Some months ago I had to get information on several thousands IPs. To get this information I had to use some sort of advanced WHOIS that gathers more information than classic WHOIS, including contact’s phone numbers, email addresses and more. One problem though: They were selling access to their API for some hundred dollars per 1000 queries but they gave 50 free queries per IP to try their service. I decided to find a way to run a script capable of changing IP address when the limit would be reached.

To do so, I decided to use TAILS (The Amnesic Incognito Live System) that allows natively to send all traffic, including from programs ran in the console, through the TOR network (The Onion Router). The only small challenge was to find a way to make the TOR client regenerate an IP in a script. I did not went the subtle way, I simply send a hang up signal to tor which restarts it with.

killall -HUP tor

Nothing new or groundbreaking but that was practical and efficient, I post it in case anyone is looking for it.