TorJump v4

Version 4 of TorJump is out and can be found here.


This version contains the tor domain hardcoded into it. That way you don't need to trust me to distribute the correct download link via dropbox. If I try, by altering the dynamically changing download link in my dropbox, to make you download something outside the https://www.torproject.org domain, TorJump will refuse to do so. Great, isn't it? :-)

The source code can be found here.

TorJump v3

Continuing with my updates, TorJump has broken since the Tor Browser Bundle started using Aurora instead of Firefox (well Aurora is Firefox alpha actually). Anyway here the latest version of TorJump.

TorJump allows you to create custom launchers for onion sites (hidden sites in Tor's hidden service network). Recently that hidden network has got some attention along with Bitcoin because of SilkRoad, a hidden website selling illegal drugs etc. Generally Onionland (the hidden services network is called by some like that because domains in it end in .onion) is filled by child pornography and other objectionable material but occasionally you will find a few sites that are worthy. The trollery there has also moved to a whole new level but again, some people there are really worth talking to.

[EDIT] The source code is here. You could find it by clicking on the TorJump category below.

TorJump v2

Tor Browser Bundle version 1.3.25 was released and TorJump wasn't working with it correctly. I updated it to work with the new version. Previous version will display a notification about not being up to date when you try to set them up or use them for the first time after being set up. Old versions that have already been run at least once will not display a warning and will continue running with the old version of Tor Browser Bundle.

Download the new version from here. The source code is here.

TorJump

Seeing more and more sites disappearing whether because some government took down their DNS records or arrested their owners only made me wonder why don't people use Tor's hidden services for objectionable websites (or even Freenet when possible). And the answer is obvious: they don't use them because most people don't even know about Tor (I'll start capitalizing that correctly from now on. I even started using KiB instead of KB) and very few people are actually willing to install Tor just to visit a website. So how do we make hidden services more accessible to everyone? By making TorJump, a one-click wrapper for Tor of course!

But first of all, what is Tor? Tor is an anonymity network. It allows people to make TCP connections (that's the most common protocol in the Internet, you use it when visiting any page) to any destination IP anonymously, hiding their true IP address from the websites they visit and not allowing their ISP to spy on their connections. So Tor is primarily meant to protect those that access publicly available information, from governments, mostly.

Secondly, what are hidden services? Tor, in an attempt to protect not only those accessing the information but also those that want to provide information, created a protocol to make hidden services (hidden websites in most cases) possible. Anyone, can now host a website (while hiding the server's IP address) that is not visible on the clearnet (the clearnet is the normal World Wide Web) and is only accessible via the Tor network. The hostnames of those sites aren't like what you've got used to. They are composed of 16 random alphanumerical characters (unique for each service/website) and have a .onion suffix. (like this: http://kpvz7ki2v5agwt35.onion which will lead you to the hidden wiki if you access it via Tor). The sum of all those hidden sites is sometimes called the Torland or the Onionland and those that frequent them or run them are sometimes called Torizens.

So, finally, what is TorJump? It's a wrapper for the Tor Browser Bundle. First you set it up to jump to a specific hidden site (like the hidden wiki) and then you share it with anyone you want, to help him/her easily access that hidden site. It will still be a single executable that you can rename and publish on the Internet. When someone runs it, it will start downloading the latest Tor Browser Bundle, extract it to a folder next to the executable and start it up by setting the homepage to the URL you specified when you set TorJump up. Additionally, two more tabs will open every time: the main TorProject page, which explains what is Tor, and a page with the latest news about TorJump.

TorJump can be downloaded from here and the AutoIt3 source code can be found here.

Any feature requests or ideas? Leave a comment.