Create a Tor Website in 5 minutes

General information

What is Tor?

Tor is free software and an open network that helps you defend against traffic analysis, a form of network surveillance that threatens personal freedom and privacy, confidential business activities and relationships, and state security.

Why Anonymity Matters

Tor protects you by bouncing your communications around a distributed network of relays run by volunteers all around the world: it prevents somebody watching your Internet connection from learning what sites you visit, and it prevents the sites you visit from learning your physical location.

Source: https://www.torproject.org/

Installation and routing

Personally, when I need a simple Tor Website I use a VM or a physical machine with a live booted a Linux based OS (in general the Ubuntu 16.04). This tutorial is actually for Ubuntu 16.04 in virtual box and feel free to change it to your needs.

Step 1: VM and Network Interface

• Make a fresh new VM.
• Configure interface in bridged mode.
• Boot Ubuntu 16.04 live ISO.
• Do not install Ubuntu and choose “Try Ubuntu”

Step 2: Install Nginx

• sudo apt install nginx
• sudo rm /etc/nginx/sites-available/default
• sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/default
• Add the followings to the new /etc/nginx/sites-available/default and save:

server {
       listen 127.0.0.1:8080 default_server;
       server_name localhost;
       root /usr/share/nginx/html;
       index index.html index.htm;
       location / {
               allow 127.0.0.1;
               deny all;
       }
}

Step 3: Install Tor for the website

• sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list
• Append and save: deb http://deb.torproject.org/torproject.org xenial main
• Go to https://www.torproject.org/docs/debian.html.en and retrive the followings:

gpg --keyserver keys.gnupg.net --recv A3C4F0F979CAA22CDBA8F512EE8CBC9E886DDD89
gpg --export A3C4F0F979CAA22CDBA8F512EE8CBC9E886DDD89 | sudo apt-key add -

• Proceed with the instalation:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install tor deb.torproject.org-keyring

• Proceed with the configuration:

sudo nano /etc/tor/torrc

Replace:

#HiddenServiceDir /var/lib/tor/hidden_service/#
#HiddenServicePort 80 127.0.0.1:80

With:

HiddenServiceDir /var/lib/tor/hidden_service/
HiddenServicePort 80 127.0.0.1:8080

Step 4: Fire it up!

sudo service nginx restart
sudo service tor restart

To retrive the website .onion link:

cat /var/lib/tor/hidden_service/hostname

Your websites html files can be found in /usr/share/nginx/html