Welcome to the dark side of the web, where anonymity meets creativity and where privacy is paramount. In this guide, I'll take you on a journey into the mysterious realm of the Darknet, where you'll learn how to harness its hidden potential to host your very own static website. Step into the shadows, and let's illuminate the path to securing your corner of the deep web!

Basic Requirements

For this guide, you'll need the following:

Machine running some modern Linux distro, our go to is Ubuntu 22.04
Internet connection that doesn't block access to the Tor network
The nerve to venture out into the unknown

Become root on your machine

If you're not already root, go ahead and take control now

sudo -i

Make sure you're up to date

You'll want to make sure your system is fully updated

apt-get update -y & apt-get upgrade -y

Installing Nginx & Tor

We'll be using Nginx for our web server since we'll be serving up static content in this guide.

apt install nginx tor -y

Open ports in your Firewall

We can't serve any content if nothing can access our server, so fire of these commands to poke a couple of holes to our webserver

80 is the default HTTP port
443 is the default HTTPS port
9050 is the default SOCKS port for Tor

iptables -I INPUT -m state --state NEW -p tcp --dport 80 -j ACCEPT
iptables -I INPUT -m state --state NEW -p tcp --dport 443 -j ACCEPT
iptables -I INPUT -m state --state NEW -p tcp --dport 9050 -j ACCEPT

Configure Tor

Open up /etc/tor/torrc in your favorite text editor, here we'll use nano

nano /etc/tor/torrc

Add the following lines to this file, then save (Ctrl+X) your changes

HiddenServiceDir /var/lib/tor/nginx-tor-service/
HiddenServicePort 80 127.0.0.1:80
HiddenServicePort 443 127.0.0.1:443

Enable & restart Tor

systemctl enable tor && systemctl restart tor

Configure NGINX

Find your Tor host name, then copy to your clipboard because you'll need it in the next step

cat /var/lib/tor/nginx-tor-service/hostname

Darknet web addresses are LONG and end in .onion so be sure to copy and paste this as you don't want to make a typo!
Here is an example: vyogq7jhrpclmqlazew3jtwp6esogmyvpx3pmmtvzjspezu3lzdr4iqd.onion

Open the /etc/nginx/sites-available/nginx-tor-service file (it doesn't exist yet, but we're creating it now)

nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/nginx-tor-service

Paste the following into it, however on line 7, after server_name you'll want to swap in your hostname (.onion) from the previous step

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

        root /var/www/html;

        server_name vyogq7jhrpclmqlazew3jtwp6esogmyvpx3pmmtvzjspezu3lzdr4iqd.onion;

        location / {
                    try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
        }
}

Create a symbolic link for your new configuration file to /etc/nginx/sites-enabled

ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/nginx-tor-service /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/

Remove the default config file in /etc/nginx/sites-enabled

rm /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default

Enable & restart NGINX

systemctl enable nginx & systemctl restart nginx

Add your content

You'll want to add your content to /var/www/html

Lets create an index.html file and add some simple content

nano /var/www/html/index.html

Copy and paste this and then save (Ctrl-X)

<html>
  <title>My First Darknet Website</title>
  <body bgcolor="#001100" text="#00FF00">
   <h1> hello darknet!</h1>
  </body>
</html>

If you don't already have the Tor Browser installed, grab it fromhttps://www.torproject.org/download/ and visit your .onion address to see your new darknet website in all it's anonymous glory

If you run into any trouble, hop into our discord server for more help.