[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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