Onion Pi — Make a Raspberry Pi Into a Anonymizing Tor Proxy

coop0030 writes "Feel like someone is snooping on you? Browse anonymously anywhere you go with the Onion Pi Tor proxy. This is fun weekend project from Adafruit that uses a Raspberry Pi, a USB WiFi adapter and Ethernet cable to create a small, low-power and portable privacy Pi."

Comments

Neat idea.

[BitterOak]

I've always thought the Raspberry Pi would be a pontentially much more useful device if it had two Ethernet ports instead of one. It could be a NAT box, Firewall, TOR proxy, or any number of other things. By separating these functions form the computers you're trying to protect, you potentially have a lot more security. Dare I dream there will be a model with two Ethernet ports sometime in the future?

Re:Neat idea.

[ColaMan]

Yes, that's right, don't bother about adding a single ethernet port, merely invest in a VLAN-capable switch! You always need another piece of power-hungry overkill hardware when you're using your Pi in a remote location somewhere (or even behind your TV), and you've got money to burn now that you've saved so much money buying a Pi!

Brilliant! /s

Re:Neat idea.

[gweihir]

The Pi does not have native Ethernet anyways. You can add a second one with an 100Mbps USB2-to-Ethernet adapter without losing much. For native interfaces, an Alix board may be a better choice.

What irks me more is that the Pi has issues with quite a few USB hubs. In fact I found none that worked well in a stress-test (two memory sticks connected as RAID1, always lost one during re-sync, no matter what sticks I used), and I tried several.

Re: Neat idea.

[swsuehr]

I'm doing exactly this. I have a Pi firewall running with three total ethernet ports (the third is a wifi DMZ). I got another Pi and it's running asterisk for the house with a POTS connection via an Obi110. However, based on the load and RAM usage I could be using a single Pi for both. Speed tests show that the Pi performs the same as the full scale computer that it replaced. Check my blog for more details on the firewall rig. I haven't blogged about the asterisk setup yet. Steve

A Anonymizing

[mooingyak]

Should be "an anonymizing". Not because it's grammatically correct (though it is), but because it's more fun to say.

Re:You must be

[K. S. Kyosuke]

More like a torrorist, don't you think? And I'm sure The Onion would jump on it.

Danger

[Anonymous Coward]

Note that routing through Tor can hide your location, but it will not protect unencrypted traffic from eavesdropping and MITM attacks.

I would caution strongly against indiscriminately running all your traffic trough Tor. In many cases this will increase your chance of being subject to an active or passive attack, as one of the reasons people operate Tor exit nodes is to observe the outgoing traffic, either for research or for more clandestine purposes.

Preferably only use it for encrypted traffic where you have a way to authenticate the other side. Routing TLS traffic through Tor should be fine for personal use, as long as you take care to never accept self-signed certificates.

Take the warnings seriously!

[gweihir]

It is really no good using Tor when your application screams to the world who you are. Applications need to be carefully vetted in order to be sure they do not. Better use the Tor browser bundle from a clean system, than this "solution", unless you are really sure you know what you are doing.