[Tor-BSD] tor Ports 9050 and 9150

[teor]

Hi attila,

I just read your post on porting Tor Browser to OpenBSD - thanks for the work you're putting into this.
http://trac.haqistan.net/blog/adventures-ports-tor-browser

I wanted to explain why Tor Browser uses tor SOCKS port 9150, but the default system tor port is 9050.

Tor Browser is designed to run its own instance of tor on 9150, and to not conflict with any existing system tor install on 9050. (This, of course, causes some confusion, and some tor clients look on 9050, and others on 9150.)

If you want to use the system tor for both Tor Browser and other apps, why not just have it listen on both 9050 and 9150?

There are security implications of using the same tor instance for multiple apps (mainly cache sharing, denial of service, and single-point-of-hack/failure). However, there are also advantages in combining all your tor traffic together, as it's (slightly) harder to analyse that way.

A similar tradeoff exists for running a tor relay on the same instance as Tor Browser. (However, in the case of a hidden service, it's recommended that it's a separate instance, ideally on a separate machine.)

Regards

Tim

Tim Wilson-Brown (teor)

teor2345 at gmail dot com
pgp ABFED1AC
https://gist.github.com/teor2345/d033b8ce0a99adbc89c5

teor at blah dot im
OTR D5BE4EC2 255D7585 F3874930 DB130265 7C9EBBC7

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