Tortise

What is Tortise

Tortise is a (very) simple, distributed, decentralized twitter which runs over tor. It is designed to be a good basis for learning more about how to build systems on top of privacy protecting technology like Tor.

Instructions

0. Make sure you have the latest python installed, using a tool like brew

1. Clone this repository to your home directory

2. Install Tor Browser: https://www.torproject.org/

3. Add the following lines to your torrc file.

   HiddenServiceDir /Users/<YOUR USERNAME>/tortise/priv 
   HiddenServicePort 80 127.0.0.1:8083
   

   Hints:

   • You'll need to customize the directory paths to wherever you cloned this repo!
   • The priv/ subfolder will automatically be created
   • My torrc is located at: /Applications/TorBrowser.app/TorBrowser/Data/Tor/torrc
   • Still Need help? https://www.torproject.org/docs/tor-hidden-service.html.en has more detailed instructions

   Fun Fact: the -rc suffix doesn't really stand for anything useful, but you can think of it as resource configuration.

4. (Re)Start TorBrowser.

5. in src/, run python run.py, and leave it running. This is your server. You may need some dependencies: pip install PySocks pip install tornado

6. check priv/hostname to see your onion address (keep key in priv private)

7. Paste the address into the Tor Browser to connect.

8. visit /peer on your website to put your friends domains (ie, http:/// in and send/recieve messages

9. CHALLENGE EXERCISES:

10. Make your peers persistent: that is, make it so that you don't need to reconnect every time

11. Allow People to post messages with a username... * Make that username a keypair!

12. Make a nicer user interface

13. Clear out old messages

14. Make it so that only you can post to your server