First Start-up Dialogue

During the first start-up after the installation of TorBox, a handful of dialogue boxes have to be answered. To protect people in authoritarian countries, TorBox will only connect to the tor network after answering these questions. The questions are the following:

  1. By default, the countermeasure against tightly configured firewalls is used. Do you want to keep using the countermeasure against tightly configured firewalls? We recommend answering it with YES because this will increase the probability that TorBox can connect to the tor network. We don’t know any negative side effects; nevertheless, you probably should deactivate this feature if you run bridge relay and face problems.
  1. Select from where the Internet is coming from. After choosing a source, TorBox will give you some more information and ask if you want to continue. Answering YES will ask you if you’re going to have a direct connection or if you have to use a captive portal. Open access means that you already have entered a password to access the provided network, and you don’t have to fill out an additional login/authentication page. By contrast, captive portals are additional login pages for which you have to register.
  1. TorBox’s automatic counter actions (TACA) and Vanguards are activated by default. We recommend starting both. TACA avoids downtime to the tor network and improves user experience, especially on connections with lower bandwidth (for more information, see also here). Vanguards protect against guard discovery and related traffic analysis attacks. A guard discovery attack enables an adversary to determine the guard node(s) used by a Tor client and/or Tor onion service. Once the guard node is known, traffic analysis attacks that can deanonymize an onion service (or onion service user) become easier.
  1. TorBox asks if OBFS4 should be used, which is recommended if TorBox is used in a highly authoritarian country. If this is not the case, we recommend choosing NO.
  1. After the last question, tor will be unblocked, and TorBox will connect to the tor network. If successful, the highlighted message “Bootstrapped 100% (done): Done” is shown. The log screen can be exited with CTRL-C, and TorBox will ask you if you saw the “Bootstrapped 100% (done): Done” message.
  1. If TorBox was unable to connect the Tor network and you answer is NO (you didn’t see the “Bootstrapped 100% (done): Done” message), TorBox will ask if you want to enable the countermeasure against tightly configured firewalls or if you want to switch to the “Countermeasure sub-menu” to choose Meek-Azure or Snowflake.

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Problems and questions

  • Can Tor protect me against tracking and/or fingerprinting in webbrowser to guaranty my anonymity accessing a website? –> see here.
  • How can I access the TorBox Menu? –> see here.
  • I selected to use OBFS4 bridges with pluggable transports when I started TorBox the first time, but so far I’m unable to connect to the Internet. TorBox received a valid IP from the router, but tor stuck at “Bootstrapped 0%”. What can I do? –> see here.