Using JAP to access Tor

The development version of the Java Anonymizing Proxy (JAP) client now has the ability to access the Tor network.

This feature is not available in the current release version of JAP (00.02.004) but is in the development version (00.03.015 at the time of posting, dated 3rd December). To obtain this version, run the release version of JAP and select Config/Miscellaneous/Update. Select "Development" from the Type droplist as shown in the screenshot below and click Upgrade. You will be asked to confirm the location of the existing JAP.jar file which will then be backed up before being overwritten by the new version.

Note: Development versions are "bleeding edge" releases which may have unfixed bugs or, in the worst case, may not work at all. Ensure that you keep the backed-up JAP.jar copy as a fallback and if the current development release does not work on your system, consider checking again in a couple of days time.

 

The development version of JAP has a new interface...

 

To enable access to the Tor network, select Config/Services...

 

...then choose the Tor tab and click on Fetch List to get the currently available Tor nodes.

 

Select OK to confirm the changes. At this point, the JAP client can access both the JAP mixes and the Tor network. Which one is used will depend on whether it is used as an HTTP proxy (where a JAP mix will be used) or a Socks proxy (data will go to Tor). To ensure that Tor is used therefore, you need to do one of the following:

• reconfigure your browser to access JAP as a Socks proxy (address 127.0.0.1, port 4001) if the browser is connecting to the JAP client directly;
• change your Socks settings to access the JAP client (address 127.0.0.1, port 4001) if using a "Socksified" proxy like Proxomitron.

See the Setting up Tor/Proxomitron+SocksCap thread for more details on Socks and Tor. Please note that this is a work in progress and therefore is not problem-free (currently I am seeing corrupted webpages with extra characters when using Tor with the JAP client). However later releases of the JAP client should provide better support and offer a faster anonymizing service as a result.