Steve sez, “TorPark is a combination of Firefox and the anonymizingTor Onion Router project. Sticking it on a USB stick allows you to bring not just a great browser wherever you go, but privacy as well!”
How can this be used?
Lots of ways! It can be used to circumvent censorship firewalls, like at work or in China. It can be used to bypass paying for internet access at a wifi cafe. It can be used at school computers so you can get full access to the internet. And best of all, if there is no key loggers secretly installed on the machine, nobody is going to know where you went, what you saw, who you spoke to, or what you said. It is all encrypted in a tunnel between your computer, and at least three others somewhere in the world. Only after your data has passed through the encrypted and constantly changing tunnel (a tor circuit) will it reach the internet as unencrypted. The data from surfing the internet goes through the same tunnel as well, passing back to you encrypted, where your computer uses Tor to decrypt it to the Torpark browser. When you need a secret and secure tunnel to surf the internet, Torpark is your mobile solution.
(Thanks, Steve!)
Update: Jake sez,
it doesn’t appear
that the torpark people are giving a download link for any of their
source code. Nor are they explaining how their project was built.I know I can get the source code for the programs elsewhere. I’ve heard
that there may be issues with bandwidth but I find it suspect that such
a project doesn’t provide source.How much can you trust that program when it’s released in such a way? I
don’t trust that at all. I don’t think the tor developers would endorse
such a product for being anonymous.
Update 2: Alexk sez, “TorPark DO publish source code.” Link to tarball
Update 3: Jake sez, “Torpark.nsi is a very long text file, I don’t see the source to say, tor. Or the other stuff that comes in that .exe file.
Torpark is a GPL program. Yet it’s made of lots of other software under
other licenses. The source download on the torpark page
(source_torpark_1.5.0.2b.tar) includes only these files:
FIREFOX_LICENSE.doc Torpark.ico TORPARK_LICENSE.doc
PORTABLEFF_LICENSE.doc Torpark.gif Torpark.ini Torpark.nsiThe Torpark.exe that’s available for download includes tor, portable
Firefox and possibly other software. What’s inside the .exe is unknown
as there are no documents describing its creation. There is no way to
verify that the program does what it says and it appears to not follow
all of the licenses involved.What is known is this:
Tor is released under a 3-clause BSD license. Torpark needs to include
at the very least include tor’s license file.
Firefox is released under a MOZILLA PUBLIC LICENSE Version 1.1.
PortableFF appears to be under the GPL if the license is to be trusted.
You’d likely need to include the full source.What is not known is this:
We don’t actually know what else is inside the exe (in addition to
portable firefox and tor) or what it’s doing. We don’t have anyway to
verify what’s been done to build torpark, nor can we see what was
modified by the torpark developers that might not be in a users best
interest.I wouldn’t trust the software until they compile a document describing
how Torpark was created and until they comply with the software licenses
involved.Also related to boingboing directly on the tor mailing list.
Update 4: Steve from TorPark sez,
Jake Appelbaum is unfamiliar with the Nullsoft Scriptable
Install System. NSIS is a open-source development environment.
You can download the whole thing, compiler and all plugins, here.Jake says that he doesn’t know what Torpark actually does.
I am not surprised, since he didn’t read the source code. The source
code is fully commented. Actually, it is excessively commented from
what I changed in Portable Firefox.With the NSI file, and providing a gif image for the splash screen,
it will fully compile Torpark.exe. I can provide the torpark splash
screen image, but you might not be able to get the same hash because
NSIS compiler has different compressions. I believe the one I used
was LMZ Solid.The other products, Tor and Firefox, have not been altered.
However, Jake is right in one respect, I uploaded different licenses
than I have included with the distribution. The distribution contains
all the licenses, so technically it doesn’t matter except for the
confusion. I will change the tarball to include the right licenses.
I will also include a tutorial on how to build your own version of
Torpark. This will be available in a few minutes.