How to create a tor proxy?

Question

I want to create a tor proxy on a virtual machine (Linode). But I'm missing some elements.

For example, when I buy a proxy service I can send requests to socks5 proxy with user:password.

So ideally I want to do the same, on the client side: curl -x socks5://user:password@IP@PORT END_URL

I have a couple of questions: 1. Since I'm sending user:password, is it possible to encrypt the data? 2. How to add the user:password limitation?

I tried and got some of the features working with HAProxy/Dante Server/Proxychains but nothing that worked properly from start to end.

Any suggestion will be greatly appreciated. I'll be happy to create and publish a Docker build with (I presume needed) this setup once done.

Answer 1

I believe, by default, tor is configured to only accept connections from the local machine (i.e., SocksListenAddress 127.0.0.1).

If you edit the torrc configuration file (e.g., /usr/local/etc/tor/torrc, etc) per wiki specifications (https://trac.torproject.org/), you can change things such as which subnets are allowed to access the tor port(s), and which port numbers are used, etc.

One of the first uses i ever made of the tor daemon (not the TorBrowser) was to create a host/port on a VM in the local subnet, and have it serve as a 'central proxy' for anyone who cared to configure the proxy settings of their local browser(s). We were not so much concerned with anonymity in our use of the tor network, but were attempting to test the behavior of our web services from "outside" our local subnet. (i.e. from our local network we are unable to resolve names-to or ip-addresses-of our external ip addresses)

The tor network quickly solved our immediate problem, and it was easier to explain how to configure 'browser proxy settings' than it was to write detailed instructions for installing tor and/or the tor-browser on all of our supported (internal) test machines and platforms. The 'proxy server' also served as a single point-of-access for all of our intended test activities (e.g., logging, timing, handoff, etc.)