Librerouter project

General Tor and Anonymity Talk
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Anything useful here?

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Good day,

Looked over their entire documentation, including the “non technical” and “GUI” drafts and I have to say that I’m not certain. While it all sounds rather ambitious and interesting, as far as I can tell, there is little of substance here at the moment. Maybe I’ve overlooked it, but as far as I can tell they are trying to combine some ideas we see in Whonix (i.e. using an “in between VM” as a gateway to connect to a security focused network) with the ability of using I2P and Tor at the same time via the same browser, as well as the ability to specifically turn on and off certain methods of tracking evasion somehow on a gateway level. Now, if the “Workstation-Part” would be based on a Linux distribution like Whonix is, the first idea, i.e. specifically linking over Tor or I2P as needed based on how a URL’s top-level-domain ends (.onion vs .i2p) might be possible after heavily modifying the TBB and some networking rules when it comes to things like hidden services, however when using Windows “inside” said “Workstation” as they propose this won’t be as easy.

Adding to that, I may miss something here, but if we consider that most tracking from bigger companies like Alphabet, Facebook, etc. happens over encrypted channels either way (SSL) the only way for them to block tracking on a gateway level, would be to bundle the whole thing with their own (insecure) certificates so they’d be able to manually “open” every encrypted package, look in it, and “take out” what has been disabled by the user. This approach to “security”, earlier seen by Lenovo with their " accidental MitM attacks" or some makers of Anti-Virus-Software (Avast, ESET, Kaspersky, etc) is anything but a good idea when it comes to security.

Adding to the fact that it would be a rather bad idea, if that was their approach to “filtering out” tracking methods on a gateway-level, this kind of “protection/MitM-attack” has, as far as I can tell, never been executed over more than one system, meaning, if that is their approach, that the traffic would be fully exposed between “Workstation” and “Gateway” as their certificate would have to decrypt everything on the machine the process is run on.

Now, if that is their approach, I can’t think of using their concept in good conscience. If it isn’t, then first of all, I’m sorry for making the claims I did and secondly, it would be great of them to explain how they will be able to achieve what they promise, i.e. “security settings” on a gateway level. As far as I can tell, they didn’t explain it in their current documentation, which is sad since, if they’ve found a way arround the “MitM approach” favoured by producers of Anti-Virus-Software arround the world, they’d definitely receive my admiration.

Have a nice day,

Ego

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TL;DR

Fuck. After spending half an hour going over everything wrong in their intro I realized its a prank. Its like they took everything we do and did the opposite. Apt install script is a laughable mess - pings Google DNS, fetches keys using extremely short fingerprints, forces unauthenticated apt package installs.

Quite a few things here:

  • Putting Windows 10 behind a anonymizing router and calling it privacy is reckless and gives a false sense of security. For one thing, Windows 10 snoops on keystroke dynamics as part of its spy suite which is enough to identify anyone behind Tor.

  • Using WiFi for the links of physical isolation is very dangerous as an untrusted workstation (running Windows 10) automatically scans and sends WiFi SSIDs in sight which is enough to identify the physical whereabouts of the user. Also an attacker with root can bypass the anonymous router and send back signals in the clear via another unsecured WiFi network. Physical WSs must have no WiFi hardware attached.

  • The anonymous router will be capable of resolving addresses of a variety of anonymous networks. Now that’s interesting and potentially a good thing to borrow but it must be put in the Workstation. Resolving things on the GW is a big security hole. Meanwhile putting WebRTC on the GW is… WTF.

  • Includes a bunch of apps on the gateway that can be used to connect in the clear. Making anonymity optional.

  • Puts Squid for .domain redirection and ad scrubbing. Big no-no becuase it makes browsers fingerprintable.

  • Includes everything and the kitchen sink. IDS, caching proxies, content filtering (that’s censorship), AV scanning, reverse proxies

  • Calling Tor -> TOR

  • Nice diagrams

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