How to change the Tor exit node programmatically to get a new IP?

Question

I have Tor running on my computer, and I need to change the Tor exit node every five minutes. For example, if I start using Tor via some exit node, then in 5 minutes I want Tor to change to an exit node with a different IP address. How can I do this?

Tor, as far as I know, is listening to port 8051 on localhost.

What commands can I send to this port to make Tor build a new chain, so that I can get another IP address?

Answer 1

Method 1: HUP

sudo killall -HUP tor

Then check that your IP has changed with:

curl --socks5 127.0.0.1:9050 http://checkip.amazonaws.com/

Tested in Ubuntu 17.10 with sudo apt-get install tor version 1.6.0-5.

sudo is needed since the process is started by root by default.

What an HUP signal does exactly to the Tor daemon is documented at: https://gitweb.torproject.org/torspec.git/tree/control-spec.txt?id=03aaace9bd9459b0d4bf22a75012acf39d07bcec#n394 and is equivalent to sending some command through the command port.

Browser Bundle 5.0.5 is not affected by this, only daemon ports like the default 9050, which is not used by the TBB. For that use case see: https://tor.stackexchange.com/questions/1071/how-can-a-new-circuit-happen-without-closing-all-tabs

If you are deploying an army of Tor IPs as mentioned here you can selectively send:

kill -HUP $PID

Method 2: control port

Mentioned by kat:

(echo authenticate '""'; echo signal newnym; echo quit) | nc localhost 9051

but for that to work on Ubuntu 17.10 you must first:

• enable the control port by uncommenting:

  ControlPort 9051
  

  from /etc/tor/torrc

• Set the empty password, otherwise it gives 515 Authentication failed: Wrong length on authentication cookie.. First run:

  tor --hash-password ''
  

  This outputs something like:

  16:D14CC89AD7848B8C60093105E8284A2D3AB2CF3C20D95FECA0848CFAD2
  

  Now on /etc/tor/torrc update the line:

  HashedControlPassword 16:D14CC89AD7848B8C60093105E8284A2D3AB2CF3C20D95FECA0848CFAD2
  

• Restart Tor:

  sudo service tor restart
  

Bonus: how to check that your IP changed

curl --socks5 127.0.0.1:9050 http://checkip.amazonaws.com/

See also: https://askubuntu.com/questions/95910/command-for-determining-my-public-ip

Related threads

• https://superuser.com/questions/449060/tor-how-to-have-different-ip-address-for-every-page-request
• https://askubuntu.com/questions/499995/change-ip-address-which-is-given-by-tor-using-the-terminal
• https://tor.stackexchange.com/questions/100/can-tor-be-used-with-applications-other-than-web-browsers
• https://askubuntu.com/questions/95910/command-for-determining-my-public-ip