Konqueror & SOCKS with Tor+Privoxy

Martin Fick mogulguy at yahoo.com
Sun Jan 20 08:07:02 UTC 2008


--- Ringo Kamens <2600denver at gmail.com> wrote:
> Using konqueror with tor can be dangerous. Since
> it's not just a browser (also a desktop system), it
> handles lots of different types of files such as
> videos etc. 

This does not sound like a very fair assessment of
konqueror, in fact I would almost qualify this as FUD.
 It sounds more like you don't really know if
konqueror is secure or not and are simply assuming the
worst about it.  (If you do know, please forgive me, I
am just pointing out that it sounds like you are
guessing.)

Video files a konqueror specific thing?  Come on, most
people are running firefox and windows.  These
inherently support video/flash/java/javascript much
better than most free linux distributions (which is
probably what konqueror is running on.)   So with that
logic a konqueror installation which does not have
proprietary video support is going to be less
susceptible to the types of vulnerabilities that you
are suggesting.  However, I agree that konqueror is
more extensible in some sense than most other
browsers, and this should seriously be considered when
making an evaluation.

I will not make a specific judgment that konqueror is
better or worse than firefox, but I certainly would
not rule it out so quickly.  The default install of
konqueror is much more tweakable than firefox at
turning certain things off such as java, javascript,
browser-id strings, adds, plugins, various file/MIME
type support... Many of those things are in fact off
by default until turned on!  The only thing that I am
aware of that konqueror cannot easily turn off for tor
usage is the HTTP_REFFERER string.

But, I will be happy to hear about any specific known
problems of using konqueror with tor.  If you know of
any, please let us know!  I use konqueror with tor,
but I do not have any actual need for anonymity, I
just think that it is fun. :)

-Martin



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