Yay to Bicycling! I don't think I've been on a bike in what.. 5 years? I didn't ride most of my last year in Vancouver, and it's been almost 5 since we left (eep!) Benjamin Mesing had been here in Montr al from Germany for a year and was selling his bike on his way back home a month or so ago. Today, I went out and bought a helmet, then hopped on the bike to take some library books back.<br /><br />The bike is in fairly rough shape. I'm a bit spoiled in that I'm used to buying new hybrid bikes, but as I work from home there's no point. In Vancouver I would travel up to 40km/day on my bike. I've taken it into the shop, and should get it back next friday. Handlebar alignment, rear wheel trueing, replace front tire, align all breaks, grease and tune gear cables, and generally hose the thing down with oil.<br /><br />On the walk home, I discovered that there's a fairly large Rachelle-B ry at Rachel and Berri. (I don't know why I never looked there...) All told, a very wonderful day.

Warning: Very long post ahead. You have been warned! What? Tor is a Free Software project (revised BSD license), developed by Roger Dingledine and Nick Mathewson, which creates an infrastructure for anonymous TCP communication. From the project website:

Tor is a toolset for a wide range of organizations and people that want to improve their safety and security on the Internet. Using Tor can help you anonymize web browsing and publishing, instant messaging, IRC, SSH, and other applications that use the TCP protocol. Tor also provides a platform on which software developers can build new applications with built-in anonymity, safety, and privacy features. Tor aims to defend against traffic analysis, a form of network surveillance that threatens personal anonymity and privacy, confidential business activities and relationships, and state security. Communications are bounced around a distributed network of servers called onion routers, protecting you from websites that build profiles of your interests, local eavesdroppers that read your data or learn what sites you visit, and even the onion routers themselves.

Tor also allows you to set up and/or use a so-called Tor hidden service, i.e., a server which offers some service (a website, ssh access, or similar) without revealing its IP to its users. Why? Why would you want to use Tor? Well, because you probably don't want anybody (neither state agencies, nor companies, nor "hackers", nor any other individuals or groups) to be able to record, analyze, and (ab)use information about your web browsing habits, or any other communication habits. For instance, you don't want Google to have a complete search-profile of you, which — even worse — might some day get in the hands of other parties. In the days of massive data retention you don't want all your electronic traces to be recorded, stored for ages, analyzed, and data-mined for dubious reasons and with even more dubious results and false conclusions drawn which might negatively affect you. If you're a human rights activist in China, you want anonymous communication. If you're a whistleblower, you want anonymous communication. The list is endless. For securing your communications, so that nobody is able to sniff your emails, your chat messages, your passwords, your private documents and conversations, you use encryption. For communicating anonymously you can use Tor. Combine both, and you have secure and anonymous communication. In case you're wondering whether criminals might abuse Tor, read the Tor Abuse FAQ. Short answer: yes, but if you're willing to break the law, you already have anonymity (open access points, stolen/prepaid mobile phones, etc.). You don't need Tor to do bad things if you're a criminal. If you're one of those horrible "oh, but I don't have anything to hide" guys, consider this: Say you have a drug/alcohol problem and want to visit an anti-drugs/anti-alcohol website or forum for help. Would you want the whole world, your neighbors, your co-workers, your boss, to know that, or would you rather want to keep that a secret? Say you have AIDS and want to get information on the web? Or, to make the example even more dramatic: Would you want some random guys to be able to watch you while you fuck your wife? No? So you have something to hide after all, right? My point is: Everyone has something to hide, even more, it is a basic human right to have the ability to hide something. It's called privacy. How? Tor implements a form of onion routing to, basically, push encrypted data through multiple Tor nodes (servers), before it reaches the final destination (e.g. a website). The result is that neither the website owner, nor a local eavesdropper, nor any single Tor server knows who requested that specific website, hence you are communicating anonymously. For more technical details, read the Tor overview and the Tor documentation pages. In order to use Tor, you have to install and run a local Tor client/daemon (this is not necessarily a Tor server!). On Debian, type apt-get install tor, on other systems you can get the respective binary packages or download the sources and compile Tor yourself. Usually Tor is used together with Privoxy, a configurable HTTP proxy which sanitizes your web-browsing experience by removing nasty banner ads, pop-ups, JavaScript, webbugs, cookies etc. etc. So: apt-get install privoxy. After installing and starting Tor and Privoxy, you can now configure your webbrowser to use Privoxy as an HTTP proxy (see below), and Privoxy will in turn use Tor to anonymize your communication if you add "forward-socks4a / localhost:9050 ." to your /etc/privoxy/config. Anonymizing various applications Most (but not all) of the following information is also covered in the very useful Torify HOWTO in the Tor wiki (I will add the missing information there, ASAP). As I'm pretty paranoid, I have checked every single of these configurations with Ethereal to ensure that the traffic is really anonymized. However, if you are paranoid, you shouldn't trust me, but rather test this stuff for yourself! Warning: DNS Leaks:
The biggest problem with many applications is that they leak DNS requests. That is, although they use Tor to anonymize the traffic, they first send a DNS request untorified in order to get the IP address of the target system. Then they communicate "anonymously" with that target. The problem: any eavesdropper with more than three brain cells can conclude what website you visited, if they see that you send a DNS request for rsf.org, followed by some "anonymous" Tor traffic. The solution: use Tor together with Privoxy, that prevents DNS leaks. Many non-HTTP-based applications are usually torified using a small tool called torify (e.g. by typing torify fetchmail), but often this approach has DNS leaking problems, see below.

• Webbrowser: Firefox, Mozilla, Galeon, Konqueror, ...:
  Most browsers can be torified by using Privoxy as an HTTP(S) proxy, i.e. using 127.0.0.1 as proxy host and 8118 as proxy port.
  For example, to torify Firefox go to Edit -> Preferences -> General -> Connection Settings -> Manual proxy configuration and configure:
  HTTP Proxy: 127.0.0.1 port 8118
SSL Proxy: 127.0.0.1 port 8118
FTP Proxy: 127.0.0.1 port 8118
SOCKS v5

  For Konqueror, go to Settings -> Configure Konqueror -> Proxy -> Manually Specify the proxy settings -> Setup and configure:
  HTTP Proxy: 127.0.0.1 port 8118
HTTPS Proxy: 127.0.0.1 port 8118
FTP Proxy: 127.0.0.1 port 8118

  Warning: Although Privoxy doesn't support FTP, you should configure the browser to use Tor + Privoxy for FTP. By doing that, you get an error message when you try to access ftp:// URLs, but at least you don't send untorified traffic without noticing.
  Warning: Firefox's "Live Bookmarks" (RSS feeds) are a problem if you switch from a torified to an untorified state sometimes (by switching or enabling/disabling the proxy). Firefox periodically requests all the feeds you're subscribed to. If you turn off Tor + Privoxy usage, they will be requested non-anonymously, and you won't even notice it! Solution: remove all "Live Bookmarks", or never switch to untorified browsing.
• HTTP-based tools: lynx, links, w3m, wget, curl, ...:
  Most other HTTP tools, such as wget, can be torified by setting the respective values for the http_proxy and HTTP_PROXY environment variables. Applications which don't honor http_proxy probably have a configuration option to set the HTTP proxy.
  Add this to your ~/.bashrc or similar config-file:
  http_proxy=http://127.0.0.1:8118/
HTTP_PROXY=$http_proxy
export http_proxy HTTP_PROXY

  Warning: links is a notable exception here. It does not honor the http_proxy environment variable! However, you can add http_proxy 127.0.0.1:8118 to your /etc/links.cfg and/or to your ~/.links/links.cfg. Or go to Setup -> Network Options and do the same there. Or use the -http-proxy 127.0.0.1:8118 command line option.
• Instant Messaging: Gaim:
  Go to Preferences -> Network -> Proxy and configure this:
  Proxy type: Socks 5
Host: 127.0.0.1
Port: 9050

  Gaim doesn't seem to leak DNS requests.
• Debian: Apt:
  Setting http_proxy is enough, as apt-get honors the http_proxy environment variable. But you can also add this line to your /etc/apt/apt-conf:
  Acquire::http::Proxy "http://127.0.0.1:8118/";

  apt-get doesn't seem to leak DNS requests.
  Warning: This will only work for deb/deb-src lines in /etc/apt/sources.list which use HTTP, because Privoxy does not support FTP.
• RSS-Reader: Akregator:
  Which RSS feeds you are reading tells quite a lot about you, and it's probably an information some people or organizations would be very interested in, I imagine. So anonymizing your feed-reader is quite important, IMHO. Akregator (a KDE RSS-reader application) uses Konqueror internally, so if you have set Konqueror to use Tor + Privoxy as HTTP-proxy, Akregator is safe, too.
  Akregator doesn't seem to leak DNS requests.
• Podcast Client: iPodder/Juice:
  Got to File -> Preferences -> Network settings and configure this:
  Use a proxy server: enable
Address: http://127.0.0.1
Port: 8118

  iPodder/Juice doesn't seem to leak DNS requests.
• Secure login: ssh:
  In order to torify all your ssh communications (ssh, slogin, sftp, etc.), edit your /etc/ssh/ssh_config and/or ~/.ssh/config and add:
  Host *
ProxyCommand socat STDIO SOCKS4A:127.0.0.1:%h:%p,socksport=9050

  This requires socat, so: apt-get install socat.
  ssh doesn't seem to leak DNS requests.
  Warning: Simply using torify ssh does not suffice, it leaks DNS requests!
• Email: fetchmail:
  Properly torifying fetchmail is pretty ugly. Basically, torify fetchmail should be enough (one would think), but that leaks DNS requests! All tips offered in the Torify HOWTO suffer from this problem. The ideal solution would be to use tor-resolve (a small utility which resolves DNS requests via the Tor network, and hence anonymously) before fetching the emails, but I haven't found a good and simple solution for that. What I do right now is to hardcode IP addresses in my ~/.fetchmailrc config-file and then use torify fetchmail, which doesn't leak DNS requests. However, it leads to some ugly "fetchmail: Server CommonName mismatch: foo.bar.com != xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx" warnings.
  I always start fetchmail manually, often by clicking an icon in my IceWM toolbar. So I use the following line in my ~/.icewm/toolbar config-file:
  prog Fetchmail fetchmail xterm -e torify fetchmail

  Sometimes I invoke fetchmail from the command-line, too, so I have this alias in my ~/.bashrc:
  alias fetchmail='torify fetchmail'
Warning: Just for the record: torify fetchmail alone (i.e. used with hostnames in ~/.fetchmailrc) does not suffice, it leaks DNS requests!
• IRC: XChat:
  Go to Settings-> Preferences -> Network -> Network setup -> Proxy server and configure:
  Hostname: 127.0.0.1
Port: 9050
Type: Socks5

  Then make sure you check the "Use a proxy server" checkbox in the preferences dialog of the IRC server you want to use.
  XChat doesn't leak DNS requests.

You might also want to check out toraliases, a small shell script you can source from your ~/.bashrc file. It defines some functions and aliases which transparently direct the traffic of some (but not all!) programs through Tor. Applications which cannot easily be torified Anything not using TCP usually cannot be torified, as Tor only works for TCP.

• Non-TCP traffic from tools like ping, host, dig, nslookup, nmap, traceroute and lots more: as Tor only supports TCP, you're out of luck. However, you can safely use web-frontends such as dnsstuff.com over Tor + Privoxy (if they don't block Tor users, that is).
• whois: Although torify whois google.com leaks the DNS request for the whois-server (in this case whois.crsnic.net), it doesn't seem to leak the host you wanted to lookup. Can somebody confirm this? The safer method is to use a web-frontend, though.
• FTP: Although torify ncftp works, it leaks DNS requests! I haven't yet found a way to fix this (help is appreciated!). I also tried a few other FTP clients, without luck.
• GnuPG: Using gpg anonymously should work by using a proper http_proxy environment variable and by using a hidden Tor server as keyserver.
  Add this to your ~/.gnupg/gpg.conf:
  keyserver x-hkp://yod73zr3y6wnm2sw.onion
keyserver-options honor-http-proxy broken-http-proxy

  This works in theory. However, I noticed a problem: while gpg --recv-keys seems to work fine, gpg --refresh-keys leaks DNS requests! It seems GnuPG hard-codes the keyserver to keyserver.pgp.com in that case and leaks the DNS request for this domain name.
• Sending email (SMTP): Not sure how to do this with Tor. Many Tor nodes block SMTP per default. A better solution is probably Mixmaster/Mixminion.
• CVS, svn, Bittorrent/Azureus (untested HOWTO), usenet clients (pan, slrn), xmms: TODO. Haven't checked, yet.

Pitfalls to be aware of

• Rule #1: Don't spoil your anonymity by being stupid!
• IRC: Don't use nicks which hint at you, such as your real name, real-life nickname, acronyms which are known to "belong" to you or identify you. Don't use things like DCC which might reveal your real IP or real information about you. Disable all possibly "leaky" features/commands such as CTCP, VERSION requests, automatically accepting files from other IRC users, etc. etc.
• Don't accidentally access Tor hidden server URLs in an untorified browser. For example, if you would try to access the fictitious hidden server abc1234.onion, this request would travel over the net unencrypted and untorified. An eavesdropper could sniff that, enable Tor on his computer, go to abc1234.onion, and would know what you wanted to look at.
• Double-check that all applications you use don't leak DNS requests.
• Do not only configure your ~/.foobarrc config-files but also the config-files in /etc. Otherwise you might eventually use wget, ssh, lynx or other tools as root (instead of your normal, non-privileged user account) resulting in untorified traffic!
• Disable all "check for updates automatically", "notify upon new release" and similar "phoning home" features in all your applications. Most such features are probably not Tor-safe, i.e. will send/receive untorified traffic. Some candidates are Firefox, Adobe Acrobat reader, Gaim, and others.
• Never, never, think that Tor encrypts your traffic! It does not! The person who runs a Tor exit node can easily sniff all plain-text traffic! Tor only anonymizes your traffic, but it can still be sniffed plain-text at the beginning and at the end of the onion route! So don't do any HTTP-auth, or plain-text password sending for e.g. POP3, telnet, and so on. Always use encryption in addition to Tor!
• In general, spread only a minimum of information. Disable referrer sending (e.g. using Privoxy), disable cookies, kill webbugs (Privoxy), and so on.
• Watch your language, especially in public forums or IRC. A linguist can probably easily figure out which country/region you're from if you speak/write broken English or use certain idioms or false friends. This might or might not be a problem for you, but it's something you should bear in mind.
• If you're extra paranoid, you could set up your firewall to block all outgoing DNS traffic and force all applications to use Tor to resolve names. You could probably also block all outgoing non-Tor traffic...
• Another good idea is probably carrying an Anonym.OS LiveCD with you, so you can have a (more) anonymous communication wherever you go.

More information More information is available in the Tor documentation, the Tor wiki, and especially in the Tor FAQ. In addition, there's an IRC channel on Freenode (#tor), some slides and a video (torrent) about Tor you might find interesting. If you would like to help, you can run a Tor server, donate some money, or volunteer to do other things (code, debug, document, translate, and more). That's it for now. I'm very grateful for comments and suggestions, especially for hints on how to anonymize more applications. Also, if you notice any dumb mistakes I made, please leave a comment. Update 2006-03-07: Fixed typos, added link to the toraliases project (thanks Benjamin Schieder).

... but sometimes you just can't hold on.

Mike Hearn, author of the wonderful autopackage installation software - the one that's breaking your distribution by overwriting files installed by the package manager - has been entertaining me these days. After claiming to have "designed a versioning scheme" that he compared to ELF, he started a flamewar about how Debian likes to break upstream's software - without any relevant example so far. Interestingly, this thread also showed there are still some people to believe D.J. Bernstein's teachings can be useful.

His latest blog entry really made my day. After complaining about people not using autopackage enough (guess why), he started again to claim Debian is breaking upstream's software, with finally one example: the user-agent in Xulrunner being broken. A bug in the first public release of the package. Just like we didn't fix bugs...

Usually I try not to get involved in the mind-numbingly pointless desktop wars, but Benjamin produces one of the most flawed arguments I can remember having seen.

Fair enough that you want to use the keyboard. I'm much quicker on the keyboard than on the mouse, and presumably so are you. After a long time using computers, and CLIs in particular, this is no surprise.

Most people are not this way. I can assure you that my mother is not this way, and prefers the comfort of the mouse whne navigating around. I don't see what your assertion that 'stating that a typical Gnome user does not want keyboard is simply false' is grounded in. Have you done studies? Do you know the exact breakdown of geeks vs normal people using GNOME? Remember that it's not just for the cool kids who can write their own code anymore -- I know plenty of 'normal' people using Linux now, typically with a GNOME-based desktop.

But, it's 'but don't say it is for users sake' that really throws me. Why do you think they do it? For fun? To see how many people bitch on blogs about it when they do it? Because they hate people and this is the best practical way to take out their anger on the world? They've done studies on their userbase (e.g. the Sun usability study), and they're doing what they believe is best. This is true of every desktop: they simply do what they believe will produce the best desktop for their userbase. Sometimes this results in decisions which people think are bad. Fine then, so be it. This is what's happened here, as opposed to your suggestion of a deep-seated hate for all their users, individually and collectively, or something.

Your claim to be a normal user is simply false. I can't claim the same thing. A good rule of thumb is that if you're capable of writing the application you're using, then you're not a normal user. In some cases, this means you're not its target userbase (not always: this holds more true for, say, Evolution, than mutt).

If you have truly constructive suggestions (not using the words 'crap' and 'simply false'), then provide feedback to the developers through the appropriate channels. If you don't think GNOME is for you, try some of the many excellent other desktops (KDE, XFce, GNUstep, whatever else is around). If you like GNOME otherwise and would like to make a concrete improvement, then submit patches.

Daniel Burrows's point was simple: you are probably not GNOME's target audience (this is not specific to benj; if you are reading my blog, then odds are you aren't GNOME's target audience). So, assertions that they've got it all wrong and they should listen to you on matters of interface design aren't really going to be helpful, because you just aren't the primary target market.

PS: Just because you write it in Latin, doesn't make someone else's argument a logical fallacy.
PPS: If you're still having trouble wrestling with this entry, imagine instead someone bitching about Debian being crap because they don't include the proprietary Flash plugin, a bunch of closed-source games, VMware, etc. That's not what Debian's about. Make sense now?

Daniel, I'm afraid you are guilty of Argumentum ad populum. I would really like to see those millions of Gnome users confused by this small white square called a GtkTextEntry that every gnome zealot invokes when asked why keyboard support disappeared from a lot of Gnome features. What is funny is that the very Gnome Human Interface Guidelines ask not to [...] Limit Your User Base and that is exactly what the Gnome developers do. Stating that a typical Gnome user does not want keyboard is simply false. My own experience let me think a substantial part of Gnome users want both (and the Ctrl-L thingy does not count as keyboard support, it is just crap). I would perfectly understand Gnome developers prefer it this way, after all it is their choice. But don't say it is for users sake. And be prepared to loose many users with unique needs.

Benjamin Mako Hill writes:

To Boston Debianistas

It's simple really: Get ready to show those New Yorkers that despite the fact that our subways are clean, look like toys and close at midnight, our bars close at two, our milkshakes are in no way actually milkshakes and our international airport is comparatively tiny, we can still have a way better Debian Social Scene.

Yeah baby. Boston Debian is heating up. Come for a visit and bring your whiskey (or fruity drinks for Ari) and your GPG key.