Dev/Torified Wi-Fi Hotspot

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Development considerations on using Whonix to provide a Torified Wi-Fi Hotspot or Torified VPN server.

Reputational Considerations

• For now Whonix has a simple design and great reputation. At time of writing, no clearnet IP leak found ever. See Whonix Protection against Real World Attacks.
• If that gets mixed with android-anyting, the quality if leak protection could be lower due to issues causes on the Android, not Whonix side.

Torified WiFi Hotspot

Even if a WiFi USB stick was added to Whonix-Workstation^™... Possible causes for clearnet leaks on the Android side:

• The WiFi could go off / out of range. Then the device might jump to an untorified open WiFi.
• Users might turn off WiFi off while forgetting to keep mobile network (clearnet) turned off.
• madaidan:

  The mobile device wouldn't be isolated from local networks though. Nothing stops it from bruteforcing your neighbour's WiFi and deanonymizing you that way. Unlike in a Whonix workstation VM, where it can't access those.

• Adding all the security challenges of WiFi.
  • A 1) insecure WiFi + TLS is less of a problem than 2) insecure WiFi connection to Whonix-Gateway which would be even more of an issue. 1) could still be OK because TLS secures the contents of the connection. But 2) could be used to de-anonymize the user.
• Using a stock android device once non-anonymously, then routing all traffic over Tor would not be as anonymous as expected due to TransparentProxyLeaks.
  • TransparentProxyLeaks are not an issue in the usual Whonix, Whonix-Gateway^™ + Whonix-Workstation design. Mixing Whonix-Gateway^™ with stock android gives the developers of Whonix a lot less design abilities. Similar to using Whonix with other operating systems, Whonix-Custom-Workstation^™, see security comparison.

forum discussion: https://forums.whonix.org/t/whonix-gateway-whonix-workstation-torified-wi-fi-hotspot/4751

Using VPN

A VPN tunnel from Android to Whonix-Gateway or Whonix-Workstation.

Many Android phones do not have a fail closed mechanism. When the VPN connection gets interrupted, device continues to connect without VPN.

Related

• Dev/DHCP

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