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Oh but not just any kind of “untrusworthyness”, from what I gathered from Twitter at the time, he did it after the Appelbaum affair broke out to provide a “non-

by nzp 10y ago

Oh but not just any kind of “untrusworthyness”, from what I gathered from Twitter at the time, he did it after the Appelbaum affair broke out to provide a “non-SJW” fork of Tor Browser. And If I'm not mistaken, he initially forked the wrong repo, it was a running joke for a couple of days... Nice to see the farce still going strong. EDIT: s/Tor/Tor Browser/

PhasmaFelis 10y ago
> a “non-SJW” fork of Tor Hahaha, what?
- nzp 10y ago
  No joke. Apparently he deleted the original tweet. https://twitter.com/isislovecruft/status/766372347892920320 https://twitter.com/isislovecruft/status/766372347892920320 https://twitter.com/isislovecruft/status/768137697554731008 https://twitter.com/isislovecruft/status/768137697554731008
  - M_Grey 10y ago
    What a dumpster fire... how does someone write that out and think it's a good idea to broadcast to the entire planet?
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
wyager 10y ago
As I recall, the board of the Tor Project recently changed substantially amid some drama. is this related to that?
- nzp 10y ago
  I think it is, but I didn't really follow. The whole story is nausea inducing. You have, apparently, a respected, turns-out creepy/selectively abusive guy (one of life's great archetypes) get called out for sexual abuse. Numerous people confirm, some deny. Alt-right and associated acts immediately jump on this and start hating on the Tor Project because “SJW mob lynching” etc. Then, accusations start that Tor Project is deeply infiltrated by the CIA to, I guess, try to marginalise Appelbaum. Of course, everyone ignores the fact that Appelbaum himself practically acted as a CIA agent in Burma some years ago via Radio Free Asia. “The public” demands a purge of the “SJW/CIA infiltrated” TP board. At that point I just stopped paying attention, for the sake of mental hygiene. In this story I learned that the board changed in the end, so I'll google what happened, but I'm not in a hurry.
petertodd 10y ago
Actually, people thought he forked the wrong repo because he forked the browser, not the Tor node repo... and then he finds this bug in the browser. I suspect that wasn't planned, but regardless, he did fork the "right" repo.
- nzp 10y ago
  Ah, right, thanks. But, this thread got me thinking yesterday — if TP is untrustworthy, shouldn't he have forked node code? What use is what I understand is just a Firefox with locked down security related settings and set up to proxy through Tor? So in that sense he did fork the wrong code, and the TP people were right.
  - petertodd 10y ago
    Well, one explanation is that he thinks the threat model is such that a more likely risk is RCEs into the browser; if Tor directory authorities are doing untrustworthy things that can probably be more easily detected than deliberate exploits. It's also a very pragmatic plan: rebooting the whole Tor relay/exit node community is going to be a long term project without clear gains in the end; if your replacement looks like Tor in that you continue to invite volunteers to run nodes if the previous set of nodes are compromised what prevents those nodes from joining your network too? Arguably better to focus on forking what you can fix, which is apparently the browser. But that's all a charitable explanation: the less charitable explanation was he forked the browser because that's where the Tor branding is... Fork the relay codebase and you can't take pretty screenshots of your new fork.

by nzp 10y ago

PhasmaFelis 10y ago

> a “non-SJW” fork of Tor Hahaha, what?

nzp 10y ago
No joke. Apparently he deleted the original tweet. https://twitter.com/isislovecruft/status/766372347892920320 https://twitter.com/isislovecruft/status/766372347892920320 https://twitter.com/isislovecruft/status/768137697554731008 https://twitter.com/isislovecruft/status/768137697554731008
- M_Grey 10y ago
  What a dumpster fire... how does someone write that out and think it's a good idea to broadcast to the entire planet?
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

wyager 10y ago

As I recall, the board of the Tor Project recently changed substantially amid some drama. is this related to that?

nzp 10y ago
I think it is, but I didn't really follow. The whole story is nausea inducing. You have, apparently, a respected, turns-out creepy/selectively abusive guy (one of life's great archetypes) get called out for sexual abuse. Numerous people confirm, some deny. Alt-right and associated acts immediately jump on this and start hating on the Tor Project because “SJW mob lynching” etc. Then, accusations start that Tor Project is deeply infiltrated by the CIA to, I guess, try to marginalise Appelbaum. Of course, everyone ignores the fact that Appelbaum himself practically acted as a CIA agent in Burma some years ago via Radio Free Asia. “The public” demands a purge of the “SJW/CIA infiltrated” TP board. At that point I just stopped paying attention, for the sake of mental hygiene. In this story I learned that the board changed in the end, so I'll google what happened, but I'm not in a hurry.

petertodd 10y ago

Actually, people thought he forked the wrong repo because he forked the browser, not the Tor node repo... and then he finds this bug in the browser. I suspect that wasn't planned, but regardless, he did fork the "right" repo.

nzp 10y ago
Ah, right, thanks. But, this thread got me thinking yesterday — if TP is untrustworthy, shouldn't he have forked node code? What use is what I understand is just a Firefox with locked down security related settings and set up to proxy through Tor? So in that sense he did fork the wrong code, and the TP people were right.
- petertodd 10y ago
  Well, one explanation is that he thinks the threat model is such that a more likely risk is RCEs into the browser; if Tor directory authorities are doing untrustworthy things that can probably be more easily detected than deliberate exploits. It's also a very pragmatic plan: rebooting the whole Tor relay/exit node community is going to be a long term project without clear gains in the end; if your replacement looks like Tor in that you continue to invite volunteers to run nodes if the previous set of nodes are compromised what prevents those nodes from joining your network too? Arguably better to focus on forking what you can fix, which is apparently the browser. But that's all a charitable explanation: the less charitable explanation was he forked the browser because that's where the Tor branding is... Fork the relay codebase and you can't take pretty screenshots of your new fork.