[tor-talk] Can we come up with a lighter, easier torified client apps ?
John Case
case at SDF.ORG
Mon Oct 1 04:10:44 UTC 2012
My only use for tor is to set up plain old interactive ssh logins.
If I want to do this, I need to install the full blown tor package, and
run tor (and quality assure it, sanity check my local installation,
perform regular maintenance, etc.) just so I can run ssh with a netcat
proxy command pointing back to my own tor instance blah blah blah.
Ok, fine. I've done it for years.
But sometimes I just need to make a quick connection from a system that I
don't have time, or authority, to do major package installation and run
daemons, etc. What I would really love is:
cd /usr/ports/net/torssh
make install ; rehash
torssh user at host.com
But this brings up a larger question ... are there ANY standalone end user
applications that have tor built into them ? or at least, enough of tor
to simply connect and run connections over tor ?
So never mind that ssh is my particular need - think of any simple
application: fetch, wget, telnet, sftp, whatever ... it would really,
really be nice if I could just fire off a 'fetch' command over tor without
doing major software installation (and the associated QA, maintenance,
research, etc.) with it.
Yes, I am aware of ancillary issues, like DNS leaks. But if you're
packaging up the particular application as "torssh" or "torfetch" then
presumably you package it up without the leaks, which in my opinion is
much safer than providing a general "torify" mechanism and hoping that
people figure out the leak characteristics of their particular app - which
is not easy, as evidenced by the little 'nc' table that is shown on the
TorifyHOWTO wiki page ...
Comments ? Has this ever been done with any particular app ? Is there a
fundamental flaw in wanting this ?
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