[tor-talk] TBB Users: We Need New Directions on Torifying Software! Solution Required!

[cgp 3cg]

On 2 February 2012 17:52, Fabio Pietrosanti (naif)
<lists at infosecurity.ch> wrote:
> On 2/2/12 5:59 AM, ming at tormail.net wrote:
>> This is a repost of important question NOT solved last month.
>>
>> Please solve!
>>
>> This page:
>>
>> Torifying software HOWTO:
>> https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/doc/TorifyHOWTO
>>
>> is now, for most people using the Tor Browser Bundle, obsolete.
>>
>> We who use the TBB do not have torify, usewithtor, tor-resolve, socat,
>> torsocks, privoxy, polipo and other types of programs within the TBB
>> directory.

I guess it isn't the page which is obsolete, but rather that the
required tools aren't distributed with the TBB.  I quite happily use
torsocks with the TBB, and maintain a local installation. It may be
prudent to ask the question "what is the purpose of the TBB?" My
observation over several years is that The Tor Project has moved from
supplying software which required a reasonable amount of technical
knowledge to install, use and maintain, to a much simpler bundle that
pretty much anyone can download and use. The obvious trade-off is that
there are more limitations. You generally can't simplify things
without limiting scope. I would guess that we're in a transition phase
at the moment, and that when it is feasible (i.e. more manpower within
the Tor Project itself) we may see more functionality included.

Until then the page listed above is certainly useful for people with a
technical background to get up and running. For others then TAILS is
probably a good solution.

> We had a nice discussion on IRC about the idea of integrating into
> Vidalia a funcitonality to provide easy torrification functionalities
> for third party application.
>
> Immagine "a console" providing functionalities similar to FreeCAP (
> http://www.freecap.ru/eng/) to be available within Vidalia, so that a
> user just do:
> - Add Application
> - Select Application
> (Vidalia provide a view of the Application icons that, when started from
> here, will be socksified)
> - Click on that application from within Vidalia
> - That's it

Nice solution, but Windows only? Mind you, that may be enough to solve
the solution. Are there any stats on %age of TBB downloads for the
various operating systems?

> p.s. yes, someone will say that it may be dangerous to socksify
> application that leak IP address inside their protocol payload. We
> cannot prevent users from committing suicide, at maximum we can provide
> a warning that suiciding it's not always a good choice.

Something like TAILS in a VM using NAT helps to solve that problem, as
well as other problems such as email clients leaking local hostnames,
etc.

-C