Tor Browser Bundle

Even humble web browsing can’t be trusted to betray incriminating details, which is why the Tor Project is so vocal about using the Tor Browser Bundle, rather than just proxying your web browser of choice.

The TorBrowser is built on the ESR (Extended Support Release) of Firefox, so it doesn’t have the latest features, but it does get regular and thorough attention from both Mozilla and the Tor Project. It also goes out of its way to make sure that the underlying Tor connection is sane, and can help ameliorate problems with NAT, proxies or firewalls.

The best way to download the TorBrowser is straight from www.torproject.org (we won’t put a bit.ly link, but we will leave you to navigate to the right section of the website). Good practice dictates that we should also check the signatures. First download the browser and corresponding .sig file from the Tor Project website. Then import the Tor Project’s key with: $ gpg --keyserver pool.sks-keyservers.net --recv-keys 0x4E2C6E8793298290 Now check that this key really belongs to the Tor Project. $ gpg --fingerprint 0x4E2C6E8793298290

And finally check the signature (run this command from the directory where the files are): $ gpg --verify tor-browser-linux64-6.0.8_en-US. tar.xz{.asc,}

Hopefully, we should be met with a ‘good signature’ message. If not then it’s likely the download has been tampered with and you shouldn’t use it. Otherwise untar it with $ tar xvJf tor-browser-linux64-6.0.8_en-US.tar. xz and run it with: $ cd tor-browser_en-US $ ./start-tor-browser.desktop