[tbb-bugs] #26341 [Applications/Tor Browser]: Enable setting torbutton.use_nontor_proxy with an environment variable

Tor Bug Tracker & Wiki blackhole at torproject.org
Fri Jun 15 01:45:19 UTC 2018


#26341: Enable setting torbutton.use_nontor_proxy with an environment variable
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 Reporter:  eyedeekay                 |          Owner:  tbb-team
     Type:  enhancement               |         Status:  needs_information
 Priority:  Low                       |      Milestone:
Component:  Applications/Tor Browser  |        Version:
 Severity:  Trivial                   |     Resolution:
 Keywords:  tbb-torbutton             |  Actual Points:
Parent ID:                            |         Points:
 Reviewer:                            |        Sponsor:
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Comment (by eyedeekay):

 Thanks for getting back to me. I didn't mean to imply that I would leave
 Tor Project strings and images in place, I understand how that
 misunderstanding arose and want to make sure that you know before anything
 I do reaches any upstream projects or distributions, I promise to remove
 misleading branding. Anything on my personal github should be considered a
 prototype or working copy. What I meant was that I would prefer to not
 introduce any new code if I could reasonably help it. On that subject, I
 had thought that the existing environment variables would be adequate to
 accomplish the removal of Tor Project markings, however, upon closer
 examination, this isn't the case. I'm going to put in some time this
 weekend to figure out exactly what I would need to do to accomplish this
 more thoroughly. Besides that, in Whonix, the Tor Browser is downloaded
 and started by two scripts, in the packages tb-updater and tb-starter.
 These are configured using environment variables that affect the settings
 in the Tor Browser Bundle at runtime. That way they can guarantee that the
 settings are not accidentally overwritten by an update, As they are stored
 outside the TBB itself and set at runtime, and they don't have to ship a
 different prefs.js. I had actually taken the prefs.js approach in a
 previous attempt to produce an i2p browser.

 As for domain isolation, i2p doesn't really provide a way to do it the way
 TBB does it. I think I remember reading somewhere, long ago, that the
 argument is that it isn't the core i2p router's job to do that, it should
 be done by an application that talks to the i2p API's(I am working on such
 an application). What it does instead is rotates the destination used for
 the http proxy, refreshing the destination when the router is restarted or
 after a configurable amount of idle time. It's obviously very simple to
 link people's browsing behavior across multiple eepSites if you own
 multiple eepSites, and it's also very easy to spin up multiple eepSites
 from anywhere. I can't speak for anyone else but the way I think about it
 is that, at least on i2p, I am the same person in every single browser
 tab. I'd personally like things to be more automatic, but I don't think
 this is an unreasonable mental model, as long I keep my promise to remove
 all TPO related labeling and provide adequate documentation. But in order
 to follow a path where the default i2p http proxy is used, I know this is
 the reason use_nontor_proxy must be set.

 So I shall reconsider my approach and get back to you.

--
Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/26341#comment:2>
Tor Bug Tracker & Wiki <https://trac.torproject.org/>
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