v2 onion services deprecation, Bug Smash 2021, Announcing Arti
Onion service admins must upgrade to v3 onion services as soon as possible
If you are an onion site administrator, you must upgrade to v3 onion services as soon as possible.
As we announced last year, v2 onion services will be deprecated and obsolete in Tor 0.4.6.x. As of April 2021, Tor Browser Alpha uses this version of Tor and v2 addresses no longer work in this and future versions of Tor Browser Alpha.
When Tor Browser stable moves to Tor 0.4.6.x in October 2021, v2 onion addresses will be completely unreachable.
Why are we deprecating v2 onion services? Safety. Technologies used in v2 onion services are vulnerable to different kinds of attacks, and v2 onion services are no longer being developed or maintained. The new version of onion services provides improved encryption and enhanced privacy for administrators and users.
It's critical that onion service administrators migrate to v3 onion services and work to inform users about this change as soon as possible.
In 2019, we launched Tor’s Bug Smash Fund to raise money that would support our developers finding and fixing bugs in our software and to conduct routine maintenance. Maintenance isn’t a flashy new feature, and that makes it less interesting to many traditional funders, but it’s what keeps the reliable stuff working--and with your support, we’ve closed 370 Bug Smash Fund tickets.
Over the past year or so, we've been working on "Arti", a project to rewrite Tor in Rust. Thanks to funding from Zcash Open Major Grants (ZOMG), we can finally put the Arti project up in our priorities list, and devote more time to it.
Every year, the Tor Project completes a Form 990 and independent audit of our financial statements. After completing standard audits for 2019-2020, our federal tax filings and audit are both available. We upload all of our tax documents and publish a blog post about these documents in order to be transparent.
(July 20) This version updates Firefox to version 78.12.0esr on Windows, macOS, and Linux, and Firefox to version 90.1.1 on Android. This version includes important security updates to Firefox on Windows, macOS, and Linux, and Android. Full changelog.
(July 13) What's new: After connecting to a local network, a Tor Connection assistant helps you connect to the Tor network. This new assistant is most useful for users who are at high risk of physical surveillance, under heavy network censorship, or on a poor Internet connection. Full changelog.
The Tor Project is a US 501(c)(3) non-profit organization advancing human rights and freedoms by creating and deploying free and open-source anonymity and privacy technologies, supporting their unrestricted availability and use, and furthering their scientific and popular understanding.