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Comment by tlrobinson | Hacker News Reader

I feel like Tor Browser should just spin up a fresh VM with a minimal Linux distribution and fullscreen Tor browser, with the VM's only networking tunneled through Tor.

I think Hyper-V can do graphics as well and it looks like bhyve added some sort of graphics support earlier this year, but xhyve has none. Not sure if there are any other lightweight hypervisors that support graphics (or maybe just use a protocol like X11 or VNC?).

Docker for Mac and Docker for Windows have done a great job of hiding the fact that it's using virtualization from users (but doesn't need graphics, of course)

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> fullscreen Tor browser

Tor recommends not going full-screen, since window size can be used as one of several identifiers.

I mean fullscreen within the VM's desktop (no need for normal GNOME/KDE/whatever desktop), which itself may not be fullscreen on host OS. It would act like a native app. If you quit the browser it shuts down the VM.

Ah, You mean the VM only have one program which is Tor browser, and when Tor terminated the VM should terminated with it.

>I mean fullscreen within the VM's desktop

so like... maximized?

How does this work?

I would expect a generic resolution like 1920x1080 to convey much less identifiable information that some random 1583x1176 that the user might resize tor browser window to.

The idea is to not change the window size at all from the default. If this advice is followed, you minimize the possible information leak. In your example, 1583x1176 tells us that your system is capable of rendering at least that size. Given the unusual numbers, we further suspect you're not maximized on a system capable of an 1176px tall browser (much fewer of those than 1920x1080). While not uniquely identifying, it's a piece of the puzzle.

https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/7255

A better idea would be to simply not leak any of this information at all, or if it must, return some generic 1080p regardless of the actual size. It's a terrible UX to restrict yourself to the default window size (and depending on the window manager, the default window size might not even be respected). Plus, it's so easy to accidentally change the browser window size.

The VM can go "full screen" and lock the height/width in X, then.

We could do stretching then when the user tries to enbiggen it, that way they don't get deanonymized!

It is basically impossible to fully anonymize a browser as long as JavaScript+plugins are running. EFF's Panopticlick [1] and browserleaks [2] are good at explaining some of these fingerprinting vectors.

[1] https://panopticlick.eff.org/

[2] http://browserleaks.com/

This is worst part of Tor browsing for me. 1000x800?! Are you kidding! Must be upped to macbook's 1680, or whatever is most popular resolution of a modern display

Yes it can.

It is a type 1 hypervisor and DX is supported since a few versions.

Also the foundation of Windows 10 containers and secure kernel.

So basically Whonix?

https://www.whonix.org/

One word: whonix.

ParrotSec OS is another OS that tries to fully block all connections not going through Tor, out of the box.

Another: Qubes

A slight aside, but is Docker on Unix running natively then?

Typically yes, unless you set it up in a VM yourself (or using docker-machine)

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