Getting Tor to proxy connections from inside the VMWare Browser Appliance
Introduction
Tor is good, but periodically there are applications which do not proxy as safely as we might like (java vm, I'm looking at you). It is possible to set the VMWare Browser appliance to proxy through a standard windows tor+privoxy setup.
Procedure
These directions are specifically for the VMWare Player playing the Browser Appliance vm. Don't yell at me if they don't work with anything else.
- Configure Tor and Privoxy as usual for windows. Verify that they work.
- Configure your VMWare machine to use the "Host-only" setting. (this is done by double clicking the green network adaptor icon in the lower right corner of the running VM, or in the VM > Settings... > Hardware > Ethernet section).
- Determine what IP address your host system is running on the device called "VMware Network Adapter VMnet1". Mine was set to 192.168.23.1 by default.
- Open privoxy setup file config.txt and modify the line (substituting your IP address found above and favorite port.): {{{listen-address 127.0.0.1:8118 to: listen-address 192.168.23.1:8118}}}
- Open firefox from within the running VM and set it to use the IP and port you just configured.
- Browse!