Recently, Private Window with Tor only ever shows as Disconnected. It used to work fine up till a couple of weeks ago. I installed Tor Browser and it works fine, so there is no network or OS restriction on using Tor.
I am running Brave Browser Version 1.59.124 Chromium: 118.0.5993.117 (Official Build) (x86_64) on macos 14.1 Sonoma. I only noticed this after updating to macos 14, and I think there have been at least 2 updates to Brave Browser since the last time I used Private Window with Tor.
I have tried disabling then re-enabling Private Window with Tor in settings, but this has not fixed things.
I noticed someone else posted a similar question today (without much info - but they got a reply asking for more info - grr), so I thought I’d make my question more complete.
brave://tor-internals/ returns the following:
General Info tab
Tor version:
Tor process ID: -1
Tor Proxy URI:
Tor connection status: Disconnected
Tor initialization progress:
Update : checked in my Cloudflare Zero Trust logs - they have started blocking tor.bravesoftware.com in their DNS blocking which must have changed recently. It is under the Security Threats list. I have whitelisted it, so hopefully that will resolve things soon.
Same issue here, in a public library otherwise supporting tor. I can boot and run Tails without hassle, or use my own tor service daemon on Void Linux. I even proxied Brave through Void’s tor daemon, which works fine.
In short, the library has no problems with tor, just with Brave’s built-in tor; brave://tor-internals shows me the same blank stuff as dunxd, and live port inspection shows none opening. Brave is not launching its internal tor.
The library’s upstream ‘security’ provider is something called WatchGuard HTTP Proxy. A direct, unproxied look via Firefox browser at your website tor.bravesoftware.com shows this site block notice:
Request denied by WatchGuard HTTP Proxy.
Reason: Category ‘Proxy Avoidance’ denied by WebBlocker policy ‘Patron-WebBlocker’.
Please contact your administrator for assistance.
More Details:
Method: GET
Host: tor.bravesoftware.com
Path: /
I hope Brave contacts WatchGuard. After all, the library has no policy against tor, it’s just an overly aggressive rule coming from the vendor. This vendor also blocks the RetroShare.cc open-source software site for no reason. It needs to review its dataset.
Brave could add a setting for tor tabs to use an external tor daemon. Proxying via command line switches hits all Brave windows indiscriminately, and with lower security, because tor tabs still won’t work (they expect the internal tor), so that one may only use ‘normal’ windows which might leak. Tor tab code must incorporate daemon choice.
