Subject: Re: bug#35728: Tor & IceCat's TorButton shows it's connected but doesn't route the traffic

From: Mark H Weaver <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 18 Jun 2020 03:40:12 -0400

Hi,

sirmacik <[email-masked]> wrote:
> There seems to be a problem with Tor and TorButton in GNU IceCat's
> package. Torsocks works for other apps, TorButton shows notification
> that it's connected to the Tor server but when I go to
> check.torproject.org I'm not routed through tor.

Thanks for bringing this to our attention.  I see the same problem.

> This problem doesn't appear in Archlinux or GNU/Debian so it seems
> that bug is Guix related.

Interesting.  Which version of Debian did you test with, and how did you
install the Firefox that you used for testing this?

I found this same problem with Firefox ESR 68.9 running on a stock
Debian 9 (stretch, a.k.a. oldstable) system, using Debian's
'firefox-esr' package, after installing the extension via
addons.mozilla.org, specifically version 0.1.8 of the "Onion Browser
Button by Benthum", available here:

  https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tortm-browser-button/

Moreover, I found that even if Tor is not running at all, and nothing is
listening on port 9050, the extension still reports that it's "checking
tor proxy connection..." and then "TOR is running.  Connected to
127.0.0.1:9050", which is false on both counts.  I filed a bug report
upstream.

I've removed this extension from Guix's IceCat package for now, pending
further investigation, commit 416439263cb295260ba38ab1cce5b4468ae5691e.

     Thanks,
       Mark