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I've hosted a wifi network using a virtual router, with which the local area connection is sharing it's internet with. My Android device can connect to this wifi network and can access my laptop's internet.

Now comes in Tor. On my laptop, Tor can be accessed on 127.0.0.1 via a Socks5 protocol. I'm trying to connect to this network from my Android device. I figured that all I need to do is acccess my laptops localhost from my device. Since my phone is connected to the laptop's wifi network, I should be able to access localhost by using my laptop's ip address (192.168.xx.x). Unfortunately this does not work. Any idea why?

Is there a better way I can access the Tor running on my laptop from my device via Wifi or USB tethering?

Windows 7 (Ubuntu 12.04 is available if a solution demands it), rooted Android on CM9.

Orbot is not an option since it's unable to connect via the wifi's proxy.

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Local is a separate interface on your laptop, just like your ethernet adapter and Wi-Fi adapter. Just because a program listens on 127.0.0.1:1080 (localhost SOCKS proxy) does not mean that it will listen on another interface. "Access the laptop's localhost from my device" is not possible. Proxies, that are not intended for public use, normally listen only on localhost for security reasons.

If you MUST connect to the laptop's localhost SOCKS port, you need "TCP tunnel" software running on your laptop to listen on a reachable interface and redirect it to the local interface. Realize that you are creating a security risk if you do, because the Tor client on your laptop won't be able to tell whether it's you connecting to the local socks proxy port. It's been a decade since I last looked for "TCP tunnel" or "TCP proxy" software, so I don't know which to suggest -- you'll have to research it.

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  • Thx for your reply Getch. The virtual router link you referred is correct. It basically just hosts a wifi connection with which another connection's internet can be shared. I'm not really sure how it does it, but it just needs another network with an internet connection. As for Orbot, the internet connection that I'm behind has a proxy and user auth. Orbot seems to be having problems getting connected behind this. Basically, with all this I'm just trying to bypass the proxy. On my desktop, Tor does that perfectly. I'm trying to get my phone to do the same, using Tor.
    – Urban
    Commented Aug 14, 2012 at 15:52
  • Can you tell me more about the proxy? Does it intercept web pages and replace them with a page requesting authentication? Tor on your PC will allow you to connect with the PC to the 'net without authenticating to the proxy?
    – Getch
    Commented Aug 14, 2012 at 21:41
  • If you open a new session in the web browser, the browser displays a pop-up asking for credentials. This happens since none of the browsers have proxy auth fields in their network settings. Tor does have the auth fields in its network settings, so no such popup is displayed.
    – Urban
    Commented Aug 15, 2012 at 3:58

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