torsocks over torsocks? (by accident)

Question

Sometimes I'll $ torsocks --shell, then forget I'm in a torified shell and hours later do $ torsocks curl https://website.com.

Does torsocks know not to do tor over tor? Is there some kind of idiot proofing written into torsocks to prevent this kind of activity?

Answer 1

Torsocks sets the LD_PRELOAD environment variable to intercept a few system calls.

It does not matter if you use it recursively:

# at first $LD_PRELOAD is unset
$ echo $LD_PRELOAD 

# when we start a torsocks shell is $LD_PRELOAD is set
$ torsocks --shell
/usr/bin/torsocks: New torified shell coming right up...
$ echo $LD_PRELOAD 
/usr/lib/torsocks/libtorsocks.so

# if create a torsocks shell in a torsocks shell $LD_PRELOAD remains unchanged
$ torsocks --shell
/usr/bin/torsocks: New torified shell coming right up...
peter@ivy:~/src$ echo $LD_PRELOAD
/usr/lib/torsocks/libtorsocks.so

# when we exit the two shells, torsocks is deactivated again
peter@ivy:~/src$ exit
peter@ivy:~/src$ exit
peter@ivy:~/src$ echo $LD_PRELOAD