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?

Accepted Answer

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
```

We can select the PID by port as per: https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/106561/finding-the-pid-of-the-process-using-a-specific-port E.g. to change IP of the Tor listening in at port 9050:

```
kill -HUP "$(sudo netstat -nlp | awk '$4~":9050"{ gsub(/\/.*/,"",$7); print $7 }')"
```

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
```

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

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

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