py-node-tunnel

Personal servers such as Umbrel offer Bitcoin users a quick and easy way to self host a Bitcoin & Lightning Network Node. At present, Umbrel does not allow it's Bitcoin Core instance to accept incoming connections over clearnet. All incoming connections must happen over Tor. This has both security and privacy benefits, however, it presents a challenge for some users who wish to connect apps with no existing proxy/Tor support to their Umbrel Bitcoin Core node.

A good example is hardware wallet manufacturer Ledger's desktop software 'Ledger Live'. Ledger Live allows a user to connect and use their own Bitcoin Core node to validate transactions, verify wallet balances, etc. This improves a users opsec as it avoids the use of Ledgers remote surveillance node. Unfortuntaely, however, Ledger live does not offer outbound proxy support, and as such it is not currently possible to connect to a node operating as a Tor hidden service.

py-node-tunnel provides a solution to this problem by running an instance of Tor on the users local machine, in conjunction with a python based tunnel script. The tunnel script opens a port on the machine, and proceeds to listen for incoming connections. When a connection is initiated, py-node-tunnel routes the requests over Tor, to the desired Bitcoin hidden service node.

Requirements

Docker

Setup

To get setup, download or clone this repository to a folder on your local machine.

Configuration

To setup py-node-tunnel, edit docker-compose.yaml and update the following lines with your Umbrel's Bitcoin Core Tor hostname & port:

tunnel:
  entrypoint:
    --connect-host=yourumbrelbitcoincoretorhostname.onion
    --connect-port=8332

By default, py-node-tunnel will listen for incoming connections on the local machine on port 8332. To change this, edit the following line in docker-compose.yaml:

tunnel:
  entrypoint:
    --listen-port=8332

Launching py-node-tunnel

To launch py-node-tunnel, cd to the py-node-tunnel and run: docker-compose up -d

Using py-node-tunnel

When using an application that can connect to a Bitcoin Core node, but does not support proxys/Tor, simply configure your software to connect to localhost:8332 instead, and your connection will be routed over Tor to the target Bitcoin Core hidden service node.

Credits

Thanks to WangYihang for the python tunnel gist: https://gist.github.com/WangYihang/e7d36b744557e4673d2157499f6c6b5e

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