[tor-bugs] #3354 [Vidalia]: tor's auto bridge default and unintended Vidalia side effects

[Tor Bug Tracker & Wiki]

#3354: tor's auto bridge default and unintended Vidalia side effects
---------------------+------------------------------------------------------
 Reporter:  erinn    |          Owner:  chiiph         
     Type:  defect   |         Status:  needs_review   
 Priority:  blocker  |      Milestone:  Vidalia: 0.2.13
Component:  Vidalia  |        Version:  Vidalia: 0.2.12
 Keywords:           |         Parent:                 
   Points:           |   Actualpoints:                 
---------------------+------------------------------------------------------
Changes (by arma):

 * cc: nickm, anonym (added)


Comment:

 Some thoughts:

 A) I wonder if there are Vidalia users out there who won't be upgrading
 their Vidalia when they move to the new Tor. E.g. don't some Ubuntus ship
 a Vidalia? In that case if they have listed bridges but not checked the
 box, the box will be surprisingly checked for them.

 B) I wonder if we should resolve this issue by backing the "feature" out
 of Tor, rather than by hacking around it in Vidalia. We sure didn't see
 this compatibility coming when we merged the feature. Also, if I want to
 tell Tor not to connect to the network until I do a setconf, the intuitive
 way to do that is not to setconf usebridges=1 while leaving bridges empty.

 C) Is the proposed Vidalia hack described in this ticket actually going to
 be compatible with the hack that the Tails people intend to do? I'm adding
 anonym to the cc list. I don't actually remember how they intended to
 deploy their hack. But if Vidalia auto unsets usebridges when it's set, no
 bridges are listed, and you click save, can the user accidentally bypass
 the Tails hack by changing something else in Tor's config, clicking save,
 and having Vidalia set usebridges to 0, thus allowing the user to start
 talking to the network?

-- 
Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/3354#comment:16>
Tor Bug Tracker & Wiki <https://trac.torproject.org/>
The Tor Project: anonymity online