quBO: Manage uBlock Origin and Tor Browser "the qubes way"

[apparatus]

@qubist

I suppose by DVM you mean the disposable, not the disposable template?

Yes.

@qubist

This is sub-optimal for 2 reasons:

1. Every newly started disposable would mean connection to addons.mozilla.org to download the extension.

That is not only a privacy issue (fingerprintable behaviour) but also means additional traffic (not much but it does matter on limited mobile plans) + extra time to download. If one starts a browser disposable 50 times a day, this means 50 times downloading the same data.

2. In case of a network issue (e.g. the browser cannot connect to addons.mozilla.org for some reason), the extension will not be installed.

quBO avoids both those problems.

Once you have the extension and the filters locally, you can use them with any Firefox-based browser in any qube (I will add easy support for clearnet Firefox later).

The linked guide is not downloading the extension every time, it’s checking in caching qube (e.g. sys-whonix) whatever the extension already downloaded and whatever it’s the latest version and only downloading the extension if needed:

    url = 'https://addons.mozilla.org/api/v5/addons/addon/ublock-origin/versions/?page_size=1'
    response = requests.get(url, proxies=proxies)
    addon_latest_json = response.json()['results'][0]
    if not os.path.exists(addon_dest_file) or sha256sum(addon_dest_file) != addon_latest_json['file']['hash'].split(':')[1]:
        download_file(addon_latest_json['file']['url'], proxies, addon_dest_file)