Hosting Tor website on dark-web the safe way

This is an educational demonstration

source: 'nebular group' from Unsplash

Tor has a clever way of hiding what you do online. When you use the Tor browser, it doesn't directly connect you to websites. Instead, it sends your data through the computers of other Tor users before it reaches the website you want to visit. Think of it like peeling the layers of an onion. This makes it difficult for anyone to determine what you're doing online.

This article gives a clear conception of how onion sites work internally. You can create one for free without purchasing a hostname. We'll use Kali for this tutorial, but you can use any Linux OS.

Let's get started.

Step 1:

Pre-requisite installation

Install "Tor browser." For Kali Linux, use this command:

sudo apt install -y tor torbrowser-launcher

Then open "Tor browser" if you haven't opened it.

2. Install python3

Step 2:

Open a terminal and make a directory.

mkdir tor

Enter into the directory:

cd tor

Create a html file for the website.

touch index.html

Then

nano index.html

Paste this piece of code:

<html>
<body>
<h1>DARKWEB</h1>
<p>Onion is free!</p>
</body>
</html>

HTML code

Use keyboard ctrl+o to write the file and press Enterthen ctrl+x to exit.

Step 3: Running a Python server on our local machine

Open another terminal and run.

python3 -m http.server --bind 127.0.0.1 8080

NB: Leave the terminal open to keep the server running

Now check the website using this URL

http://127.0.0.1:8080/

HTML page on the browser

The site is displayed correctly. So, we will move on to the next step.

Step 4: Launching the website into the Tor network

Open another terminal. For the 'tor' location, run:

whereis tor

There will be multiple directories.

Before going to this directory /etc/tor, grant your terminal temporary root access.

sudo su

Then do

cd  /etc/tor

Run

ls

There will be two files open torrc, torsocks.conf

nano torrc

Now, remove # from each of these two line in that file

Change port to 8080 same as our Python server port.

Copy this location /var/lib/tor/hidden_service/ separately

Step 5: Running the service

Open another terminal and enter the root

sudo su

Go to this directory

cd /etc/tor

Then do

sudo tor

Leave the terminal open.

Final step: Retrieving website credentials

Enter into directory

cd /var/lib/tor/hidden_service/

Then do

ls

Run cat

cat hostname

Finally, it is our onion address!!

You don't scare me. I know how to clear my browser history.

Now, open "Tor browser" and go to that onion address.

Our site is live in the Tor network!

NB: you can use any cloud/local pc to host the server. The site will be live as long as our localhost is up and running. Credit goes to Shawonmir.

If you’ve found this article helpful, you can support my time and work at Ko-fi ☕ It motivates me to keep going. Take care! 🧡