iMac Pr0n Blog - Tor & Privoxy & Vidalia

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Tor & Privoxy & Vidalia

Monday, January 8, 2007

# I installed the Tor & Privoxy & Vidalia bundle version 0.1.1.26. Tor is The Onion Router, a mechanism for browsing the web anonymously through a network of proxy servers, each of which pulls a layer of encryption off of outgoing packets before sending them on to the next server in the chain, then wraps a layer of encryption around the return packets (or something like that, I haven't actually read the spec). Privoxy is a web proxy that runs on your machine, filters browser requests and web page data and sends everything through Tor. Vidalia is an OSX user interface for the Tor server. It starts Tor, and lets you configure it.

All the defaults worked fine for me, and, contrary to the installer's warning, Privoxy was started on install. You need to configure your browser to use the proxy. The easiest way to do this, for Firefox, is the Torbutton extension, which gives a single click, on "Tor Disabled" or "Tor Enabled" in the bottom-right-hand corner of its window, to toggle Firefox' usage of Tor on or off.

Tor Disabled

There's a whole other web of .onion anonymous web servers out there that can only be accessed with Tor (the Hidden Wiki is a good starting point), and Tor protects your privacy for the rest of the web, too. The only drawback is that it slows you down, since your packets often travel across the pond and back. Tor needs more volunteers to run servers. Your Mac, maybe?

To use Tor with Safari, you need to configure its proxy. Here's the Firefox proxy dialog from the "Preferences..." dialog's "Advanced" tab, after enabling the proxy with Torbutton and clicking the connection "Settings..." button:

Firefox Proxies

And here's the "Proxies" screen for my "Built-in Ethernet" network interface in the "System Preferences..." "Network" component. The AirPort interface has a similar screen. Copy the Firefox settings above to the three checked proxies below.

Uncheck the check boxes next to "Web Proxy (HTTP)", "Secure Web Proxy (HTTPS)", and "SOCKS Proxy" to stop using Tor. Leaping Bytes' Proxy On/Off Dashboard widget makes toggling the proxies easy. You should uncheck the boxes in the network system preferences screen before toggling them with Proxy On/Off (may not be necessary, but works for me).

Proxy On/Off

# ipodjuice.com sells iPod batteries. Apple wanted $71 to replace the battery on my iPod, by replacing the entire iPod, I think. ipodjuice.com wants $29, $34, or $39, depending on whether I want 1.25, 1.5, or 2.0 times the battery life of the stock iPod. That buys the new battery, tools, and instructions. For $20 more (plus shipping), they'll do the work. There are plenty of other companies that sell iPod batteries. This was just the first one in a Google search for "ipod battery". [google]

# Perian, "The swiss-army knife for QuickTime™", "is a free, open source QuickTime® component that adds native support for many popular video formats." AVI and FLV, 3ivX, DivX, Flash Screen Video, MS-MPEG4, Sorenson H.263, Truemotion VP6, and Xvid, AVI support for: AAC, AC3 Audio, H.264, MPEG4, and VBR MP3. You'll still need Flip4Mac for Windows Media®. "Requirements: Mac OS X 10.4.7 because 10.3 makes the iceweasel cower in fear." Drag and Drop installation. Apple has more QuickTime® components here.

Perian: The swiss-army knife for QuickTime

# Kristofer Widholm, The Apotek - AppleJack "is a user friendly troubleshooting assistant for Mac OS X. With AppleJack you can troubleshoot a computer even if you can't load the GUI, or don't have a startup CD handy. AppleJack runs in Single User Mode and is menu-based for ease of use." A little command-line utility that performs some common fixup tasks when your Mac is having trouble booting. Must be run from Single User Mode (SUM), by rebooting your Mac while holding down the command and "S" keys. Free. The installer installs /private/var/root/Library/Scripts/applejack.sh and its man page. If you choose "Customize" on the "Installation Type" screen, it will also install /usr/local/sbin/memtest, a memory stress testing command (which does NOT require SUM), and its man page. Note that /usr/local/sbin is not part of the standard PATH. MacFixIt has an article about AppleJack. [tcftalk]

# Maintain - Cocktail "is an award winning general purpose utility for Mac OS X. It is a smooth and powerful digital toolset with a variety of practical features that simplifies the use of advanced UNIX functions and helps hundreds of thousands of Mac users around the world to get the most out of their computers." A GUI to the AppleJack functionality and a lot more. $15. Demo can be launched 10 times without paying. [macfixit]

# Dr. Macenstein - Video: Jim Cramer (Mad Money) Smashes a Zune - commentary and comments on a YouTube video of Cramer naming Apple the runner-up in his growth stock of the year contest, extolling the virtues of iTunes and the iPod, and smashing a Zune with a baseball bat. I noticed, though, that he didn't manage to break the Zune. [macbytes]