[tor-talk] TorBirdy: what are the known problems with 0.11?

Sukhbir Singh sukhbir.in at gmail.com
Wed Oct 3 19:02:36 UTC 2012


Hi,

antispam06 at sent.at:
>> We suggest using 0.0.13 - we've fixed a lot of bugs. It is pending
>> approval from Mozilla - so download it here:
>> https://www.torproject.org/dist/torbirdy/torbirdy-0.0.13.xpi
>> https://www.torproject.org/dist/torbirdy/torbirdy-0.0.13.xpi.asc
> 
> Thank you Jacob!
> 
> Still, are there known bugs? I'm about to start using it and it would
> ruin a few years of hidden identity for a mere archive backup.

Like we have said before, TorBirdy is still experimental. The timezone
is not leaked, as we are setting it to UTC. Only the time is being
leaked in the message-ID and date field.

>From the 0.0.13 release notes:

"General content anonymity caution note:

TorBirdy has known leaks in the Message-ID and in the Date header, we're
working on merging an upstream patch that will allow these leaks to be
closed. There are no known proxy leaks unless you use additional
extensions that do not respect the proxy settings of Thunderbird. If you
use GnuPG and Enigmail, we encourage you to use it with a local HTTP
proxy due to the issues mentioned[0] regarding GnuPG."

We have	 submitted the patches to Mozilla [0] and they are currently
being reviewed. Meanwhile, if you want to apply these patches yourself
to a custom Thunderbird build and then use TorBirdy [1], they will plug
the date and the message-ID leaks, as we remove the date header (and let
the MTA do the job of inserting that) and generate a time-independent
message-ID header.

[0] - https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=776397
[1] - https://github.com/ioerror/torbirdy/tree/master/patches

Is TorBirdy completely safe? Not yet, but we are getting there! Is it
safer than manually configuring Thunderbird (or other mail clients) for
use with Tor? Definitely yes. I think you should give TorBirdy a try and
see if it matches up to the kind of anonymity you expect it to and then
perhaps make the switch to use it with your main account.

Also, please use 0.0.13 and not 0.0.11, there are many important bug
fixes. 0.0.13 will be available from Mozilla add-ons soon (we have
submitted it for review) [2].

[2] - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/torbirdy/

-- 
Sukhbir


More information about the tor-talk mailing list