[tor-talk] Trouble with 2.2.33-3 - Dirty workaround to avoid user local-tor in Linux

unknown unknown at pgpru.com
Thu Oct 13 20:32:00 UTC 2011


On Thu, 13 Oct 2011 20:28:52 +0100
Julian Yon <julian at yon.org.uk> wrote:
 
> OOI, what's your rationale for believing that your globally configured
> tor is more secure than the one in TBB?

1. Globally configured tor provided specially for Debian-Linux from http://deb.torproject.org . 
Signigicant part of Tor-network servers works with it. Manually configured without Vidallia.

2. System tor can be started or stopped only by root user
(or starting/stopping with system itself),
than it drops rights to group "debian-tor" -- special restricted group without associated shell.

Local Tor haves rights similar to most weak part of network connected system - Browser itself.

Potentialy malicious code executing from the browser
with user rights for "user-local-tor" reveal your IP.

You can hide within virtual machine or behind a Tor-router or make multi-users separated profiles
(with separated X-servers running in parallel) and use system Tor and 
transparent anonimyzing. Only with users rights (non root) an adversary can't reveal your 
IP directly. 

3. Global Tor may be configured with transparent firewalling to anonimyze any users traffic and
block any leakages. Not only from firefox, but for any user programm
 (leaving potentially identifying headers from that programm as is of course).

4. Global tor can be used with special restricted rules provided with SELinux or more broadly
rules provided for system daemons. 

In Linux system daemons more secure than user-running programms by design. 


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