Integration of YaCy with TorBrowser

[phabricator-migrator]

Information

ID: 291
PHID: PHID-TASK-vh5co2dzqs3wkaqb24v2
Author: HulaHoop
Status at Migration Time: resolved
Priority at Migration Time: Wishlist

Description

The integration of YaCy with TorBrowser prevents fingerprinting while users take advantage of the censorship resistant p2p search engine.

Have wrapper scripts for yacy and privoxy settings that make them usable with Tor using the follwing instructions: Whonix Forum

Some ideas:

Request of environment variable to allow seamless use of yacy if its installed so it can sit between TBB and the GW Tor. The idea is yacy will sit side by side with the normal TBB path of TBB > Tor > Internet and take reuqests only when explicitly used rather than force everything though itself.

See if there is a way to have custom search providers in TorBrowser and include a link to a would-be yacy search portal at 127.0.0.1 that only works if the user opts to install it.

Add a YaCy searchbox in the Whonix TBB custom homepage

Temporarily document the forum post in the wiki page:

YaCy Decentralized Search Engine

Comments

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HulaHoop

2015-06-05 16:11:15 UTC

I don’t think shipping YaCy by default is a good idea because it would need openjdk - a massive dependency. Documenting manual installation is enough. The process is easy enough anyhow. YaCy is configured to restart with the system out of the box.

• Should we ship YaCy’s Debian apt repo list - but comment it out and leave it up to the user to enable?

• The only problem I see is TBB refusing to recognize localhost addresses which makes YaCy not usable in TBB. That’s a serious problem because of fingerprinting. Can this be fixed?

• PaX exceptions for java need to be configured when we use it.

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Patrick

2015-06-05 18:12:11 UTC

! In T291#5231, @HulaHoop wrote:
I don’t think shipping YaCy by default is a good idea because it would need openjdk - a massive dependency.

Yes.

Documenting manual installation is enough.

Ok.

• Should we ship YaCy’s Debian apt repo list - but comment it out and leave it up to the user to enable?

Sounds good, we can preconfigure all so only a very few easy steps would be required to actually enable it.

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• The only problem I see is TBB refusing to recognize localhost addresses which makes YaCy not usable in TBB. That’s a serious problem because of fingerprinting. Can this be fixed?

Possibly, but unrealistic. Source:

connections to 127.0.0.1 no longer possible (#11493) · Issues · Legacy / Trac · GitLab

me:
Can you allow connections to 127.0.0.1 will still defeating fingerprinting issues (#10419) please?
gk:
This involves fixing ​https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=354493 which is not so easy…

Not sure how useful that answer is.

(References are also listed here: Tor Browser Essentials)

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Anything is possible, but $someone would have to create a package like anon-ws-yacy.

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HulaHoop

2015-06-06 00:53:29 UTC

There’s a workaround but at cost of less fingerprinting defense: Can requests to 127.0.0.1 be used to fingerprint the browser? (#10419) · Issues · Legacy / Trac · GitLab

Is it worth it?

Or maybe we can use something like rinetd somehow for a safer solution.

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Patrick

2015-06-06 01:47:03 UTC

! In T291#5255, @HulaHoop wrote:
There’s a workaround but at cost of less fingerprinting defense: Can requests to 127.0.0.1 be used to fingerprint the browser? (#10419) · Issues · Legacy / Trac · GitLab

Is it worth it?

Not a great solution imho. It could be added to documentation Tor Browser Essentials if you want. But a vague, not well described risk, I don’t know. Not great. Separate ticket if you want.

Or maybe we can use something like rinetd somehow for a safer solution.

Probably not. Created T343 for it.

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HulaHoop

2015-06-06 17:31:30 UTC

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HulaHoop

2015-06-06 17:30:53 UTC

Workaround documented. Its not great but acceptable than using Iceweasel.

I don’t know if this applies to I2P or just its management interface -if it does I’ll put it under the general TBB page.

However for just accessing management interfaces locally, Iceweasel is fine

Closing this.