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I am working on a decentralized card game and using Tor to easily avoid firewalls etc. In the application each user runs a hidden service via Tor and accepts incoming TCP connections. Now I want to make outbound connections from Tor.

  • Is it possible to use the same SOCKS5 proxy I am using to listen for connections to also make outbound connections? If so this would avoid firing up another Tor client to make outbound connections.

  • Otherwise, is it possible to use the same Tor address/key for the other Tor client? This would be the same key that is being used for the Tor hidden service. This would help with my application not having to authenticate multiple Tor addresses for one user.

Cheers,
Kris

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    So the second question is can you use the same public/private key pair for both a hidden service AND a regular Tor client on the same computer? I don't know, but that's an interesting question.
    – user194
    Feb 23, 2014 at 3:48
  • @user194 Correct, that is the second question. I may answer this question and make a new one for that only, as I am testing SOCKS and I think when hosting a hidden service I can both listen on a port and make outbound connections.
    – Kristopher Ives
    Feb 23, 2014 at 4:40

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  1. Yes it is possible to use the same tor process to serve a Hidden Server and as a client for accessing the Tor network. Just use the SocksListenAddress you have configured in the config file.

  2. I'm not clear what you're asking. If you want to use the same private key as the Hidden Service address and the Identity Key for the Relay - this is a bad idea, as now your previously-unknown HS (public) key is now widely known. If you want to use your HS private key as a signing/decryption key within your application - this is also possible but a bad idea to mix key uses.

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  • This is for a peer-to-peer application
    – Kristopher Ives
    Apr 28, 2014 at 9:02
  • Any Tor client can host hidden services. Otherwise it's just a client, and Tor clients don't have addresses. You could have each user create an SSH host key, and use them for authentication.
    – mirimir
    Apr 29, 2014 at 5:32

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