[tor-dev] Tor Launcher settings UI feedback request

Adam Shostack adam at homeport.org
Sat May 4 15:31:51 UTC 2013


On Sat, May 04, 2013 at 02:09:33AM -0700, Mike Perry wrote:
| Thus spake Andrew Lewman (andrew at torproject.is):

| > One answer is the user shouldn't care. Tor Browser should automatically
| > loop through the various kinds of connectivity and just connect.
| > non-obfs bridges really should get wholly replaced with obfs bridges en
| > masse. 
| 
| However, we can't just probe everything because we don't want to probe
| for the public Tor network if you're censored. Best case: client IPs
| that are observed to probe various known Tor transports get targeted for
| more agressive censorship (the censor could just fail any unrecognizable
| traffic for N minutes after someone touches a public Tor IP, for
| example). Worst case: Targeted exploits are deployed that aim to subvert
| their computer in general, via Tor or otherwise.
|
| It's tempting to say this means we should have either just two bundles
| or perhaps just an "I'm censored" checkbox at startup.

I think this might be the right direction.  The person running Tor
knows two things: if they're worried about someone monitoring their
network right now, and how technical they are (and their desire to tweak
settings).

The UI could thus start:

"Should Tor do our best to figure out how to get connected, at risk of
drawing attention and response if you're on a heavily-monitored
network?"

[I need to be careful, I'll configure things (Recommended) ]

[ Probe the network (Riskier) ]  

[ I'm not sure, please help me decide]



More information about the tor-dev mailing list