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Sprey Processing Tor Access Verification — 2026-10-14

Result

Section titled “Result”

Verified by the operator on 2026-10-14: the onion address appeared in the BTCPay administration interface, opened successfully, and the operator confirmed that the service worked through it.

Use Tor Browser to access the onion URL. The .onion URL uses HTTP by design for Tor onion services; traffic inside Tor is encrypted between the client and the onion service, but this does not make a logged-in user anonymous to the application.

Change made

Section titled “Change made”

Before the change, sudo btcpay-fragments show reported these additional fragments:

btcpay-host
opt-add-cloudflared
opt-save-storage-xs

A backup was created before changing the configuration. The operator then ran:

Terminal window
sudo btcpay-fragments add opt-add-tor

The command completed and regenerated/applied the Docker Compose configuration. The resulting configuration reported:

  • opt-add-tor — enabled and listed in effectiveFragments;
  • opt-add-cloudflared — retained and active;
  • opt-add-tor-relay — not enabled;
  • existing opt-save-storage-xs and opt-mempoolfullrbf configuration retained;
  • BTCPay and Bitcoin-related containers started successfully.

Runtime checks

Section titled “Runtime checks”

The operator checked:

Terminal window
sudo docker logs --tail 80 tor
sudo docker logs --tail 80 tor-gen
sudo docker port tor
sudo docker inspect tor --format '{{json .NetworkSettings.Ports}}'
sudo docker inspect tor --format '{{json .NetworkSettings.Networks}}'
sudo btcpay-routes show

Observed results:

  • Tor reached Bootstrapped 100% (done).
  • The tor and tor-gen containers were running.
  • Docker showed {"9050/tcp":null,"9051/tcp":null}; Tor’s SOCKS and control ports were not published on host ports.
  • Tor was attached to Docker network generated_default.
  • btcpay-routes show returned empty optionalRoutes and enabledRoutes arrays.
  • The onion URL was then opened successfully, and the operator confirmed the service worked.

Security notes and boundaries

Section titled “Security notes and boundaries”
  • opt-add-tor is enabled on this reference deployment by default after this change.
  • opt-add-tor-relay remains disabled. Sprey is not running a Tor relay as part of this setup.
  • opt-add-cloudflared remains enabled; ordinary public and administrative ingress was not intentionally replaced by Tor.
  • Tor logs warned that SOCKS (0.0.0.0:9050) and ControlPort (0.0.0.0:9051) listen on all interfaces inside the Tor container. Since Docker did not publish these ports on the host, the logs alone do not prove public internet exposure. However, other containers attached to the same Docker network may be able to reach them; this remains a container-network security consideration.
  • UFW reported inactive. The operator stated that a provider/server-side firewall is in use. Docker port inspection showed no host-published ports for 9050/9051, but this should not be interpreted as a complete audit of all network paths.
  • The onion URL provides an alternate way to reach the service; it is not a promise of complete anonymity. Account authentication, browser configuration, application-level data, and user actions can still identify or correlate activity.
  • The operator confirmed that the onion endpoint and service worked. This record does not claim a separate end-to-end paid invoice was created and settled specifically through the onion URL.

Recheck after future changes

Section titled “Recheck after future changes”

After a major BTCPay/Docker update, server recovery, or fragment reconfiguration:

  1. Run sudo btcpay-fragments show and confirm opt-add-tor remains in effectiveFragments.
  2. Check docker ps and the Tor/Tor generator logs.
  3. Open the saved onion URL in Tor Browser.
  4. Verify https://pay.sprey.win still works through the normal Cloudflare Tunnel path.
  5. If the onion URL changes, update this record and the Sprey Processing product page after confirming the replacement address works.

Documentation rule: this is a live-configuration record based on the operator’s reported tests on 2026-10-14. It should be revised when the configuration or verification boundary changes.