[Solved] Custom workstation: Tor-over-Tor

massy · April 18, 2014, 11:46am

Thanks to Patrick and contributors for this super project.

I would like to use a custom Workstation (an Ubuntu-derivative) with the Whonix Gateway. I have read the instructions for “Other Operating Systems”. Stream Isolation should not be an issue, since the only network-facing application that will be used in this Workstation is TorBrowser. I have no problems with setting a random clock skew on the Workstation. My main question, then, concerns the specific issue of preventing Tor-over-Tor in the custom Workstation.

I am comfortable with the instructions given at:

Is this sufficient, to prevent Tor-over-Tor while using TBB (again: this is the only network application that will be used in the workstatiion)? (My uncertainty refers to the references to the implementation of “rinetd” in the Design documentation, and whether this safeguard is something that I ought to try to emulate in the custom Workstation)

Thanks in advance, for any assistance/suggestions…

Patrick · April 18, 2014, 12:15pm

When the TOR_SKIP_LAUNCH environment variable is correctly used, this is sufficient to prevent starting Tor that comes with TBB. In doubt check “ps aux” and to be sure, you can delete the tor binary from the TBB package.

Also apt-get needs to connect to the internet.

I don’t know what other applications connect to the internet in a default Ubuntu installation.