Getting up to Speed
Getting up to speed on Tor's past, present, and future
First, read the overview page to get a basic idea of how Tor works, what it's for, and who uses it.
Install Tor Browser and try it out. Be sure to read the list of warnings about ways you can screw up your anonymity.
Look through the Tor Browser Design Document.
Our FAQ covers all sorts of topics, including questions about setting up a client or relay, concerns about anonymity attacks,
why we didn't build Tor in other ways, etc. There's a separate Abuse FAQ to answer common questions from or for relay operators.
The Tor Legal FAQ is written by EFF lawyers, and aims to give you an overview of some of the legal issues that arise from The Tor Project in the US.
Check out the Tor Stack Exchange Q&A Site, and help us make the questions and answers better.
The manual lists all the possible entries you can put in your torrc file. We also provide a manual for the development version of Tor.
If you have questions, we have an IRC channel at#tor on irc.oftc.net (you canjoin via Tor as well).
Developers work in #tor-dev and relay operators help each other in #tor-relays, read this fine article by Tor's Relay Advocate.
If you have a bug, especially a crash bug, read how to report a Tor bug first and then tell us as much information about it as
you can in our bugtracker. (If your bug is with your browser or some other application, please don't put it in our bugtracker.)
The tor-talk mailing list can also be useful.
Tor has a blog. We try to keep it updated every week or two with the latest news.
Download and watch Roger's Tor overview talk from Internet Days in Sweden (video, slides, youtube), which provides good
background on how Tor works and what it's for.
Learn about our censorship circumvention side: watch our 28C3 talk in December 2011 on how governments have tried to block
Tor (video, youtube, slides), an overview of what to look for in a circumvention tool, and the original "blocking-resistance and circumvention"
talk from 23C3 in December 2006 (video, slides, abstract, design paper).
Learn about the wide diversity of projects in the Tor ecosystem that need your help. Watch the 29c3 video on the Tor software ecosystem to learn more.
Look through Tor's Design Documents. Notice that we have RFC-style specs to tell you exactly how Tor is built.
Learn about the Tor proposal process for changing our design, and look over the existing proposals.
Our sponsor TODO list starts with a timeline for external promises — things our sponsors have paid to see done.
It also lists many other tasks and topics we'd like to tackle next.
Once you're up to speed, things will continue to change surprisingly fast. The tor-dev mailing list is where the complex discussion
happens, and the #tor and #tor-dev IRC channels are where the rest of the discussion happens.
Mailing List Info
Mailing List Info
Tor runs many mailing lists. New users will be most interested in:
tor-announce is a low volume list for announcements of new releases and critical security updates. Everybody should be on this list.
There is also an RSS feed.
tor-talkis where a lot of discussion happens, and is where we send notifications of prerelease versions and release candidates.
tor-relays list is for discussions about running, configuring, and handling your tor relay or bridge. If you currently run a relay or bridge,
or are thinking about doing so, this is the list for you.
tor-onions is like tor-relays but for onion services.
tor-dev is for posting by developers only, and is very low traffic.
Design Documents
Design Documents
The design document (published at Usenix Security 2004) gives our justifications and security analysis for the Tor design:
PDF and HTML versions available.
Thirteen key design changes since the original 2004 paper: part one, part two, part three.
Our preliminary design to make it harder for large firewalls to prevent access to the Tor network is described in
design of a blocking-resistant anonymity system: PDF draft and HTML draft. Want to help us build it?
The specifications aim to give developers enough information to build a compatible version of Tor:
Main Tor specification
Tor version 3 directory server specification (and older version 2 directory specification)
Tor control protocol specification
Tor rendezvous specification: version 2 and version 3
Tor path selection specification
Special hostnames in Tor
Tor's SOCKS support and extensions
How Tor version numbers work
In-progress drafts of new specifications and proposed changes
Neat Links
Neat Links
The Tor wiki provides a plethora of helpful contributions from Tor users. Check it out!
A list of supporting programs you might want to use in association with Tor.
The Tor detector tries to guess if you're using Tor or not.
Check out Tor network status information using Relay Search. Remember that these lists may not be as accurate as what your Tor client uses,
because your client fetches its own directory information and examines it locally.
Read these papers (especially the ones in boxes) to get up to speed on the field of anonymous communication systems.
For Developers
For Developers
Browse the Tor source repository
Browse the repository's source tree directly
Git and SVN access:
git clone https://git.torproject.org/git/tor
svn checkout https://svn.torproject.org/svn/website/trunk website
Basic instructions for using Git to contribute to Tor software.