Why does orbot's source code contain binary files for iptables?

Question

According to a ticket in your bug tracker, the source code for Orbot contains binary files for iptables.

To me, this sounds like Orbot is built off of some closed-source code. How then could this portion be scrutinized? Should we be worried about this?

Perhaps ticket 4444: “Iptables-binary bundled with Orbot segfaults on Android 2.3.5”? — Steven Murdoch, Commented Oct 4, 2013 at 8:27

weasel - Peter Palfrader · Accepted Answer · 2013-10-04 18:49:38Z

4

Seems like the binaries got removed from the current development tree with git commit 9d6f3c8 in August 2013 as they were apperently "unneeded old".

answered Oct 4, 2013 at 5:47

5,1481 gold badge24 silver badges39 bronze badges

link to (still open) ticket: dev.guardianproject.info/issues/1735
– Cory
Commented Oct 4, 2013 at 16:55
1

I know iptables is open source, but you can't verify that these files were compiled from the original source because the are already compiled.
– Cory
Commented Oct 4, 2013 at 17:00
1

Seems like the binaries were not removed. Found iptables in orbot's current version (12.0.5) source. page for that file's history shows it was added back in AFTER the commit you linked to: gitweb.torproject.org/orbot.git/history/HEAD:/res/raw/iptables Fdroid is hosting an old version of orbot for this very reason. They only host fully open source code.
– Cory
Commented Oct 4, 2013 at 17:07
@cory, clarified my statement - it was only about the current git tree.
– weasel - Peter Palfrader
Commented Oct 4, 2013 at 18:50

Add a comment |

1 Answer 1