[tor-dev] Making and distributing custom TBB with a new "home-page"

[Fabio Pietrosanti (naif)]

Hi all,

for a very interesting deployment of GlobaLeaks in the are of Human
Rights defense, we will have the need to distribute a customized Tor
Browser Bundle to the sources.

The "customization" requirement is simple: Have as a default home-page
the GlobaLeaks .onion site .

We must go that way because:
- the "target country" where the sources are cannot download TBB due to
torproject.org being censored
- the sources are absolutely non-technologically savy (average 60yo
lawyers doing human rights defense)

The website where there will be the leaking instructions and the
download of such custom TBB will be "privately distributed" trough word
of mouth and trusted connections, with no public solicitation.

So we must do some piece of software that will:
- Download TBB in specific languages (2-3 specific languages) for each
platform
- Unpack TBB (in all formats for Windows, OSX, Linux)
- Apply the customization (set the home-page, with slightly different
parameters depending on the language)
- Check periodically if a new version is available and, in that case,
re-execute the process described above to release updated version of TBB

The questions are:
a) Which is a simple/stable/resilient way to check which is the latest
version of TBB
b) Does someone have already done that kind of customization-process?
c) Can everything be done from Linux, like a cron-job, in a fully
automatic way?
d) Which other customization / ideas / concern are there regarding this
process?

I'd personally love if the customization would enable me to completely
disable the "URL Bar" and all of the Browser Button in order to make it
useful only to use it as a console to send information being a source,
without the possibility to go browse other sites.

Waiting for comments before writing some quick specs

-- 
Fabio Pietrosanti (naif)
HERMES - Center for Transparency and Digital Human Rights
http://logioshermes.org - http://globaleaks.org - http://tor2web.org