[tor-talk] Can we come up with a lighter, easier torified client apps ?

[John Case]

I don't want to lamely "bump" this posting, but I wonder if there is some 
flaw in my reasoning below ?  Is this not a use case that is interesting 
to folks ?

Thanks.


On Mon, 1 Oct 2012, John Case wrote:

> Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2012 04:10:44 +0000 (UTC)
> From: John Case <case at sdf.org>
> Reply-To: tor-talk at lists.torproject.org
> To: tor-talk at lists.torproject.org
> Subject: [tor-talk] Can we come up with a lighter,
>     easier torified client apps ?
> 
>
> 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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