Tor Telnet control gives Authentication Required error on any command

Question

I am trying to connect to a running instance of Tor with the Tor Control (TC) Protocol using Telnet on the ControlPort (specified in the torrc file) on Windows.

Whenever I connect using Windows's own implementation of Telnet or with PuTTY, I just receive an empty prompt. Knowing that TC only allows the AUTHENTICATE "[pass]", PROTOCOLINFO, or QUIT commands, I enter one of those. No matter which command I enter, I receive the error 514 Authentication Required.

So, Tor is not letting me authenticate and thus I cannot control Tor with Telnet commands. What could I be doing wrong?

Answer 1

• First you must set the ControlPort in your torrc file like this:

  ControlPort 9051
  

• Then restart Tor or Vidalia and set the authentification to None in Preferences → Advanced

• Then from the command line in Windows type:

  telnet localhost 9051
  

  (it seems nothing happens and the screen remains black)

• Type: authenticate "" (also if you did not see anything) and you'll see 250 OK.

Now you can send tor commands like signal newnym.

Answer 2

It appears that, in PuTTY at least, I have to specify a Raw connection instead of a Telnet connection. But, using telnet localhost 9051 in the Windows prompt now gives me a 250 OK on authenticate "[pass]", though it doesn't print the authenticate command as I type it.