Port 9050 Tor SOCKS · TCP

What runs on port 9050

Tor's SOCKS proxy: applications that should go through Tor are pointed at localhost:9050 (Tor Browser uses 9150). The control port on 9051 lets a program change circuits and must be password-protected. Anything beyond localhost is wrong; a reachable Tor SOCKS port is a free anonymous proxy for others.

Software that uses it: Tor · torsocks, proxychains · Privoxy (chained on 8118)

Should port 9050 be open?

Loopback or the host's own network only. The service should listen on 127.0.0.1 (or a Unix socket) and be reached by a reverse proxy or by the application on the same host. If it answers on a public address, that is a misconfiguration.

• curl --socks5-hostname 127.0.0.1:9050 https://check.torproject.org/api/ip confirms traffic goes through Tor.

Check port 9050

# on the host: is anything listening, and which process?
ss -ltnp 'sport = :9050'
sudo lsof -i :9050

# from another machine: is it reachable?
nc -zv host 9050
nmap -p 9050 host
curl -v telnet://host:9050      # raw TCP connect test, Ctrl-C to leave

A port that answers from the internet when it should not is the finding; nmap from a machine outside your network (or a VPS) is the honest test, because scans from inside the LAN pass the firewall you are trying to verify.

Allow or block port 9050

# ufw (Ubuntu/Debian)
sudo ufw allow from 10.0.0.0/8 to any port 9050 proto tcp
sudo ufw deny 9050/tcp

# nftables
nft add rule inet filter input ip saddr 10.0.0.0/8 tcp dport 9050 accept
nft add rule inet filter input tcp dport 9050 drop

# iptables (legacy)
iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 9050 -s 10.0.0.0/8 -j ACCEPT
iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 9050 -j DROP

# firewalld
sudo firewall-cmd --permanent --add-rich-rule='rule family=ipv4 source address=10.0.0.0/8 port port=9050 protocol=tcp accept'

Replace 10.0.0.0/8 with the networks that need access. Allowing by source address is the rule that matters; "allow 9050" with no source is just "open".

Related ports

• 9001 Tor ORPort / Supervisor
• 1080 SOCKS — Proxy
• 8118 Privoxy — Filtering proxy, often in front of Tor

Part of the port number reference. Ports are 16-bit numbers; see also the subnet calculator and the packet decoder, which shows ports inside TCP and UDP headers.

Questions