This project is not endorsed by either the Tor or i2p Projects
The path of least resistance to a Linux-only i2p browser. A script that Modifies a tor browser bundle and spits out a tar.gz. This project has good and bad qualities. The good is that it works. It's already reasonably flexible. It's pretty easy to use. The bad is that it doesn't take advantage of the built-in Tor Browser features designed to enable this type of procedure, and as a result it will fail certain security checks(reproducibility) once the script is completed, among other related shortcomings. Just to be clear, while I don't think it's dangerous to use with care it is fatally flawed. So a better approach is forthcoming, but not quite finished yet. An incremental progress report is maintained in this repository with links to the relevant project repos.
All it does it take the standard Tor Browser Bundle, applies custom settings to torlauncher, torbutton, and HTTPS everywhere(I've disabled the observatory and automatic updates for now,for now, until I learn more about HTTPS everywhere rulesets and how they work/worked with i2p). HTTPS everywhere may or may not be honoring the autoUpdateRuleset option I thought it had. For now I'm setting a custom proxy in common with i2p, so it won't be able to complete the update via the clearnet by accident. It does appear to be honoring the observatory settings at this time.
By the way, these notes are, at this point, as much for my benefit as anybody else's. Need to keep track of what's going on.
If you're using the makefile, make sure you have wget and gpg installed. Optionally, docker, go and git are helpful for some of the repackaging hacks and stuff.
The bulk of the work is being done by this script shell script now. If you just want to modify a TBB to work with i2p, you can:
./setup-i2p-browser.sh "$path_to_browser" "$desired_port" "$desired_addr"
Here is, in some detail, what it does:
First it adds a few lines to the TBB's extension-overrides.js so that it keeps torlauncher from starting tor, tells it not to try and use bridges, and configures it to not pop up a menu. It also tells torbutton to not unset our custom proxy settings and attempt to use Tor, and tells HTTPS Everywhere to not try and use resources on the clearnet.
pref("extensions.https_everywhere._observatory.enabled", false);
pref("extensions.https_everywhere._options.autoUpdateRulesets", false);
pref("extensions.https_everywhere.globalEnabled", false);
pref("extensions.https_everywhere._observatory.submit_during_tor", false);
pref("extensions.https_everywhere._observatory.submit_during_nontor", false);
pref("extensions.https_everywhere._observatory.use_custom_proxy", true);
pref("extensions.https_everywhere._observatory.proxy_host", "127.0.0.1");
pref("extensions.https_everywhere._observatory.proxy_port", 4444);
Browser/TorBrowser/Data/Browser/profile.default/browser-extension-data/https-everywhere-eff@eff.org/storage.js
{"ruleActiveStates":{},"migration_version":1,"last-checked":1527339686.4,"autoUpdateRulesets":false}
pref("extensions.torbutton.use_nontor_proxy", true);
pref("extensions.torlauncher.start_tor", false);
pref("extensions.torlauncher.default_bridge_type", "");
pref("extensions.torlauncher.prompt_at_startup", false);
After applying the extension modifications, it applies the i2p http proxy settings. In particular, it points the http proxy at 127.0.0.1:4444, it sets the http proxy to be used for all connections, and it removes all exceptions for un-proxied connections. That's all put into a file called i2p-browser.js.
pref("network.proxy.no_proxies_on", 0);
pref("network.proxy.type", 1);
pref("network.proxy.http", "127.0.0.1");
pref("network.proxy.http_port", 4444);
pref("network.proxy.https", "127.0.0.1");
pref("network.proxy.https_port", 4444);
pref("network.proxy.ftp", "127.0.0.1");
pref("network.proxy.ftp_port", 4444);
pref("network.proxy.socks", "127.0.0.1");
pref("network.proxy.socks_port", 4444);
pref("network.proxy.share_proxy_settings", true);
Then it renames a few files from something like start-tor-browser to start-i2p-browser.
Script+make(for now, because sometimes everything looks like a nail and no where is that more true than for Docker users)
When used with the Makefile, the script can be used to build some semi-standard variants of the browser. I did this to deliberately separate the process of getting the TBB from modifying it to work with i2p, and to automate the process of downloading, checking, and unpacking a stable TBB for use with the script. The Makefile scrapes the TBB download page to find the latest stable TBB version (note to self, make language configurable) and exports it to the make command. Then it downloads the stable TBB, checks the signature, and unpacks it. That process is done with the "download" make target.
make download
If you also want to automatically apply the script to your fresh TBB, you can do
make easy
instead.
From there, it can be run from the directory ./browser/tor-browser_en-US/.
Originally, this process was achieved via a Dockerfile, but a Dockerfile is basically just a script with benefits so the essentials were moved out to the ./setup-i2p-browser.sh script, and now the Dockerfile is being used for it's more substantial benefits. Building it with make+Docker can produce tarballs and deb packages for 3 variants. IF you use these, please be aware that they will fail tests of reproducibility against the regular TBB. That includes the .deb's I've got over on the Releases Page.
There are three packagable variants that have this serious shortcoming. If you want to use your package manager to track the files and directories used by the resultant modified bundle but trust your computer more than mine, then the first variant is probably what you want. It points the proxy to 127.0.0.1:4444. To generate the tarball and the deb, run
make cheater
There's also a version which points to port 8118, a the default port used by privoxy, in order to make a package for people who use Privoxy to route traffic to multiple anonymous overlay networks. To build and package this variant, run
make privoxy
Finally, there's a variant which I use with my experimental out-of-router http proxy. Probably nobody needs this one, but to build it, run
make di
For all variants, if you use the deb package, the application will be installed and run by it's own user and a script will be placed into /usr/bin to launch it. These scripts are in the ./bin directory. if you export a SIGNING_KEY variable before running make, then the checksum will also be signed at the final step. Each variant can also be run in the Docker container if run with the --net host option or by networking them with a container running an i2p router.
Thanks to hulahoopwhonix I know how to make TorButton cooperate with a non-Tor proxy, and in the end I think what that means I'm making here isn't really an i2p browser anymore. What I'm really making is a script to make minimal sane modifications to a Tor Browser Bundle to direct the traffic to another kind of proxy. That probably means I should rename ./setup-i2p-browser.sh to ./setup-proxy-browser.sh or something like that.
If one wants to, at some point, create an i2p browser bundle, then one will need something like TorLauncher to make sure that i2p starts. One thing it will need to be able to do is determine that i2p has been started and the tunnels are opened. I think the easiest way to do this would probably be to create tiny service that translates the Tor Control Port communcations done by TorLauncher and TorButton to and from the i2pControl equivalents. Possibly more.
An instructive, but possibly old, article about the Tor Control Protocol can be found here.
Pretty soon, it seems that TBB may only work over the Unix socket, so I'll need
to deal with that. If I do something with the Control Port and i2pControl, then
I'll have to do that too. Fortunately, it's easy as far as I know, already
dealt with, as the socket to be used can be configured by the script now. To
use a socket, run the script like this:
./setup-i2p-browser.sh "$path_to_browser" socket "$desired_socket_path"
I'm not at all sure what i2p's plans for HTTPS are yet, but I'm aware of some. I don't change the NoScript configuration and frankly, There is plenty I could have missed.
I made this because I needed something like it and didn't particularly like the other options. Mostly that they were based on old versions of TorBrowser. Thank goodness for constructive criticism and peer-review.
For more details about the issues being addressed in this browser, please file an issue or see: https://forums.whonix.org/t/i2p-integration/.
Use at your own risk.
If you don't want to use a TBB downloaded by the makefile, running
./setup-i2p-browser.sh "$path_to_browser" "$desired_port" "$desired_addr"
will modify an existing TBB to use i2p.
My gpg key is: 70D2060738BEF80523ACAFF7D75C03B39B5E14E1
you can find the full public key at https://eyedeekay.github.io/apt-now/eyedeekay.github.io.gpg.key
This is how the network settings will present themselves to the user in a current configuration. This is not the only modification made to the TBB. This image is here largely for me to post on reddit when somebody has a beginner question.
XMR:43V6cTZrUfAb9JD6Dmn3vjdT9XxLbiE27D1kaoehb359ACaHs8191mR4RsJH7hGjRTiAoSwFQAVdsCBToXXPAqTMDdP2bZB