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firefox.profile.i2p

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What it is

**Attention: ** If you’re on Windows, this is probably not the browser you’re looking for. An official one is now available from the i2p website . It is largely the same as this one, but supports multiple languages and has more focus on the needs of Windows users. This is still a reasonable choice for a Linux I2P Browser.

This is a set of tools for major Desktop computing platforms(Windows, Mac OSX, and Linux) which automatically configures a Firefox browser for use with i2p. It attempts to minimize the amount of user interaction that is required to get the browser up and running correctly. It requires an i2p router and either a Firefox or Tor Browser to run.

To the end of simplicity, it attempts to make use of standard, familiar installation procedures for each of these platforms. The Windows package is just a regular installer.exe/uninstaller.exe pair. You download either Firefox or the Tor Browser Bundle and install it first. Then you download the installer from the github releases , and run it. It will place two items on the start menu and two shortcuts on the desktop, any of which will launch a browser pre-configured to use i2p.

On OSX, the goal is to create a .dmg application image but I’m stalled here for the moment while I wait for more access to an OSX machine.

On GNU/Linux it’s more of a collection of tools for a variety of package managers. Ubuntu users will probably find the snap package most convenient. It just bundles Firefox and the scripts that make sure the configuration is correct together in their little snap package and runs it from inside the container. There are also a variety of other options for other platforms.

What it configures is a profile for Firefox, set up to use i2p, with an accompanying launcher for easy use. It also comes pre-configured to disable certain features that may weaken the anonymity that i2p provides, and with NoScript and HTTPS Everywhere.

For more information, see: DETAILS.md

Much of this is ready for interested parties to test, but it’s still just being tested and the rough edges are still being figured out. Use at your own risk.

For now, the testing release page is here: Github Releases where the Windows installer has been made available. The “current” release will always track the newest working version. Numbered releases are the latest version that I’m testing. There’s not really a coherent rationale to the version numbers yet. I move them when I add a feature to make sure I know what to uninstall.

Coarse Changelog/Roadmap

Donate

Automatic Setup (Recommended, Windows) Standalone guide

  1. Install the Firefox web browser. You can download it from Mozilla’s web site . Alternatively, if you’re using the latest testing version of the profile, it will use a Tor Browser if one is found in a default location, which you can get from the Tor Browser Bundle download page . This may provide additional security.
  2. Download the i2p Firefox profile installer, install-i2pbrowser.exe, from This releases page and run it. If Firefox was not detected in the default location, then you will be offered a menu to select it in a custom location.
  3. To start Firefox with the i2p Browsing profile, click the shortcut to “I2PBrowser-Launcher” or “Private Browsing-I2PBrowser-Launcher” from your Start Menu or your Desktop.

Run-From-Zip (Alternative, Windows)

  1. Install the Firefox web browser. You can download it from Mozilla’s web site . The browser must be installed in a default location selected by the Firefox installer for this to work. This version does work with Tor Browser yet.
  2. Download the i2p Firefox profile zip bundle, i2pbrowser-windows.zip, from This releases page
  3. To start Firefox with the i2p Browsing profile, double-click the i2pbrower.bat script.

Automatic Setup (OSX) Standalone guide

Entirely Untested. I’ve managed to build .dmg files that contain the scripts annd the profile. They should work, but until I get a Mac, I won’t know for sure. To generate one on a Mac, install create-dmg from brew and run 

    make osx
  1. Install the Firefox Web Browser from Mozilla’s web site . This version doesn’t integrate with a Tor Browser Bundle yet.
  2. Install the .dmg file you generated with make.
  3. Launch the I2PBrowser.sh script.

Automatic Setup Standalone guide (Debian, Ubuntu, apt-based with Firefox-ESR)

A pre-built deb(for now, crudely generated with checkinstall) is able to configure an i2p browser on Debian-based distributions as long as they package Firefox, NoScript, and HTTPS-Everywhere. This deb simply configures system-firefox with alternate defaults and configures launchers to use them with. Note that in this configuration, Firefox will also have the system plugins installed in Debian.

  1. Download the i2pbrowser-helper .deb package from the releases page .

  2. Double-click the newly downloaded .deb file and install it.

  3. Run I2PBrowser.sh and/or I2PBrowser-Private.sh to launch Firefox with the i2p browsing profile. 

    #! /bin/sh
wget -c https://github.com/eyedeekay/firefox.profile.i2p/releases/download/0.04/i2pbrowser-helper_all.deb
sudo apt-get install ./i2pbrowser-helper_all.deb

Building a .deb with Checkinstall

If you don’t want to trust the deb I generated, then it’s also very simple to generate your own from this source code.

  1. Install git, make, and checkinstall

  2. Clone this repository and change to the newly created directory

  3. run ‘make debfirefox’

  4. Install the generated package. 

    # /bin/sh
sudo apt-get install git make checkinstall
git clone https://github.com/eyedeekay/firefox.profile.i2p && cd firefox.profile.i2p
make debfirefox
i2pbrowser-helper_all.deb
sudo apt-get install ./i2pbrowser-helper_all.deb

Snap Setup Standalone guide (Cross-Distribution)

The latest snap can be installed from edge and has desktop shortcuts. Get it from the Snap Store

  1. Open a terminal and run: ‘snap install –edge i2pbrowser’

  2. Run the shortcut from your application menu or /snap/bin/i2pbrowser from a terminal. 

    #! /bin/sh
snap install --edge i2pbrowser
/snap/bin/i2pbrowser

It’s not likely that integrating a snap with Tor Browser will be possible unless Tor Browser becomes available as a snap, which seems unlikely. I can think of some things that might work but none are… perfectly clear to me. Auto-updating of the profile via the install script isn’t possible in the snap, but snapcraft.io seems to get updates about ~9 minutes after this repository does. That means a s simple ‘snapcraft refresh –edge i2pbrowser’ will automatically update the profile for you.

Make Setup Standalone guide (Cross-Distribution)

  1. Install the firefox-esr browser from your distribution or from Mozilla’s web site. Be sure to place it into your PATH as firefox, for example, /usr/bin/firefox.

  2. Download the GNU/Linux zip bundle from the releases page and unpack it.

  3. Run the following make targets: 

    #! /bin/sh
make recopy-linux
sudo make install

When it’s done, you can run ‘I2PBrowser.sh’ to start the i2p browser profile.

Docker Setup Standalone guide (Linux, probably OSX, Windows?)

Linux and Mac OSX users can run the browser within a Docker container. This image uses an entirely un-official upstream image of the Tor Browser Bundle from Dockerhub, also authored by me. Should you wish to build it yourself, instructions can be found below. However, if you wish to run the i2p Browser from the Docker Hub and have i2p installed on the host, you may simply: 

    docker run --rm -i -t \
        -e DISPLAY=:0 \
        --net host \
        --name i2p-browser \
        --volume /tmp/.X11-unix:/tmp/.X11-unix:ro \
        eyedeekay/firefox.profile.i2p

To launch a Tor Browser configured with this profile from the terminal.

In order to examine or build the upstream package locally, see: eyedeekay/tbb-docker .

If you have trouble connecting the Dockerized application to the X server, you may need to authorize the Docker user to access the X server. 

    xhost +"local:docker@"

Manual Setup (Various Linuxes) Standalone guide (Debian-Derived distros see Footnote #2)

NOTE: I’m probably going to add an apparmor profile to this setup for optional installation.

  1. Install Firefox-ESR via the method preferred by your Linux distribution.
  2. Download the i2pbrowser-gnulinux.zip from here. If you prefer, an identical i2pbrowser-gnulinux.tar.gz is also available.
  3. Extract it.
  4. Run ./install.sh install from within the extracted folder. Alternatively, run ./install.sh run to run entirely from within the current directory.

If you want to just copy-paste some commands into your terminal, you could: 

    #! /bin/sh
    curl https://github.com/eyedeekay/firefox.profile.i2p/releases/download/current/i2pbrowser-gnulinux.tar.gz --output i2pbrowser-gnulinux.tar.gz
    tar xvzf i2pbrowser-gnulinux.tar.gz
    cd i2pbrowser-gnulinux
    ./install.sh install

Once you’ve run “./install.sh install” you can safely delete the profile folder if you wish. Alternatively, you could choose to run from the downloaded profile directory by running “./install.sh run” or “./install.sh private” instead. This will always start in Private Browsing mode, and if you delete the download folder, you will need to re-download it to run the browser from the directory again.

Here’s some more information about how to use the install script: 

    usage:
        ./install.sh install     # install the profile and browser launcher
        ./install.sh uninstall   # remove the profile and browser launcher
        ./install.sh alias       # configure a .bash_alias to launch the browser
        ./install.sh usage       # show this usage message
        ./install.sh update      # update the profile
        ./install.sh run         # run from this directory without installing
            firefox --no-remote --profile "$DIR/.firefox.profile.i2p.default" about:blank $1
        ./install.sh private     # run in private mode from this directory without installing
            firefox --no-remote --profile "$DIR/.firefox.profile.i2p.private" --private about:blank $1
        ./install.sh debug       # run with debugger from this directory without installing
            firefox --jsconsole --devtools --no-remote --profile "$DIR/.firefox.profile.i2p.debug" --private about:blank $1

Screenshots

Figure D: check.kovri.i2p results

Figure E: Browser Fingerprint

Footnotes Download these notes

Differences from Tor Browser

TL:DR There is no security slider, and to compensate for this issue, the Browser is configured to enable fewer features by default. It also can’t do stuff like notify you about your browser window size.

This browser takes cues from the Tor Browser, which is also a reasonable choice for an i2p browser, but it has some absolutely critical differences from the Tor Browser which will probably not come into play, but which you should be aware of. First, there is no Torbutton, which means that this browser lacks the coarse global controls of sensitive browser features that the Torbutton provides to the Tor Browser Bundle. In order to deal with this issue the default NoScript configuration is more restrictive.

Debian/Ubuntu users can use Whonix stretch-testng i2p browser launcher

If you are using Debian or Ubuntu, or probably any other up-to-date apt-based Linux distribution, there’s another option which may you may prefer. In order to do this, one must add the Whonix apt package repository to your package sources, and install their tb-starter package from their stretch-testing repository. Don’t worry, I’ll take you through it step-by-step.

This guide is intended for users who are aware of the implications of using third-party repositories on their Debian-based Linux PC’s. In particular, Whonix is designed to pro-actively prevent certain kinds of attacks from affecting the user, and their packages sometimes overwrite things like hosts files and such with versions suitable for the Whonix threat model. While I currently use the following packages successfully on both Debian and Ubuntu Linux at this time, I cannot guarantee that they will work for everyone’s specific configuration.

First, you’ll need to obtain and install the Whonix package signing keys. This will allow you to be sure that you are obtaining the correct package from the repository automatically. 

sudo apt-key --keyring /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/whonix.gpg adv --keyserver hkp://ipv4.pool.sks-keyservers.net:80 --recv-keys 916B8D99C38EAF5E8ADC7A2A8D66066A2EEACCDA

Next, you need to tell apt, the package manager, where to look for the packages in question. The i2p browser is still in stretch-testers, so that is the version we will be using. ‘main’ means that the profile is Free Software per the Debian Free Software Guidelines. 

echo 'deb http://deb.whonix.org stretch-testers main' | tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/whonix-testing.list # apt-transport-* season to taste

Now, you must tell apt to update it’s list of available packages so it becomes aware of the Tor Browser packages. 

sudo apt-get update

Finally, install tb-starter and tb-updater. 

sudo apt-get install tb-starter tb-updater

The last step is to run update-i2pbrowser. This will pre-configure the i2p browser on your system. 

update-i2pbrowser

If for some reason, update-i2pbrowser doesn’t work(Usually this is in the absence of Tor on the system) you may run 

update-i2pbrowser --devbuildpassthrough

instead.

Finally, you need to add the following lines to the bottom of /etc/i2pbrowser.d/31_i2p_default.conf. 

    # /etc/i2pbrowser.d/31_i2p_default.conf
    TOR_HIDE_UPDATE_CHECK_UI=1
    TOR_NO_DISPLAY_NETWORK_SETTINGS=1
    TOR_HIDE_BROWSER_LOGO=1
    TOR_SKIP_LAUNCH=1
    TOR_SKIP_CONTROLPORTTEST=1

Or, you can just run these commands, now that you know what they do: 

    #! /bin/sh
    sudo apt-key --keyring /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/whonix.gpg adv --keyserver hkp://ipv4.pool.sks-keyservers.net:80 --recv-keys 916B8D99C38EAF5E8ADC7A2A8D66066A2EEACCDA
    echo 'deb http://deb.whonix.org stretch-testers main' | tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/whonix-testing.list # apt-transport-* season to taste
    sudo apt-get update
    sudo apt-get install tb-starter tb-updater
    update-i2pbrowser

Browser Security Testing:

Get the source code:
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