Onion Anonymity

How to get your webserver/website working as a .onion domain.

The TOR software installation part is well described here. If your core interest is to make your webserver reachable through the TOR Network, then you should use ExitPolicy reject *:* in the TOR configuration to be sure your server does publish itself as a exitnode. The below example is a apache webserver running two virtual websites and how to get .onion TLD's related with the correct virtual server.

Let say you have the public html files in /var/www/www.website.com/public_html then create the directory tor at same level as public_html and add the following into the tor config file (torrc).

HiddenServiceDir /var/www/www.website1.com/tor
HiddenServicePort 80 127.0.0.1:80

When you start tor it will create two files in the tor directory. The file 'hostname' contains your .onion domain name. Use it in the VirtualHost configuration for your apache server. Example:

ServerAlias www.website1.com 32rfckwuorlf4dlv.onion

If you have many virtual web hosts, then add more lines into the tor configuration file and it will autocreate the 'hostname' file with the .onion domain name for you as soon as you restart TOR.

HiddenServiceDir /var/www/www.website2.com/tor
HiddenServicePort 80 127.0.0.1:80

When you have set up everything and have been able to surf through the TOR Network directly towards your .onion adress, then you are sure you do NOT use any exitnodes to retrive the information from your website - which mean you have made it as impossible as possible for a netspy to monitor both TOR entry and exit points of your information flow. Congratulations...