STE WILLIAMS

Portable Tor routers have a serious image problem. But one of only two companies to have actually done it right plans to fix that.Should you believe the hype this time around? Quite possibly, yes.

It was only a year ago that the tech community got excited about the idea of a small, lightweight router that would connect you with the Tor anonymizing service. Plug-and-play. No installing software or complex configurations.

Unfortunately, the Anonabox turned out to have some fundamental flaws, not least of which were its founders’ habit of being less than truthful about their “custom” hardware and the product’s failure to encrypt traffic.

The US$600,000 that Anonabox pulled in before its epic meltdown sparked a series of similar doomed projects. There was TorFi, which was pulled off Kickstarter and disappeared; Project Sierra, which raised just $6,000 of a $150,000 goal; and Cloak, which raised just £7,000 of its £65,000 ($100,000) goal.

Also offering private browsing is USB plugin Wemagin, which did raise sufficient funds but last month started offering refunds, having completely missed its April shipping date. It still hasn’t shipped.

And then there were the two products that actually got to market and worked: Safeplug and Invizbox. These are both essentially the same: you plug a small box into your home router using an Ethernet cable, and then connect either wirelessly or through another Ethernet cable to the box. The box connects to the Tor network and away you go. They both cost $49.

But here’s the rub: Even though both these products do what that say they will, they still have limited use. Why? Because a Tor router alone will not provide you with the kind of privacy that you clearly want if you are prepared to spend $50 on a piece of equipment just to get more privacy.

For one, if you are using your usual browser in the usual way, you are likely providing your IP address to websites even if you are running through Tor routers.

There is JavaScript, for one. Turn that off. If you are not going through HTTPS or SSL secure websites, you are also likely exposing your information. And if you aren’t actively blocking ads, you are also likely exposing your data. And then there is the WebRTC bug in Firefox and Chrome that exposes your IP address.

What’s more, the Tor network is slow – and often, really slow. Jumping between all those different relays takes a toll. Instant messaging and Skype are therefore out.

Many websites won’t let you access content without JavaScript running. And the fact that you are actually using the Tor network is often visible, which has given many websites the option to cut you off if you are.

The BBC, for example, notes: “If you are using a Tor network you will not be able to play programmes in BBC iPlayer.” And if a website is using CloudFlare to protect itself, you may find yourself forced to fill in a CAPTCHA just to gain access to a website.

It makes you wonder what’s the point of having a Tor router at all.

Ok, then, I’m off

Fortunately there are good reasons to use a Tor router. For one, if you are serious about privacy, having a Tor router should help you to remember to make sure you are connected to Tor before getting online.

That simple act of forgetting was what did in both the creator of Silk Road Ross Ulbricht and Lulzsec key member Hector “Sabu” Monsegur.

Then of course going through a Tor network is more likely to grant you privacy than not going through it. It is the equivalent of a window lock or a thicker chain for your bike: you are improving your chances of security. And then there is the fact that by using the network you are making it a little more sustainable and a little safer for all the other users of Tor.

The truth is that a portable Tor router is a very niche product. You can get almost all the same privacy improvements by downloading the free Tor browser, and to be truly safe requires additional expertise and configuration that makes the whole point of a plug-and-play router somewhat moot.

Which is why one of the two real products on the market – Invizbox – is branching out.

Invizbox survived the Tor router boom-and-bust by focusing on what it needed to do and not over-promising on the rest.

Here at Vulture West, we’ve played around with its product and have been impressed, mostly because it has been built to be configurable and updatable. Attach it to your router with an Ethernet cable and you’re away.

The famous Anonabox had some real problems. You couldn’t change its SSID wireless name, for one, so you broadcast the fact you were using one to anyone nearby. You couldn’t change its password, either. Or update its firmware. It was a product that was outdated the moment it left the box.

What Invizbox offers, and why it is also more useful than the Safeplug, is the ability to chop and change. Log into its admin pages and you can change the wireless name and the password. Switch the encryption. Add private Tor bridges. Add proxies. Use a small secure shell (SSH) server. It offers a whole host of possibilities, plus it logs and reports on traffic so you can see what is going on.

Sure, to put this all together requires additional work and a good degree of expertise, but it is all available. You can set up the Invizbox to give you an excellent level of privacy. And if you wanted, you could avoid the Firefox and Chrome issues by using the Tor browser and make it follow the Invizbox’s Tor path (rather than go through the system twice).

The next iteration

But.

The Invizbox still requires an Ethernet connection, which makes its portability somewhat pointless. And it is still slow, thanks to Tor.

The answer? The Invizbox Go. The company is raising the funds for this device as we speak, with just under a week left to go on the crowdfunding campaign.

What the company has been smart enough to recognize is that a Tor router – even one that enables you to connect to public WiFi and access Tor through it – is still a niche product.

And so it is planning to bundle all the other extra components that people who would ever consider buying a portable Tor box already pay for. As a result, the Invizbox Go offers:

• Faster Tor access through a “premium pricing” model that connects you to fast, private bridges (and so, presumably, relays not run by the NSA) for a monthly fee: €4 ($5) a month
• WiFi extender – spread your signal a little further
• USB charging – when your phone is low
• Proxy selection – so you can decide which country’s IP address you want to appear to come from
• An ad blocker
• A Tor/VPN combination so you can use one or the other or both

It also claims a five-hour battery life based on continuous use. As for size, it is roughly the same of the iPhone 6.

The big question is: having been bitten by last year’s Tor router hype, why should anyone fall for it again?

Invizbox is banking on the fact that people will remember that it came out with the one portable Tor router that did what it said. Now it’s hoping people will see it through to creating the Tor router that does what people want.

As things stand, the project has raised just under $61,000 of its $113,000 (€100,000) goal with a deadline of Wednesday, October 14.

Will it go the way of Anonabox, TorFi, Project Sierra and Cloak? Or will it manage to make the Tor router just one useful thing in a large bag of internet tricks? We shall wait and see. ®

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Article source: http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2015/10/06/fast_wireless_access_to_tor_just_maybe/