Wasabi Wallet White Paper
TOR is crucial for achieving privacy during a Coinjoin operation. Wasabi has used TOR for all network activity,
including keep-alive and normal (non-Coinjoin) incoming and outgoing transactions, since 2019 as a
comprehensive privacy measure.
Using TOR, entry (guard) nodes are randomly selected. Wasabi servers are located on the TOR network, as
hidden services, so that Wasabi traffic never leaves the onion via an exit node, making its network activity
secure from man in the middle attacks.
In fact, when inspected in a network sniffer, such as WireShark, it was evident that there are only encrypted
TOR packets on the Wasabi network Typically, TOR uses TLS (Transport Layer Security, a cryptographic protocol
designed to provide communications security over a computer network) over TCP (Transmission Control
Protocol) as its transport
protocol. TCP and UDP (User
Datagram Protocol) ports
commonly affiliated with TOR
include 9001, 9030, 9040, 9050,
9051, and 9150.
In the below figure we can see an
example of a Wireshark trace of
Wasabi network traffic, in which
the inspected traffic protocol is
TLS v1.2, meaning only encrypted
traffic is presented, and one of
the ports (source or destination)
is 9001, indicating the use of TOR.
This usage of TOR also mitigates
the risk of tracking activity on the
blockchain in the event of a closure
of Wasabi by law enforcement, who
may seize logs to identify the illicit
transaction makers. Even if the
wasabiwallet.io site is taken down,
IP logs would be worthless as the
service uses TOR.
Figure 5 – A Wireshark trace of Wasabi network traffic. Only encrypted traffic
is displayed.
Even the download of the Wasabi application is available via an onion link, so a privacy-seeker could completely
masquerade his mere use of Wasabi wallet, let alone details of his crypto transactions.
Figure 6 - Wasabi web site. Onion link is visible on the bottom
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