Introduction
In this blog post I will demonstrate how to install tor browser on ubuntu. The installation process is same for all debian distros like kali linux.
First of all let’s talk about what is TOR & how to use it?
TOR basically keeps you anonymous by routing through a network of servers to obfuscate the origin of the data. Please note that because it bounces your connection in that network, it will slow your internet connection.
In the picture above, the yellow ball is the actual data which is wrapped around multiple layers of encryption just like an onion, so each time it talks to a server in tor network, the server will decrypt one layer and pass it to other server & vice versa until it reaches the actual destination server.
What does each layer contain?
Decrypting each layer will give the info about where to send the data next, & decrypting it again (by peeling off another layer) will tell where to go next, vice versa.
Now, let’s talk about how to install tor on your linux distro. I am installing on kali linux, the process is same on any debian os like ubuntu or black buntu etc.
Download and extract tor browser
I am using wget to download the setup if you want to do it from the browser, use this link
First step in installing any software using apt package manager is by adding a link to sources.list.d. Create a list for tor source in sources.list.d,
vi /etc/sources.list.d/tor.list
add following links to tor.list, if you are on other debian distros you need select appropriate distribution from the link, in my case I chose stretch. I believe it should work for most of the debian distributions.
deb https://deb.torproject.org/torproject.org stretch main deb-src https://deb.torproject.org/torproject.org stretch main apt update wget https://www.torproject.org/dist/torbrowser/7.5.5/tor-browser-linux64-7.5.5_en-US.tar.xz tar -xvf tor-browser-linux64-7.5.5_en-US.tar.xz
Launching tor browser from command line
I always move all the software to /opt you can move it to /home/$user its just a personal choice. Let’s move to /opt
mv tor-browser_en-US /opt/tor-browser_en-US cd /opt/tor-browser_en-US/Browser ./start-tor-browser --detach
Certainly, this will launch your browser but as you can see that you always need to navigate to /opt/tor-browser_en-US/Browser . Let’s create a shortcut GUI icon.
Launching TOR browser from GUI
Alacarte is a GNOME menu editor which can be used to create/edit shortcuts. Let’s use this to create shortcut for the tor browser which we just installed. Install alacarte using apt-get using the command below.
sudo apt-get install alacarte
Let’s search for alacarte (“main menu”) & you can find the below window.
- New Item
- Name: “tor”
- Give below command for Command,
/opt/tor-browser_en-US/Browser/start-tor-browser --detach
Adding the icon
Finally, Let’s add the icon,
- click on the image section and browse for the icon
- select icon from here, /opt/tor-browser_en-US/Browser/browser/chrome/icons/default
After the all the changes being made the shortcut with the green icon should be available, drag the icon to launch bar & use it.
