Linux

48655 readers

1171 users here now

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

Rules

Posts must be relevant to operating systems running the Linux kernel. GNU/Linux or otherwise.
No misinformation
No NSFW content
No hate speech, bigotry, etc

Related Communities

Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

TOR browser User Agent in Linux increases fingerprinting (programming.dev)

submitted 3 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

9 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I usually use Tor Browser to scan files online for viruses, which I then send to Windows users (I use Linux) if they are clean.

Lately, I've noticed that the User Agent in TOR is showing up as Linux, when it used to show up as Windows.

Is this a problem with my system or a change made by the TOR team? The fact that Linux has far fewer users increases fingerprinting.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

Does it increase fingerprinting? I imagine there might be some non-user-agent way to determine the OS. Like with image handling or whatever.

It's probably more unique and suspicious for a linux browser to pretend to be Windows than a Linux system disclosing itself as Linux.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 3 weeks ago

Pretty sure the TOR user agent is just default firefox, by design. It's very easy to detect OS with very rudimentary fingerprinting techniques, a lot of which are blocked by the TOR browser but they can never get them all.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago

Like with image handling or whatever.

I'd expect TOR browser to mitigate this. Canvas2D is disabled for instance and system fonts aren't exposed.

Most other things could be mitigated by making every platform use the same code paths for e.g. font rendering. It should be pretty damn hard to determine which OS it is when the userspace is the same. I don't know whether TOR browser currently does this though.