGo .onion address and other Tor URIs. It's working correctly again.