Can someone explain WHY Mozilla Firefox Tor Browser does what it does?
Why does the Mozilla Firefox Tor Browser take two connections when the
system time zone is incorrect? What actions are going on under the hood?
Can someone explain WHY Mozilla Firefox Tor Browser does what it does?
[1] I found a great script on alt.msdos.batch for anti-fingerprinting
[2] I've been booting to that wonderful tz script for more than a year
[3] It randomly changes the system timezone for anti-fingerprinting
[4] Upon rebooting, it first kicks off a 3rd-party taskbar time-zone clock [5] Which perfectly covers over & replaces the original taskbar clock
[6] Even down to the "Sergoe UI (9pt)" taskbar fonts (I make mine bold)
[7] Such that there is no indication to me of what timezone I'm set to
[8] Which has been working fine for about a year with no problems at all
The only issue is minor and I understand it at the top level only.
My question here is to see if someone understands it at a deeper level.
It's known (from bug reports) that the Mozilla Firefox Tor Browser has initial connection problems when the timezone of the system isn't what the Mozilla Firefox Tor Browser thinks the timezone of the system should be.
"Timezone and Clock Offset
While the latency in Tor connections varies anywhere from milliseconds to a few seconds, it is still possible for the remote site to detect large differences between the user's clock and an official reference time source.
Design Goal: All Tor Browser users MUST report the same timezone to
websites. Currently, we choose UTC for this purpose, although an equally valid argument could be made for EDT/EST due to the large English-speaking population density (coupled with the fact that we spoof a US English user agent). Additionally, the Tor software should detect if the users clock is significantly divergent from the clocks of the relays that it connects to, and use this to reset the clock values used in Tor Browser to something reasonably accurate. Alternatively, the browser can obtain this clock skew via a mechanism similar to that used in tlsdate.
Implementation Status: We set the timezone using the TZ environment
variable, which is supported on all platforms." https://tor.stackexchange.com/questions/13450/does-tor-leak-time-and-time-zone
While I can "read" that, I don't "understand" how that makes Tor connect twice whenever the timezone is not the current timezone.
How does the Mozilla Firefox Tor Browser even KNOW what the "right" TZ is?
It's reproduceable what happens simply by changing the time zone.
[a] Set your TZ correctly & the Tor Browser usually connects on the 1st try [b] Set your TZ incorrectly & the Tor Browser takes two tries to connect
It's not something that I can solve.
But it is something that I'd like to better understand why.
You'd have to be a pretty good Firefox/Tor expert to help out.
So I'm ok if nobody knows the answer to this (rather niche) question.
If you do understand how Tor directories work, maybe you can explain these? https://tor.stackexchange.com/questions/13450/does-tor-leak-time-and-time-zone
"Tor Browser uses UTC for its time. This hides the "system time" from any querying websites and stops any website that could read the time from determining your location based on your timezone. However it is not able to protect users whose time is uniquely inaccurate."
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser/-/issues/31324 "the Tor Browser spoofs the timezone displayed to websites to UTC but this doesn't spoof the actual system time which can still be gotten with new Date()"
Why does the Mozilla Firefox Tor Browser take two connections when the
system time zone is incorrect? What actions are going on under the hood?
[4] Upon rebooting, it first kicks off a 3rd-party taskbar time-zone clock [5] Which perfectly covers over & replaces the original taskbar clock
[6] Even down to the "Sergoe UI (9pt)" taskbar fonts (I make mine bold)
[7] Such that there is no indication to me of what timezone I'm set to
Why does the Mozilla Firefox Tor Browser take two connections when the
system time zone is incorrect? What actions are going on under the hood?
OpenSSL, the thing under the hood that TOR uses to secure connections, requires the time to be correct.
Winderrs, when the TZ is "wrong" will tell things the wrong time, for a while, ish, until it is corrected. Ish.
The above is greatly simplified, but you should see the same behaviour
when SSH-ing into a system.
Until I get that test working, I may not have made it clear
that the system TIME is correct. It's just the TIMEZONE which
is randomized on my PC.
I'm curious what that taskbar replacement time clock software is.
And how does it correct for the time when the system time zone changes?
If you do a (quick) search for "tor timezone" you might find that your TOR client actually accesses the timezone setting - as far as I could tell to check if you match up with your credentials.
If those credentials are my time zone, they match because WHATEVER
timezone my computer is set to _is_ my timezone (as far as the
browser is concerned). Right?
How does any browser know that my system timezone isn't my real timezone?
Do you know of any other program other than the Microsoft Firefox Tor
Browser which acts different when the time zone is randomly changing?
Do you know of any other program other than the Microsoft Firefox Tor
Browser which acts different when the time zone is randomly changing?
SSH, as I mentioned previously.
On Wed, 26 Jul 2023 07:26:59 -0700
Peter Moylin <peter@moylin.invalid> wrote:
[]
checking.
Are you aware that a well-respected regular poster in another NG's name is >Peter Moylen?
How amazing is that!
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