How to use Torrent over Tor | How can we bypass security policies to use Torrent

Hello friends..

Everyone knows how important the torrent network is. And when there are restrictions in the network like proxy servers, url filtering and port blocking, we have to use some unconventional means to make things work.

Here I have shown a method which will surely make the torrent work via Tor, as long as you are able to surf web. But beware that here it says that torrent over tor is not a good idea from security point of view. So use it at your own risk. But I think as long as you are not concerned about your anonymity and you have good security config in your machine, you are good to go.

Tor uses the principle: “As long as there is some traffic allowed, all traffic can be passed.” It means as long as even simple web browsing is allowed you can tunnel other types of traffic through this web browsing service.

You would need:

1. Tor. Either installed version or portable version. If you are new to tor, I suggest portable version.
2. Privoxy. This creates a HTTP/HTTPS proxy server on your local machine.
3. A torrent client. I use uTorrent.
4. And a list of http torrent trackers. You can use this list and paste it directly in torrent client.

Step 1: Setting up Tor.

There are a lot of tutorials on how to configure Tor. If you have tor installed and working, it will already allow you to visit websites which are otherwise blocked. In portable version there is a firefox derivative Tor Browser through which you can visit websites anonymously without any censorship. You can read more about Tor here.

Configure your connection settings in tor according to your network:

View your proxy config in your default browser and use it here. If your proxy server uses authentication, make sure you insert username and password. Get new bridges from here. You should check tor logs regularly to see if your bridges work. If they don’t then replace them with new bridges. Preferably use ones with port 443, if your are using proxy server to connect to internet.

Now start Tor. Tor opens a SOCKS5 proxy on a port in your machine. If you are using portable version, that port is at 127.0.0.1:9150. Else it is at 9050.

We can use this port directly in torrent but it gives a lot of warnings and erros in tor logs.

Check if you can browse through Tor before you move to next step. Use https://check.torproject.org to check if you are really connected through Tor.

Step 2: Setting up Privoxy.

After installing privoxy edit the file config.txt know as “Main configuration” which in the install directory.

Find the following lines and uncomment them(Remove the ‘#’ from the start of line). If any of these lines are not present then add them at the end of config file.

listen-address  127.0.0.1:8118
listen-address  localhost:8118
forward-socks5t   /               127.0.0.1:9150 .

The dot at the end of last line is important. Again the port number is 9050 if you dont use portable version of tor. Read the help in the config file if more tweaks are to be made.

Now start privoxy after saving this file. You will have an HTTP proxy on your localhost.

You can check if privoxy works by using HTTP proxy server 127.0.0.1:8118 in your browser and see if it can connect to internet. Again use https://check.torproject.org to check if you are really passing through Tor.

Step 3: Setting up Torrent client

Now its time to configure proxy settings in torrent client.

Now add some torrent file to download and add the HTTP trackers mentioned previously as UDP trackers dont work over a proxy server. Note every 2 trackers should be separated by 1 blank line.

Now your torrent would have started downloading 🙂

Leave your comments and feedback below and share the page with your friends and most important: Seed your torrents 😉