[HN Gopher] Reimplementing Tor from Scratch for a Single-Hop Proxy
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Reimplementing Tor from Scratch for a Single-Hop Proxy
Author : Agreed3750
Score : 76 points
Date : 2026-02-01 06:53 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (foxmoss.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (foxmoss.com)
| fishgoesblub wrote:
| So the author doesn't want to cough up the money to buy a VPN but
| will instead write a custom Tor client that is intentionally weak
| on anonymity so they can run their own exit node on a VPS they
| bought. Why not setup Wireguard and use the VPS as a VPN? More
| power to them, seems like they learned some things and are happy
| with the results, I just don't get it though.
| guessmyname wrote:
| I call it "The Broke College Student Syndrome."
|
| Most of us did stuff like this when we were younger.
|
| For starters, we were broke. I mean, we didn't have enough
| extra cash to pay for something we knew we could probably get
| for free. Back then, having a credit card in college was
| basically a "rich kid" thing. The money we had was whatever was
| in our pockets, maybe stashed under a pillow, or saved in a
| piggy bank. These days, kids are more "modern," so the idea of
| not having a card paid for by mom or dad, or at least some
| extra cash, sounds ridiculous. But that's how it was for a lot
| of us.
|
| So I'd constantly look for ways around paying, because I
| genuinely couldn't afford it. Think learning C just to write a
| keygen.exe and bypass license checks, doing in-memory hex edits
| to tweak games and give myself more virtual coins, or forking
| Tor to get single-hop proxy connections.
|
| Good ol'times.
| LoganDark wrote:
| I remember when I was younger and didn't have a single cent
| to spend, at all. Any payment requirement would completely
| lock me out, because I had no payment method.
| fragmede wrote:
| The question is, how do you live now? I remember being on
| University email lists that I had no business being on, just
| to get find out when they had free food that I could eat. I
| grew up ridiculously cheap and broke college student syndrome
| only exacerbated things. I've gone too far in the other
| direction, which is equally as unhealthy, but I can't be the
| only one.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| I've went from being broke most of my young life, to
| homeless a short period, to being employed as a programmer
| to eventually being financially independent, I'm not sure
| there is much difference ultimately, besides being able to
| afford more expensive things. I used to buy stuff I
| enjoyed, if I could afford it, I still buy stuff I enjoy,
| but never buy things to just buy it, mostly happy with the
| stuff I have, except for some computers stuff that I don't
| neeeeeeed. But it's really nice to have 96GB of VRAM
| available for example.
|
| Don't overthink either directions, be happy with what you
| have and focus on what you want to do, rather than "what
| you should have" or similar. Not sure anyone can really
| give you good non-generic tips here, without knowing more
| about your specific situation.
| bauruine wrote:
| He uses the keys of his non-exit relay to directly connect from
| his workstation to an exit relay pretending to be the relay on
| his VPS. But yeah he could just use the VPS for wireguard which
| would be way easier.
|
| I'm in Europe so I don't get less than 20Mbit/s on any circuit
| but I asume he could have got the same speed by just selecting
| a few local, fast nodes as bridge.
| rendx wrote:
| If you have time on your hands which is basically free for you,
| and you run the relay at home too, there's no extra cost
| involved. You don't need a VPS to run a (non-exit) relay. Even
| if you do, the VPS will be associated with you much more
| directly than a third party exit, which is unlikely set up to
| log IPs. The VPS IP might even be publicly associated with you,
| if you use it e.g. also for web hosting. And Tor allows you to
| pick the exit location, like VPN services often offer different
| locations.
|
| And could it possibly be that people exist that do things for
| pure enjoyment of the exercise? Looks like they learned quite a
| bit throughout the process. In practical terms, this may even
| land them a job at Tor (or elsewhere) later, since they can
| demonstrate that they understood what it is doing and where to
| find the relevant pieces of information to "circumvent" the
| protection.
| randomtoast wrote:
| The main motivation of the author seems to be that Tor is slow,
| but you can significantly speed it up by manually choosing Tor
| nodes. For instance, if you pick your three fast nodes within a
| short distance of you location, then the speed is significantly
| higher then the default tor settings.
| goodpoint wrote:
| > Thankfully the hosting provider I chose BuyVM happens to be
| borderline bulletproof, and has no qualms with hosting extremist
| content. I've been a happy customer for a while for hosting tiny
| networking projects and personal website at good prices, and I
| was pretty blissfully unaware of their darker side when I bought
| the service. Luckily their very pro-free speech pro-privacy
| policies comes in handy for this project
|
| ...
| foxmoss wrote:
| Yeah not awesome, heavy irony in this paragraph. Been looking
| at some other providers recently with comparable prices, my
| infrastructure isn't to complicated to migrate just haven't had
| the chance to make the jump.
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(page generated 2026-02-04 23:01 UTC)