Implementing "networking.tor" in NixOS

Wed, 29 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

During the years, I’ve been struggling to build the perfect onion routing system. The idea of producing only noise for network observers has always been fascinating. You know, surfing the web knowing no one knows who you are and stuff. On top of that, I just rewrote the entire Tor protocol back in 2015, so it might just be an obsession.

You could say, “bro, relax, no one is watching you.” Yes… but not actually. During my career, I had the opportunity to use some very costly instrumentation that made me able to track down threat actors to their home IP addresses. Such software is built on a massive, global-scale data collection process.

Nix on Francesco

Implementing "networking.tor" in NixOS

Introduction