Using Freenet over Tor
▻https://bluishcoder.co.nz/2016/08/18/using-freenet-over-tor.html
2016-08-18 - This post outlines a method of using Freenet over Tor based on posts I wrote on my Freenet hosted blog and subsequent discussions about it. If you read my Freenet hosted blog there’s little new here, I’m just making it available on my non-freenet blog.
One issue I’ve had with Freenet is that it exposes your IP address to peers. Recent law enforcement efforts to monitor Freenet have shown that they have been able to obtain search warrants based on logging requests for blocks of known data and associating them with IP addresses. If law enforcement can do this, so can random bad people.
You can avoid exposing your IP address to random strangers on opennet by using darknet but even then you have to trust your friends aren’t monitoring your requests. If it was possible to run Freenet over Tor hidden services then only the hidden service address would be exposed using this logging method. A problem is that Freenet uses UDP which Tor does not support.
A recent post on the Freenet development mailing list pointed out that onioncat provides a virtual network over Tor and tunnels UDP. Using the steps they provided, and some tweaks, it’s possible to set up a darknet node that doesn’t expose its IP address. It uses the onioncat generated IPv6 address for communicating with peers - and this address is backed by a Tor hidden service.
The steps below outline how to set this up. Note that this is quite experimental and requires care to not expose your IP address. There are some Freenet issues that make things difficult so you should be aware that you do this at your risk and understand it may still expose your identity if things go wrong.
I’m assuming a Debian/Ubuntu like system for the steps.
Installing Freenet
▻https://github.com/freenet/wiki/wiki/Installing-Freenet