[tor-talk] Why does TBB use SOCKS and not HTTP(S)?

Aeris aeris+tor at imirhil.fr
Tue Mar 17 16:15:55 UTC 2015


> Since the TBB is a web browser and the web uses HTTP(S), why is the HTTP 
> settings not used.

All your HTTP(S) traffic is encapsulated into SOCKS
	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SOCKS

With HTTP(S) proxies, you can only proxying HTTP(S) protocol, and not raw 
socket.

> I understand that Tor also uses SOCKS (e.g. torsocks). But, even so, the 
> browser uses HTTP(S). Why does the browser require SOCKS and not HTTP?

Tor doesn’t really use SOCKS internaly, it only provide a SOCKS proxy server 
to allow applications to communicate with the Tor network without modification 
(provided it supports SOCKS proxy).

torsocks just replace standard TCP stack with a fake one (encapsulating TCP 
socket into a « SOCKS socket ») for application not supporting SOCKS proxy 
natively.

Regards,
-- 
Aeris

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