How to use Bash anonymously

February 20, 2021 2 minute read

Introduction

Today I’ll briefly explain how to provide the Tor anonymity guarantee to almost any scripts and CLI tools that you have in your pocket.

The most complicated question would be: «For what?», and, to be honest, I can’t come up with a strong answer. Maybe you are a hacker, or you just enjoy being hidden and safe, or you simply need to test your app from Madagascar, who knows?

Installation

brew install tor
brew install torsocks

Usage

Start proxy server:

tor

Figure out your current IP address and location:

ip2cc $(curl -s ifconfig.me)

Proxy it through Tor and check it out one more time:

ip2cc $(curl -s --socks5 127.0.0.1:9050 ifconfig.me)

Looks like it has changed, right? It was a quick win. Worth mentioning that by default Tor takes an IP address randomly, but we can specify the exact country using Tor country codes. Let’s open a connection, for instance, from Canada and close it from New Zealand.

Stop pre-created proxy server:

killall tor

Create torrc file:

touch torrc

Put entry and exit nodes in torrc file (ca and nz as we decided above):

echo "EntryNodes {ca}
ExitNodes {nz}" > torrc

Start proxy server providing the configured torrc file:

tor -f torrc

Check your location out:

ip2cc $(curl -s --socks5 127.0.0.1:9050 ifconfig.me)

Github

So, now you’d like to clone github repo anonymously. Why do you need that? Ok, never mind, let’s just do it:

curl -sOL --socks5 127.0.0.1:9050 https://github.com/{username}/{reponame}/archive/{branch}.zip

Wait, you even think about working on that repo anonymously? I didn’t go that far, but I have something for ya:

https://stackoverflow.com/a/37100346

The show must go on

It worth noticing that some CLI tools provide an argument to get a proxy server path (e.g.: youtube.dl) and this way you can strain all their traffic through Tor:

youtube-dl "youtube.com/watch?v={id}" --proxy socks5://127.0.0.1:9050

To be honest, there is a much easier way to cover all that stuff, it’s where torsocks comes. For example:

torify curl -s ifconfig.me

Torify simply wraps all the traffic that any provided tool will request and thoroughly proxies it through itself. Let’s take a look at it from a different example, imagine that for the sake of fun or for any other reasons you need to anonymously install some groundbreaking ruby gem.

Here we go:

torify gem install bundler

You’d say: «Now you’re talking», but there is always BUT. Sometimes you may face an error like:

ERROR: /usr/bin/{toolname} is located in a directory protected by Apple's System Integrity Protection.

If so, just copy-pasta that binary to your local execution folder (but it’s possibly no more a workaround for macOS Big Sur users):

cp /usr/bin/{toolname} /usr/local/bin

Conclusion

Fun fact: now you know how to wear a mask on your tools and scripts 😷