How to install Tor on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS "Bionic Beaver"

Hi, Are you wandering and searching about Tor and wondering how to install it? If yes, then great you are in right place. Here, I am going to walk you through the installation process of Tor on Ubuntu.

Tor is free software and an open network that helps you defend against traffic analysis, a form of network surveillance that threatens personal freedom and privacy, confidential business activities and relationships, and state security. It was initially a worldwide network of servers developed by the U.S. Navy that enabled people to browse the internet anonymously. Now, it's a non-profit organization whose main purpose is the research and development of online privacy tools.

I am assuming that you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple you need to be running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo’ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you through the step by step installation Tor on a Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver) server.

Operating System and Software Versions

• Operating System: Ubuntu 18.04 Bionic Beaver
• Software: Tor version 0.3.2.9

Requirements

Privileged access to your Ubuntu System as root or via sudo command is required.

Difficulty

EASY

Conventions

• # - requires given linux commands to be executed with root privileges either directly as a root user or by use of sudo command
• $ - requires given linux commands to be executed as a regular non-privileged user

1. Adding Tor Repository

First of all, we'll need to add the repository source so that the package manager ie apt can fetch the required software package from the Tor's Repository. To do so, we'll need to run the following commands in a terminal or a shell.

$ sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list.d/tor_repo.list

Then, we'll need to add the following lines into the text editor as shown below.

deb http://deb.torproject.org/torproject.org trusty main
deb-src http://deb.torproject.org/torproject.org trusty main

Then we'll need to add the gpg key which is used to sign the packages. To do that, we'll run the following commands.

$ gpg --keyserver keys.gnupg.net --recv 886DDD89
$ gpg --export A3C4F0F979CAA22CDBA8F512EE8CBC9E886DDD89 | sudo apt-key add

2. Updating the Repository Index

After we have finished installing adding the repository source list. We'll need to update our local repository index so that we can use it to fetch tor. We'll run apt manager to update the repository index.

$ sudo apt-get update

3. Installing TOR

Now, finally, we'll install TOR by running apt manager in a terminal.

$ sudo apt-get install tor

4. Running TOR

Finally, as we have successfully installed it in our Ubuntu 18.04 LTS "Bionic Beaver" machine, we'll now want to run tor client daemon out of the box. To run tor, we'll need to run the following command in a terminal with root permission.

$ sudo /etc/init.d/tor start

Now, as we can see that our daemon is running, we now need to configure the network connection of the application or browser we want to get anonymous. The only small thing we'll need to do is to set the proxy IP: port to 127.0.0.1:9050 which will point to the TOR network.

Conclusion

In this tutorial, we learned how to install Tor on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS "Bionic Beaver" box. Tor is really an awesome project. It enables us to remain anonymous but to be honest, the level of anonymous is not 100% secure and anonymous. Some Government organizations like NSA, FBI can really break into through this and can check whether you are running tor or not. So, please be secure and beware from the Government. Tor network consists of an awesome anonymity network.

If you have any questions, suggestions, feedback please don't hesitate to write them in the comment box below because it will help us to improve or correct our contents. Thanks, Happy FOSS Computing. :)