Reversed Proxy & Web Secure Socket

It’s useful to put your Exit Gateway behind a reversed proxy and have it accessible via https domain, where you can host a landing page. The guide is right below.

Another solution is to have a your Gateway behind WSS. With ongoing migration from nym-gateway to nym-node --mode exit-gateway we are working on a detailed guide for WSS setup.

Reversed Proxy: Avril 14th Exit Gateways Guide

Info

This guide was created by a Nym node operator, Avril 14th as a part of Nym Operators Community Counsel

The entire content of this page is under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License.

The following snippet needs be modified as described below according to the public identity that you may want to show on this public notice, i.e. your graphics and your email. It would allow you to serve it as a landing page resembling the one proposed by Tor but with all the changes needed to adhere to the Nym’s operators case.

Avril 14th is a team of professionals and optimistic realists eager to contribute to a future of privacy, decentralization and connectivity.

Warning

With a migration from nym-gateway to nym-node --mode exit-gateway the directory tree has been slightly changed. After the migration the configuration directory is in ~/.nym/nym-nodes/. The pathways and exact syntax in this guide is yet to be modified!

When done with the customization needs as described below, you’ll need to upload the file and reference it as the landing_page_assets_path on the [http] section of the config.toml file:

landing_page_assets_path = '<PATH_TO_YOUR_CUSTOM_FILE>'

HTML file customization

  • add your favicon logo on the line:
<link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="">

and your header logo on the line:

<img class="logo" src="<FIXME>">

by either setting the URl to the image (if you’re hosting it publicly, i.e. on your web server)

href="<PATH_TO_YOUR_PUBLIC_URL>"

and

src="<PATH_TO_YOUR_PUBLIC_URL>"

or by adding the image inline as base64 encoded image

href="href="data:image/x-icon;base64,AAABAAMA....""

and

src="href="data:image/x-icon;base64,AAABAAMA....""
  • add the email address you’re willing to use for being contacted.
<a href="mailto:>FIXME>">maintainer</a>
  • If you’re running the node within the US check the sections marked as FIXME, add your DNS name and uncomment those.
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en-US">
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>This is a NYM Exit Gateway</title>
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
<link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="">
<style>
:root {
  font-family: Consolas, "Ubuntu Mono", Menlo, "DejaVu Sans Mono", monospace;
}
:root{
--background-color: #121726;
--text-color: #f2f2f2;
--link-color: #fb6e4e;
}
html{
background: var(--background-color);
}
body{
margin-left: auto;
margin-right: auto;
padding-left: 5vw;
padding-right: 5vw;
max-width: 1000px;
}
h1{
font-size: 55px;
text-align: center;
color: var(--title-color)
}
p{
color: var(--text-color);
}
p, a{
font-size: 20px;
}
a{
color: var(--link-color);
text-decoration: none;
}
a:hover{
filter: brightness(.8);
text-decoration: underline;
}
.links{
display: flex;
flex-wrap: wrap;
justify-content: space-evenly;
}
.links > a{
margin: 10px;
white-space: nowrap;
}
</style>

</head>
<body>
<main>
<h1>This is a NYM Exit Gateway</h1>
<p style="text-align:center">
<img class="logo" src="<FIXME>">
</p>

<p>
You are most likely accessing this website because you've had some issue with
the traffic coming from this IP. This router is part of the <a
href="https://nymtech.net/">NYM project</a>, which is
dedicated to <a href="https://nymtech.net/about/mission">create</a> outstanding
privacy software that is legally compliant without sacrificing integrity or
having any backdoors.
This router IP should be generating no other traffic, unless it has been
compromised.</p>

<p>
The Nym mixnet is operated by a decentralised community of node operators
and stakers. The Nym mixnet is trustless, meaning that no parts of the system
nor its operators have access to information that might compromise the privacy
of users. Nym software enacts a strict principle of data minimisation and has
no back doors. The Nym mixnet works by encrypting packets in several layers
and relaying those through a multi-layered network called a mixnet,  eventually
letting the traffic exit the Nym mixnet through an exit gateway like this one.
This design makes it very hard for a service to know which user is connecting to it,
since it can only see the IP-address of the Nym exit gateway:</p>

<p style="text-align:center;margin:40px 0">
<svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="500" viewBox="0 0 490.28 293.73" style="width:100%;max-width:600px">
<desc>Illustration showing how a user might connect to a service through the Nym network. The user first sends their data through three daisy-chained encrypted Nym nodes that exist on three different continents. Then the last Nym node in the chain connects to the target service over the normal internet.</desc>
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<p>
<a href="https://nymtech.net/about/mixnet">Read more about how Nym works.</a></p>

<p>
Nym relies on a growing ecosystem of users, developers and researcher partners
aligned with the mission to make sure Nym software is running, remains usable
and solves real problems. While Nym is not designed for malicious computer
users, it is true that they can use the network for malicious ends. This
is largely because criminals and hackers have significantly better access to
privacy and anonymity than do the regular users whom they prey upon. Criminals
can and do build, sell, and trade far larger and more powerful networks than
Nym on a daily basis. Thus, in the mind of this operator, the social need for
easily accessible censorship-resistant private, anonymous communication trumps
the risk of unskilled bad actors, who are almost always more easily uncovered
by traditional police work than by extensive monitoring and surveillance anyway.</p>

<p>
In terms of applicable law, the best way to understand Nym is to consider it a
network of routers operating as common carriers, much like the Internet
backbone. However, unlike the Internet backbone routers, Nym mixnodes do not
contain identifiable routing information about the source of a packet and do
mix the user internet traffic with that of other users, making communications
private and protecting not just the user content but the metadata
(user's IP address, who the user talks to, when, where, from what device and
more) and no single Nym node can determine both the origin and destination
of a given transmission.</p>

<p>
As such, there is little the operator of this Exit Gateway can do to help you
track the connection further. This Exit Gateway maintains no logs of any of the
Nym mixnet traffic, so there is little that can be done to trace either legitimate or
illegitimate traffic (or to filter one from the other).  Attempts to
seize this router will accomplish nothing.</p>

<!-- FIXME: US-Only section. Remove if you are a non-US operator -->
<!--
<p>
Furthermore, this machine also serves as a carrier of email, which means that
its contents are further protected under the ECPA. <a
href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2707">18
USC 2707</a> explicitly allows for civil remedies ($1000/account
<i>plus</i>  legal fees)
in the event of a seizure executed without good faith or probable cause (it
should be clear at this point that traffic with an originating IP address of
FIXME_DNS_NAME should not constitute probable cause to seize the
machine). Similar considerations exist for 1st amendment content on this
machine.</p>
-->
<!-- FIXME: May or may not be US-only. Some non-US tor nodes have in
     fact reported DMCA harassment... -->
<!--
<p>
If you are a representative of a company who feels that this router is being
used to violate the DMCA, please be aware that this machine does not host or
contain any illegal content. Also be aware that network infrastructure
maintainers are not liable for the type of content that passes over their
equipment, in accordance with <a
href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/512">DMCA
"safe harbor" provisions</a>. In other words, you will have just as much luck
sending a takedown notice to the Internet backbone providers.
</p>
-->

<p>To decentralise and enable privacy for a broad range of services, this
Exit Gateway adopts an <a href="https://nymtech.net/.wellknown/network-requester/exit-policy.txt">Exit Policy</a>
in accordance with the <a href="https://tornull.org/">Tor Null ‘deny’ list</a>
and the <a href="https://tornull.org/tor-reduced-reduced-exit-policy.php">Tor reduced policy</a>,
which are two established safeguards.
</p>

<p>
That being said, if you still have a complaint about the router, you may email the
 <a href="mailto:>FIXME>">maintainer</a>. If complaints are related
 to a particular service that is being abused, the maintainer will submit that to the
 NYM Operators Community in order to add it to the Exit Policy cited above.
If approved, that would prevent this router from allowing that traffic to exit through it.
That can be done only on an IP+destination port basis, however. Common P2P ports are already blocked.</p>

<p>
You also have the option of blocking this IP address and others on the Nym network if you so desire.
 The Nym project provides a <a href="https://explorer.nymtech.net/network-components/gateways">
 web service</a> to fetch a list of all IP addresses of Nym Gateway Exit nodes that allow exiting to a
specified IP:port combination. Please be considerate when using these options.</p>

</main>
</body>
</html>

Reverse proxy

You may set up a reverse proxy in order to serve this landing page with proper SSL and DNS management, i.e. to resolve it to https://nym-exit.<YOUR_DOMAIN> or https://nym-readme.<YOUR_DOMAIN>.

The following assumes that you’re owning a domain and that you’ve already set the Let’s Encrypt certificates on your hosting, and you’ve copied those on your Gateway, i.e. copy the two Let’s Encript pem files on your Gateway’s home folder. Else you may obtain a Let’s Encrypt certificate using a --certonly procedure.

sudo apt install nginx

If you’re running your Gateway (you should…) exposing only the needed ports as listed here, you need to add the Nginx service to your ufw configuration:

sudo ufw app list
sudo ufw allow 'Nginx Full'
sudo ufw reload

Disable the default Nginx landing page

sudo systemctl status nginx
sudo unlink /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default
sudo systemctl restart nginx

Add your endpoint configuration to Nginx changing <YOUR_DOMAIN> occurrencies below with your domain name, including the top-level domain, i.e. avril4th.org

sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/nym-exit.<YOUR_DOMAIN>

server {
  listen 443 ssl http2;
  listen [::]:443 ssl http2;

  server_name nym-exit.<YOUR_DOMAIN>;

  ssl_certificate <PATH_TO>/fullchain.pem;
  ssl_certificate_key <PATH_TO>/privkey.pem;

  access_log /var/log/nginx/access.log;
  error_log /var/log/nginx/error.log;

  location / {
    proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8080;
    proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
    proxy_set_header Host $host;
    proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
  }
}

server {
  listen 80;
  listen [::]:80;

  if ($host = nym-exit.<YOUR_DOMAIN>) {
    return 301 https://$host$request_uri;
  }

  server_name <YOUR_DOMAIN> www.<YOUR_DOMAIN>;

  return 301 https://<YOUR_DOMAIN>$request_uri;
}

sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/nym-exit.<YOUR_DOMAIN> /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/
sudo nginx -t
sudo systemctl restart nginx

When done with the customization needs as described below, you’ll need to upload the file and reference it as the landing_page_assets_path on the [http] section of the config.toml file that you’ll find in the ~/.nym/gateways/<YOUR_GATEWAY_ID>/config/config.toml file

nano ${HOME}/.nym/gateways/<YOUR_GATEWAY_ID>/config/config.toml

change

landing_page_assets_path = '<PATH_TO_YOUR_CUSTOM_FILE>'

If you’re running the Gateway as a service as described here and here you may just restart your service

service nym-gateway stop
service nym-gateway start

and check for the page being served either checking the service logs

sudo journalctl -u  nym-gateway.service | grep 8080

where you should read out

... Started NymNodeHTTPServer on 0.0.0.0:8080

or just point your browser to the URI which you set above, such as https://nym-exit.<YOUR_DOMAIN>