Hi all, I wanted to report a method I have found of running a tor relay on Windows, as well as an obfuscated bridge.

So when I switched over to Windows, I had to start a new relay as my signing keys were lost in the transit.

I decided to switch over to running a bridge, as I am running on a home router to cut down on connections, etc.

For setting up a new relay on Windows, these are the steps that worked (cmd says I have generated a fingerprint).

Step 1: Download the tor expert bundle from here https://www.torproject.org/download/download

Step 2: Extract the tor expert bundle to the desktop.

Step 3: Run “tor.exe” as administrator (doing so will create the folders were going to be running tor from later.

Step 4: Open the “run” command. Using this, open “C:\Users\keife\AppData\Roaming\tor” (Where is says “keife” you will need to type your username).

Step 5: Go back to the folder that the tor expert bundle was extracted to formerly. Open the folder called “Tor” and copy / paste all of the contents of it over to the roaming/tor folder you just opened using the run command.

Step 6: Right click inside the folder, and select New -> Text Document, name the text file “torrc” and open it using notepad.

Step 7: In the torrc text file just created, type nothing else but the configuration for your relay, for example  

Nickname torland

SocksPort 0

ORPort 9002

ExitRelay 0

ContactInfo keifer dot bly at gmail dot com

ExitPolicy reject *:*

Change the nickname to what you want your relay to be called, ORPort to what port you are forwarding on, ContactInfo to your email address, etc. Go file -> save then close notepad.

Step 8: To start a middle relay, do not click tor.exe as it will not recognize torrc in txt file format. Instead we will use Windows Command Prompt to ask “tor.exe” to read the torcc file. Open cmd, and type “cd”, then a space, then “C:\Users\yourusername\AppData\Roaming\tor”. This will point command prompt to the directory where tor is.

Step 9: in CMD, type “tor.exe -f torrc.txt” This will send a command to tor to read the file called “torrc.txt” in the file directory, and start a relay.

Now, I will go to how tonight I was able to start an obfs4 obfscated bridge on Windows (at least to where it says I have a fingerprint and a “registered server transport ‘obfs4’).

Step 1: After doing all of the things above, download the tor browser from https://www.torproject.org/download/download

Step 2: Install tor browser, then navigate to the folder you installed tor browser to.

Step 3: In the folder tor browser was installed to, above the “start tor browser” button, there will be a folder called “Browser”. Open this folder, open “TorBrowser” folder, then open “Tor” folder. Right click the folder called “pluggable transports” and copy / paste it to the “roaming/tor” folder.

Step 4: Now to edit the torrc file to run the obfuscated bridge. Here is a somewhat example torrc file (my current one)

Nickname torland

SOCKSPort 0                # no local SOCKS proxy

ORPort 9002                # public bridge must have an open ORPort

ExtORPort auto             # configure ExtORPort for obfs4proxy

ExitPolicy reject *:*      # no exits allowed

BridgeRelay 1              # relay won't show up in the public consensus

PublishServerDescriptor 1  # publish to the bridge authority

ContactInfo keifer dot bly at gmail dot com

# use obfs4proxy to provide obfs4 on port 80

ServerTransportPlugin obfs4 exec C:\Users\keife\AppData\Roaming\tor\PluggableTransports\obfs4proxy.exe

ServerTransportListenAddr obfs4 0.0.0.0:9002.

To try running any kind of obfusacted bridge, try editing “ServerTransportPlugin obfs4 exec C:\Users\keife\AppData\Roaming\tor\PluggableTransports\obfs4proxy.exe” to the exe of the pluggable transport you want to run.

Doing this, after starting it about an hour ago, has resulted in this output from tor, it is a picture on a google drive link as the list does not allow photos and there is now way to edit copy text from command prompt. Cheers.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1aPVIYox5ZD_JwpqnRGFk-bGxDjRDc_OL