Guide: Portable Tor Browser with Google Chrome

If you're into online privacy and anonymity then you already know about The Tor Project. It is the standard for keeping yourself and your browsing habits private and anonymous online. The Tor project has a portable version of their software which includes the Firefox web browser (portable version of course.) This guide will help you setup this portable version of Tor to use Google Chrome instead of Firefox for those of us who don't really like Firefox. 

First thing you need to do is download the self extracting executable for Tor Browser. You can extract the contents of this package anywhere you want and use Tor Browser to browse the internet safely on any computer you can stick a USB stick in. In order to replace Firefox as the default browser for the package continue reading.

The next thing you need to do is download ChromePlus. ChromePlus is a version of Chrome that is portable and based on the open source version of Chrome called Chromium. I had basically two choices for the portable version of Chrome to incorporate into the Tor Browser Portable version. I chose ChromePlus because the other project is in german, uses a custom launcher and is not configurable like ChromePlus. For instance in the official Tor Browser release the portable Firefox is configured to automatically start in "Private" mode. ChromePlus has additional features that allow it to be configured to start in "Incognito" mode. I liked having that option. These "private" browsing mode allow for increased security while browsing, and since this portable tor browser with chrome is all about security thats what we want!

On with the guide. The next thing you will need to do is delete the portable Firefox folder from within the Tor Browser folder. You won't need it for our purposes. After that create a folder called "Browser" inside the Tor Browser folder. This is where we will put the contents of the ChromePlus zip file. After you have extracted the contents of the ChromePlus zip file into the Browser folder there are only two more things you need to do.

The next thing to do is edit the vidalia.conf file. This is the file that launches the browser exe. You will find it in Tor Browser->Data->Vidalia->Vidalia.conf. Under [General] remove the first line that talks about the browser path. Just delete it. On the second line you should see

BrowserExecutable=blahblahblah

change that to

BrowserExecutable=.\\Browser\\chrome.exe

Save the file and lets move on.

The last thing you need to do is configure ChromePlus to use Tor and it associated stuff as a proxy to the internet. In ChromePlus click on the wrench in the upper right hand corner and select "Enhanced Options." This is the awesome "more options" that ChromePlus gives compared to Google Chrome. Under the left side bar click Startup Options and check the "Use the proxy(ip+port) option and put 127.0.0.1 in as the IP address and 8118 as the port. These are the default IP and port for the Tor Browser portable release. Just for your information if you didn't already know, 127.0.0.1 is the loopback address for your computer. Not some foreign website or anything.

Thats it. ChromePlus using Tor is ready to go. For increased security you can select "Startup as Incognito" options just below the proxy configuration in the enhanced options. Another level of security would be to use https instead of http for all your browsing while you are using your custom Tor Browser with Chrome. i personally set my homepage in this portable browser to Encrypted Google, and i set another tab to go to Tor Check. Obviously you can use anything you want.

Until Next time
d4v3

Ruby saved the day.

require 'FileUtils'
Dir.glob("*.xml").each do f
if File.read(f) =~ /searchstring/ then
FileUtils.mv(f, "c:/destination_directory/" + f)
end
end

This code cycles through the contents of every xml file in the current directory looking for the search string then moves the files that have the string to another directory.

Ruby in Windows Path syntax

basedir = "c:/test"

Notice the / and not \

duh
*smacks head*