[tor-talk] AORTA - others tried it?

grarpamp grarpamp at gmail.com
Fri Feb 2 02:59:24 UTC 2018


On Thu, Feb 1, 2018 at 7:20 PM,  <alen.alen at powdermail.com> wrote:
> https://hoevenstein.nl/aorta-a-transparent-tor-proxy-for-linux-programs

> How does it work?

The underlying tech is kernel facilities and filters like pf / ipfw / nftables.

For Linux see...
https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Cgroups
https://www.spinics.net/lists/netdev/msg264727.html

> **Did anyone else check out AORTA or review its code?

One way for non coders to review it is to observe if the rulesets
it creates meets comprehensive expectations and makes sense.

You'd need to read the manpages for the filter in question.

> Why is it supposed to work under more situations?

Kernel packet filters have rule over userland software / libraries / users.

Example:
If you compile tor or telnet statically, you can't torsocks them,
but you can aorta them.

Aorta won't work unless you're running a supported Linux kernel.

Torsocks is more platform independant so it works on BSD's.

Or users can write similar packet rules on their BSD boxes
to effectively do what aorta does on Linux.

Whonix and various VM solutions do similar things.

> Also wonder, what exactly the software does when testing if "Tor handles all
> Internet traffic"?

Tries to resolve and connect to an onion, prints results, exit on fail.

> What are the consequences of using -c to disable the test?

Runs your app without such test first.

Something like that, read the above aorta link and aorta.c for specifics.


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