Other Gateways

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Using Whonix-Workstation with a Gateway Other Than Whonix-Gateway.

Documentation for this is incomplete. Contributions are happily considered! See this for potential alternatives.

Potential Issues When using A Custom Gateway[edit]

TODO: document

  • Gateway IP Change required? See chapter below.
  • Tor Control Protocol Access. See chapter below.
  • Custom gateway might not provide all the Tor SocksPorts that Whonix-Gateway provides. Fixable by adjusting Tor configuration of the custom gateway.
  • Custom gateway might not provide transparent proxying. This might be intended if the user prefers an IsolatingProxyarchive.org setup.

Gateway IP Change[edit]

grep the Whonix source code for the following search term.

IP HARDCODED

For example. (Creation of the mygrep script is documented in above link.)

mygrep -r "IP HARDCODED"

Perhaps IP change can be avoided with some iptables trick?

Forum discussion:

https://forums.whonix.org/t/network-changing-the-complete-16/10586archive.org

Tor Control Protocol Access[edit]

Two options. Either:

  • Allow filtered Tor control protocol access through onion-grater.
  • unfiltered Tor control protocol access. A compromised workstation with unfiltered Tor control protocol access can acquire the real external cleranet IP. [1]
  • No Tor control protocol access. This would break some functionality.

Which applications require Tor control protocol access?

Filtered Access using onion-grater[edit]

Undocumented.

Unfiltered Access not using onion-grater[edit]

This setting comes from Debian system Tor upstream package default file /usr/share/tor/tor-service-defaults-torrc.

CookieAuthFile /run/tor/control.authcookie

The file location for this file is non-ideal since it will change at every boot. By re-configuring Tor on the other gateway to use a different file location the contents of this file might be constant. Untested.

On the Whonix-Workstation package anon-ws-disable-stacked-tor script /usr/lib/anon-ws-disable-stacked-tor/state-files copies at boot /usr/share/anon-ws-disable-stacked-tor/control.authcookie to the right places.

By copying the control.authcookie file from the gateway to Whonix-Workstation /usr/share/anon-ws-disable-stacked-tor/control.authcookie one might be able to have Tor cookie authentication. Contents of /usr/share/anon-ws-disable-stacked-tor/control.authcookie will be overwritten when package anon-ws-disable-stacked-tor is upgraded.

Therefore this exercise might be a bit pointless. A better solution might be to use Tor Browser control protocol authentication using a Tor control password rather than Tor control auth cookie.

Open file /etc/X11/Xsession.d/50user in an editor with root rights.

Non-Qubes-Whonix

This box uses sudoedit for better security.

Qubes-Whonix

NOTE: When using Qubes-Whonix, this needs to be done inside the Template.

Others and Alternatives

  • This is just an example. Other tools could achieve the same goal.
  • If this example does not work for you or if you are not using Whonix, please refer to this link.

sudoedit /etc/X11/Xsession.d/50user

Paste the following contents.

## see also /usr/lib/anon-ws-disable-stacked-tor/torbrowser.sh ## See workstation file ~/.tb/tor-browser/Browser/start-tor-browser ## or Tor Browser file Browser/start-tor-browser script for comment ## why quoting looks weird. export TOR_CONTROL_PASSWD='"password"' ## Overwrite what /usr/lib/anon-ws-disable-stacked-tor/torbrowser.sh / ## /etc/X11/Xsession.d/20torbrowser is doing. export TOR_CONTROL_IPC_PATH="/run/anon-ws-disable-stacked-tor/127.0.0.1_9151.sock"

Save.

This would have to be combined with Tor setting HashedControlPassword on the other gateway. Untested.

References[edit]

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