1358039 - Add an option in Fennec's Setting/Advanced/Experiment Features to connect to Orbot

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox for Android Graveyard :: Settings and Preferences, enhancement, P1)

Description

[Jonathan Hao (inactive) [:jhao]]

We need an option in Fennec's setting for the users to connect to Orbot.

We'll use the NetCipher library [1] to detect whether Orbot is installed and show the option at Advanced > Experiment Features.

When the option is turned on, we should set all the relevant prefs, as in bug 1337647.

[1]: https://github.com/guardianproject/NetCipher

Comment 1

[Jonathan Hao (inactive) [:jhao]]

In my prototype in bug 1337647, I just copied the two files I need in NetCipher into the patch for convenience.

Hi Tim,

What do we do in Fennec code when we need to call an external library like this?

Comment 2

[Jonathan Hao (inactive) [:jhao]]

I've talked with Max.  To detect if Orbot is installed, we don't have to import the NetCipher library yet.  We can call getPackageInfo and catch the exception if the package name doesn't exist.  That's actually what NetCipher does now.

Moreover, Max suggested us to check the package's public key because there might be malicious apps pretending to be Orbot.

Comment 3

[Jonathan Hao (inactive) [:jhao]]

Max also pointed out that we can't be sure whether we're giving our network traffic to Orbot or other malicious apps if we blindly set the proxy port to 8118 like Orfox does.  We could be sending our traffic to some malicious app pretending to be Orbot.  We should do something to ensure that the proxy is indeed Orbot.

Comment 4

[Max Liu [:maliu]]

Hi Jonathan,

Just a few notes,

* Check the signkey of target app: Orbot.
  http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5578871/how-to-get-apk-signing-signature
* ActivityStreamPreference
  https://dxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/mobile/android/base/java/org/mozilla/gecko/activitystream/ActivityStreamPreference.java
* Android Security Tips #IPC
  https://developer.android.com/training/articles/security-tips.html#IPC

Feel free to ask any question. :)

Comment 5

[Ethan Tseng [:ethan]]

We don't need to do this bug due to design change.