comit-network/ping-pong

POC demonstrating rust-libp2p connectivity over the Tor network

Project Harpocrates - Ping-Pong

Basic TCP peer to peer connectivity [1] using libp2p over the Tor network.

ping-pong v0.2

From v0.2 there are a number of steps one needs to take in order to run ping-pong.

0. Install Tor
1. Configure an onion service using the Tor run file. You can use ./torrc and run tor using sudo /usr/bin/tor --defaults-torrc tor-service-defaults-torrc -f torrc --RunAsDaemon 0
2. Once you have run tor for the first time get the onion address from the hostname file (if you used the tor invocation above this will be in /var/lib/tor/hidden_service/hostname). Set the onion address const ONION in main.rs.
3. Set the log level in main.rs if you wish.

Now to run this demo application run tor in one terminal, the listener in another terminal, and the dialer in a third terminal.

• Run the listener with: ping-pong --listener.
• Run the dialer with: ping-pong --dialer.

See ping-pong --help for more information.

Version 0.2 no longer uses the Tor Control Protocol or the torut library to access it.

ping-pong v0.1

git checkout v0.1

For the listener the upstream TCP Transport logic is used (albeit imported into this repository). We use the torut library to start and connect to a local Tor instance using the Tor Control Protocol (hats off to the authors, nice library).

For the dialer we modify the TCP Transport's dial method to first connect to the Tor instance started by the listener [2] via a socks5 proxy connection. We convert the Multiaddr (onion) to a format that Tor can understand and then connect to the onion service using TCP via the socks5 proxy. For the socks5 connection we use the tokio-socks library.

The code base is tied to tokio as both the torut and tokio-socks libraries use tokio.

[1] Uses a simple ping application based on the example code from rust-libp2p

[2] Tested on a single machine only.

Usage

0. Install Tor
1. Make sure Tor can be started but is not currently running (see below for the Tor command that is used)
2. In one terminal, run the listener (as root, see below for reason)
3. In another terminal, run the dialer (does not need root)

See ping-pong --help for help.

The listener:

sudo target/debug/ping-pong
2020-06-25 17:19:01,915 INFO  [ping_pong] Tor instance started

Onion service available at:

    /onion3/jymc37wy2zeiv3y42e2wd6aaqmhl6ckgn4lgdapdw2oln4ydkorqaaad:7777


Local ping server available at:

    /ip4/127.0.0.1/tcp/7777

PingEvent { peer: PeerId("12D3KooWKWFYYkyEhaEFLeMerJ1AEYjAQYfhis1YuZjA1HWwkSxh"), result: Ok(Pong) }
PingEvent { peer: PeerId("12D3KooWKWFYYkyEhaEFLeMerJ1AEYjAQYfhis1YuZjA1HWwkSxh"), result: Ok(Ping { rtt: 1.684465016s }) }
PingEvent { peer: PeerId("12D3KooWKWFYYkyEhaEFLeMerJ1AEYjAQYfhis1YuZjA1HWwkSxh"), result: Ok(Pong) }
PingEvent { peer: PeerId("12D3KooWKWFYYkyEhaEFLeMerJ1AEYjAQYfhis1YuZjA1HWwkSxh"), result: Ok(Pong) }

The dialer:

target/debug/ping-pong --dialer --onion /onion3/jymc37wy2zeiv3y42e2wd6aaqmhl6ckgn4lgdapdw2oln4ydkorqaaad:7777
[sudo] password for tobin:
2020-06-25 17:19:39,999 INFO  [ping_pong::transport] connecting to Tor proxy ...
2020-06-25 17:19:49,375 INFO  [ping_pong::transport] connection established
PingEvent { peer: PeerId("12D3KooWPuUb6JCbux9dvKKBweFWbejf3A6fZgntmV26fR9HHqPt"), result: Ok(Pong) }
PingEvent { peer: PeerId("12D3KooWPuUb6JCbux9dvKKBweFWbejf3A6fZgntmV26fR9HHqPt"), result: Ok(Ping { rtt: 1.783064395s }) }
PingEvent { peer: PeerId("12D3KooWPuUb6JCbux9dvKKBweFWbejf3A6fZgntmV26fR9HHqPt"), result: Ok(Ping { rtt: 1.866048209s }) }

Further usage notes

Tested with:

Tor version 0.4.3.5.

The listener must be run with root privileges because of how we start Tor

[warn] Bind to /run/tor/socks failed: Permission denied.

The command we use to start Tor is

/usr/bin/tor --defaults-torrc /usr/share/tor/tor-service-defaults-torrc -f /etc/tor/torrc

Copies of both files can be found in this repository.

Thanks for looking, happy hacking!