How do I change my IP address using Ruby/Tor?

Question

I”m using Rails 4.2.7 and I have several Tor gems installed.

gem 'tor'
gem 'tor_requests'
gem 'tor-privoxy'
gem 'net-telnet'

I started my Tor browser (running on Mac El Capitan) and I want to periodically (every 20th request) change the IP address of where my TOR web requests originate. So I tried this

agent = TorPrivoxy::Agent.new '127.0.0.1', '', {8118 => 9151} do |agent|
  sleep 1
  puts "New IP is #{agent.ip}"
end

However, this results in the below error. I’m confused about how else I need to configure things so that I can make the above work.

Error during processing: Failed to open TCP connection to 127.0.0.1:8118 (general SOCKS server failure)
/Users/davea/.rvm/rubies/ruby-2.3.0/lib/ruby/2.3.0/net/http.rb:882:in `rescue in block in connect'
/Users/davea/.rvm/rubies/ruby-2.3.0/lib/ruby/2.3.0/net/http.rb:879:in `block in connect'
/Users/davea/.rvm/rubies/ruby-2.3.0/lib/ruby/2.3.0/timeout.rb:91:in `block in timeout'
/Users/davea/.rvm/rubies/ruby-2.3.0/lib/ruby/2.3.0/timeout.rb:101:in `timeout'
/Users/davea/.rvm/rubies/ruby-2.3.0/lib/ruby/2.3.0/net/http.rb:878:in `connect'
/Users/davea/.rvm/rubies/ruby-2.3.0/lib/ruby/2.3.0/net/http.rb:863:in `do_start'
/Users/davea/.rvm/rubies/ruby-2.3.0/lib/ruby/2.3.0/net/http.rb:858:in `start'
/Users/davea/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.3.0/gems/net-http-persistent-2.9.4/lib/net/http/persistent.rb:700:in `start'
/Users/davea/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.3.0/gems/net-http-persistent-2.9.4/lib/net/http/persistent.rb:631:in `connection_for'
/Users/davea/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.3.0/gems/net-http-persistent-2.9.4/lib/net/http/persistent.rb:994:in `request'
/Users/davea/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.3.0/gems/mechanize-2.7.5/lib/mechanize/http/agent.rb:274:in `fetch'
/Users/davea/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.3.0/gems/mechanize-2.7.5/lib/mechanize.rb:464:in `get'
/Users/davea/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.3.0/gems/tor-privoxy-0.1.1/lib/tor-privoxy/agent.rb:38:in `ip'
/Users/davea/Documents/workspace/myproject/app/helpers/webpage_helper.rb:57:in `block in get_content'
/Users/davea/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.3.0/gems/tor-privoxy-0.1.1/lib/tor-privoxy/agent.rb:11:in `initialize'
/Users/davea/Documents/workspace/myproject/app/helpers/webpage_helper.rb:55:in `new'
/Users/davea/Documents/workspace/myproject/app/helpers/webpage_helper.rb:55:in `rescue in get_content'
/Users/davea/Documents/workspace/myproject/app/helpers/webpage_helper.rb:50:in `get_content'
/Users/davea/Documents/workspace/myproject/app/helpers/webpage_helper.rb:14:in `get_url'
/Users/davea/Documents/workspace/myproject/app/services/onlinerr_race_finder_service.rb:41:in `get_race_list'
/Users/davea/Documents/workspace/myproject/app/services/abstract_race_finder_service.rb:26:in `process_data'
/Users/davea/Documents/workspace/myproject/app/services/run_crawlers_service.rb:18:in `block in run_all_crawlers'
/Users/davea/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.3.0/gems/activerecord-4.2.7.1/lib/active_record/relation/delegation.rb:46:in `each'
/Users/davea/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.3.0/gems/activerecord-4.2.7.1/lib/active_record/relation/delegation.rb:46:in `each'
/Users/davea/Documents/workspace/myproject/app/services/run_crawlers_service.rb:5:in `run_all_crawlers'
(irb):2:in `irb_binding'
/Users/davea/.rvm/rubies/ruby-2.3.0/lib/ruby/2.3.0/irb/workspace.rb:87:in `eval'
/Users/davea/.rvm/rubies/ruby-2.3.0/lib/ruby/2.3.0/irb/workspace.rb:87:in `evaluate'
/Users/davea/.rvm/rubies/ruby-2.3.0/lib/ruby/2.3.0/irb/context.rb:380:in `evaluate'
/Users/davea/.rvm/rubies/ruby-2.3.0/lib/ruby/2.3.0/irb.rb:489:in `block (2 levels) in eval_input'
/Users/davea/.rvm/rubies/ruby-2.3.0/lib/ruby/2.3.0/irb.rb:623:in `signal_status'
/Users/davea/.rvm/rubies/ruby-2.3.0/lib/ruby/2.3.0/irb.rb:486:in `block in eval_input'
/Users/davea/.rvm/rubies/ruby-2.3.0/lib/ruby/2.3.0/irb/ruby-lex.rb:246:in `block (2 levels) in each_top_level_statement'
/Users/davea/.rvm/rubies/ruby-2.3.0/lib/ruby/2.3.0/irb/ruby-lex.rb:232:in `loop'
/Users/davea/.rvm/rubies/ruby-2.3.0/lib/ruby/2.3.0/irb/ruby-lex.rb:232:in `block in each_top_level_statement'
/Users/davea/.rvm/rubies/ruby-2.3.0/lib/ruby/2.3.0/irb/ruby-lex.rb:231:in `catch'
/Users/davea/.rvm/rubies/ruby-2.3.0/lib/ruby/2.3.0/irb/ruby-lex.rb:231:in `each_top_level_statement'
/Users/davea/.rvm/rubies/ruby-2.3.0/lib/ruby/2.3.0/irb.rb:485:in `eval_input'
/Users/davea/.rvm/rubies/ruby-2.3.0/lib/ruby/2.3.0/irb.rb:395:in `block in start'
/Users/davea/.rvm/rubies/ruby-2.3.0/lib/ruby/2.3.0/irb.rb:394:in `catch'
/Users/davea/.rvm/rubies/ruby-2.3.0/lib/ruby/2.3.0/irb.rb:394:in `start'

How do I programmatically force an IP address change using Ruby/Tor?

Edit:Here is what I included in my helper file and below is the error that results

require 'rubygems'
$:.unshift "./tor/lib"
require 'tor'
…
    cookie_file = '/Users/davea/Library/Application Support/TorBrowser-Data/Tor/control_auth_cookie'
    file = File.open(cookie_file, 'rb')
    cookie = file.read # read contents of auth cookie to string
    file.close

    Tor::Controller.connect(:port => 9150, :cookie => cookie) do |tor|
      tor.signal('NEWNYM') # send NEWNYM signal (gets new IP)
    end

The error that results in the rails console …

Error during processing: undefined method `signal' for #<Tor::Controller:0x007fe044b1e550>
/Users/davea/Documents/workspace/myproject/app/helpers/webpage_helper.rb:87:in `block in get_content'
/Users/davea/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.3.0/gems/tor-0.1.2/lib/tor/control.rb:38:in `connect'
/Users/davea/Documents/workspace/myproject/app/helpers/webpage_helper.rb:86:in `rescue in get_content'

Edit 2:

After adding this to my Gemfile file

gem 'tor', :git => 'https://github.com/dryruby/tor.rb.git'

I ran the code above, and now got the error …

Error during processing: end of file reached
/Users/davea/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.3.0/bundler/gems/tor.rb-08e589d17196/lib/tor/control.rb:301:in `readline'
/Users/davea/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.3.0/bundler/gems/tor.rb-08e589d17196/lib/tor/control.rb:301:in `read_reply'
/Users/davea/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.3.0/bundler/gems/tor.rb-08e589d17196/lib/tor/control.rb:194:in `authenticate'
/Users/davea/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.3.0/bundler/gems/tor.rb-08e589d17196/lib/tor/control.rb:282:in `send_command'
/Users/davea/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.3.0/bundler/gems/tor.rb-08e589d17196/lib/tor/control.rb:269:in `signal'
/Users/davea/Documents/workspace/myproject/app/helpers/webpage_helper.rb:90:in `block in get_content'

Answer 1

To change your IP in Tor, you need to connect directly to the controller (it uses a telnet-like line based command/response protocol.

It looks like you're trying to connect through Privoxy which isn't necessary. The controller only allows local connections by default.

Tor Browser's Tor config enforces authentication uses the cookie method, without changing any options in torrc you need to read the contents of the auth cookie to connect.

I was able to change the IP with the following code:

require 'rubygems'
$:.unshift "./tor/lib"
require 'tor'

# the cookie file contains a "password" for authentication, 32 random bytes
cookie_file = '/home/me/tor-browser_en-US/Browser/TorBrowser/Data/Tor/control_auth_cookie'
file = File.open(cookie_file, 'rb')
cookie = file.read # read contents of auth cookie to string
file.close

Tor::Controller.connect(:port => 9151, :cookie => cookie) do |tor|
    p tor.signal('NEWNYM') # send NEWNYM signal (gets new IP)
end

tor.signal returns a string, which should read "250 OK" if the NEWNYM command was successful. There is some internal rate limiting which prevents this from being run too often (like every 10 seconds I think) which shouldn't be a problem for you.

EDIT: The 0.1.2 (current release) of this Gem doesn't include the signal method from the master branch. You'll need to use the latest code or replicate their code instead of calling signal.