Setup & Run Nym Socks5 Client

nym-socks5-client now also supports SOCKS4 and SOCKS4A protocols as well as SOCKS5.

The Nym socks5 client allows you to proxy traffic from a desktop application through the mixnet, meaning you can send and receive information from remote application servers without leaking metadata which can be used to deanonymise you, even if you’re using an encrypted application such as Signal.

Setup

Download or compile socks5 client

If you are using OSX or a Debian-based operating system, you can download the nym-socks5-client binary from our Github releases page.

If you are using a different operating system, head over to the Building from Source page for instructions on how to build the repository from source.

Initialise Socks5 Client

To initialise your nym-socks5-client you need to have an address of a Network Requester (NR). Nowadays NR is part of every Exit Gateway (nym-node --mode exit-gateway). The easiest way to get a NR address is to visit harbourmaster.nymtech.net and open the tab called SOCKS5 NETWORK REQUESTERS. There you can filter the NR by Gateways identity address, and other options.

Use the following command to initialise nym-socs5-client where <ID> can be anything you want (it’s only for local config file storage identification and never shared on the network) and <PROVIDER> is suplemented with a NR address:

./nym-socks5-client init --id <ID> --provider <PROVIDER>

"network_requester": {
    "address": "CyuN49nkyeuiLohSpV5A1MbSqcugHLJQ95B5HooCpjv8.CguTh45Vp99QuGWZRBKpBjZDQbsJaHaXqAMGyc4Qhkzp@2w5RduXRqxKgHt1wtp4qGA4AfXaBj8TuUj1LvcPe2Ea1",
    "uses_exit_policy": true
}

Run

Now your client is initialised, start it with the following:

./nym-socks5-client run --id <ID>

Useful commands

Viewing Command --help

You can check that your binaries are properly compiled with:

./nym-socks5-client --help

A SOCKS5 localhost proxy that converts incoming messages to Sphinx and sends them to a Nym address

Usage: nym-socks5-client [OPTIONS] <COMMAND>

Commands:
  init               Initialise a Nym client. Do this first!
  run                Run the Nym client with provided configuration client optionally overriding set parameters
  ecash              Ecash-related functionalities
  list-gateways      List all registered with gateways
  add-gateway        Add new gateway to this client
  switch-gateway     Change the currently active gateway. Note that you must have already registered with the new gateway!
  build-info         Show build information of this binary
  completions        Generate shell completions
  generate-fig-spec  Generate Fig specification
  help               Print this message or the help of the given subcommand(s)

Options:
  -c, --config-env-file <CONFIG_ENV_FILE>  Path pointing to an env file that configures the client
      --no-banner                          Flag used for disabling the printed banner in tty
  -h, --help                               Print help
  -V, --version                            Print version

You can check the necessary parameters for the available commands by running:

./nym-socks5-client <COMMAND> --help

For example ./nym-socks5-client run --help will return all options associated with run command.

Run the Nym client with provided configuration client optionally overriding set parameters

Usage: nym-socks5-client run [OPTIONS] --id <ID>

Options:
      --id <ID>
          Id of client we want to create config for

      --gateway <GATEWAY>
          Id of the gateway we want to connect to. If overridden, it is user's responsibility to ensure prior registration happened

      --nym-apis <NYM_APIS>
          Comma separated list of rest endpoints of the API validators

      --use-anonymous-replies <USE_ANONYMOUS_REPLIES>
          Specifies whether this client is going to use an anonymous sender tag for communication with the service provider. While this is going to hide its actual address information, it will make the actual communication slower and consume nearly double the bandwidth as it will require sending reply SURBs.
          
          Note that some service providers might not support this.
          
          [possible values: true, false]

      --provider <PROVIDER>
          Address of the socks5 provider to send messages to

  -p, --port <PORT>
          Port for the socket to listen on

      --host <HOST>
          The custom host on which the socks5 client will be listening for requests

  -h, --help
          Print help (see a summary with '-h')

build-info

A build-info command prints the build information like commit hash, rust version, binary version just like what command --version does. However, you can also specify an --output=json flag that will format the whole output as a json, making it an order of magnitude easier to parse.

Flags & Arguments

• --id: A local identifier so that you can name your clients and keep track of them on your local system; it is never transmitted over the network.

• --use-reply-surbs: This field denotes whether you wish to send SURBs along with your request. It defaults to false and must be explicitly set to true to activate.

• --use-anonymous-replies : Specifies whether this client is going to use an anonymous sender tag for communication with the service provider. While this is going to hide its actual address information, it will make the actual communication slower and consume nearly double the bandwidth as it will require sending reply SURBs.

• --gateway: By default your client will choose a random gateway to connect to. However, there are several options for choosing a gateway, if you do not want one that is randomly assigned to your client:

• --latency-based-selection: This flag will choose a gateway based on its location relative to your client. This argument means that to select a gateway, your client will:

  • fetch a list of all availiable gateways
  • send few ping messages to all of them, and measure response times.
  • create a weighted distribution to randomly choose one, favouring ones with lower latency.

Note this doesn’t mean that your client will pick the closest gateway to you, but it will be far more likely to connect to gateway with a 20ms ping rather than 200ms

Configuring nym-socks5-client

When you initalise a client instance, a configuration directory will be generated and stored in $HOME_DIR/.nym/socks5-clients/<YOUR_CLIENT_ID>/.

tree $HOME/.nym/socks5-clients/<YOUR_CLIENT_ID>
├── config
│   └── config.toml
└── data
    ├── ack_key.pem
    ├── credentials_database.db
    ├── gateways_registrations.sqlite
    ├── persistent_reply_store.sqlite
    ├── private_encryption.pem
    ├── private_identity.pem
    ├── public_encryption.pem
    └── public_identity.pem

The config.toml file contains client configuration options, while the two pem files contain client key information.

The generated files contain the client name, public/private keypairs, and gateway address. The name <YOUR_CLIENT_ID> in the example above is just a local identifier so that you can name your clients.

Configuring your client for Docker

By default, the native client listens to host 127.0.0.1. However this can be an issue if you wish to run a client in a Dockerized environment, where it can be convenenient to listen on a different host such as 0.0.0.0.

You can set this via the --host flag during either the init or run commands.

Alternatively, a custom host can be set in the config.toml file under the socket section. If you do this, remember to restart your client process.

Automating your socks5 client with systemd

Create a service file for the socks5 client at /etc/systemd/system/nym-socks5-client.service:

[Unit]
Description=Nym Socks5 Client
StartLimitInterval=350
StartLimitBurst=10

[Service]
User=nym # replace this with whatever user you wish
LimitNOFILE=65536
ExecStart=/home/nym/nym-socks5-client run --id <your_id>
KillSignal=SIGINT
Restart=on-failure
RestartSec=30

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Now enable and start your socks5 client:

systemctl enable nym-socks5-client.service
systemctl start nym-socks5-client.service

# you can always check your socks5 client has succesfully started with:
systemctl status nym-socks5-client.service