December 2025 Tor News [HTML]

Published on 2025-12-05

This month's newsletter looks at Mexico lifting Tor restrictions on government sites, Tor's deployment of a new encryption mechanism for relays, and the anti-censorship team's lessons from combating blocks in Iran and Russia. Plus updates on Tor Browser Alpha's shift to a new release cycle and the latest Arti 1.8.0 features.

Free the Internet: The Tor Project's annual fundraiser

Is the internet today the internet you want for future generations? What if instead of for-profit greed, rampant privacy violations, and pervasive government spying, we could have a different relationship with the internet?

What if we could FREE THE INTERNET from the chains of surveillance and censorship?

Tor is a building block for a free internet, and it takes our collective efforts to improve and amplify it. That's why during the next three months, the Tor Project will be holding a fundraising campaign during which we ask for your support to advance digital freedom. During this period, your donation will be matched by our supporters at Power Up Privacy: https://powerupprivacy.com/. This means a $25 donation will have a $50 impact--and all donations over $25 will qualify you for fun Tor merchandise. Learn more here: https://https://blog.torproject.org/2025-fundraiser-donations-matched/

Mexican government partially unblocks secure internet

Mexico blocked Tor access to government websites citing security concerns. The current administration lifted the main block earlier this year, though some sites appear to remain restricted. Ironically, the government had previously used Tor for its own anti-corruption whistleblower system while blocking citizens. 

Learn more in this guest post you can find on our blog. If you have a relevant story you want to share with the Tor community, please get in touch via press[at]torproject.org: https://blog.torproject.org/mexican-government-partially-unblocks-tor/

Counter Galois Onion: Improved encryption for Tor circuit traffic

Tor is upgrading its relay encryption algorithm for improved security. In upcoming releases, Arti and Tor will both support a new encryption algorithm called Counter Galois Onion (CGO). CGO prevents attackers from tampering with encrypted traffic, adds forward secrecy, and brings Tor's encryption up to modern standards. Find more details and detailed schematics here: https://blog.torproject.org/introducing-cgo/

Staying ahead of censors in 2025: What we've learned from fighting censorship

in Iran and Russia

In 2025, Tor faced some of the toughest censorship yet. From Iran’s wartime internet blackouts to Russia’s rapidly evolving blocking tactics. Tor’s anti-censorship team sprung into action and strengthened Snowflake, deployed the new Conjure pluggable transport, and made WebTunnel more wide available. Thanks to real-time monitoring, community feedback, and faster bridge distribution, Tor keeps people connected when it matters most. Want to help? You can support our mission by running a Snowflake proxy or hosting a WebTunnel bridge. Learn more here: https://blog.torproject.org/staying-ahead-of-censors-2025/

Keeping up with the latest releases

The Future of Tor Browser Alpha

Starting with Tor Browser 16.0a1, the Tor Browser Alpha release channel will be based on Firefox Rapid Release rather than Firefox Extended Support Release. Among other factors, this means we are basically moving to one major feature release per year. You can find a full overview of the expected changes and our rationale behind making them here: https://blog.torproject.org/future-of-tor-browser-alpha/

Arti 1.8.0

Arti is our ongoing project to create a next-generation Tor implementation in Rust. Arti 1.8.0 introduces a new, usage-based, timeout for strongly isolated circuits. Find out everything that's new in the release notes: https://blog.torproject.org/arti_1_8_0_released/

Other releases

New Release: Tor Browser 15.0.2, November 19, 2025

New Release: Tails 7.2, November 13, 2025

Upcoming Events

State of the Onion 2025 – Community Day, December 10, 2025 - 17:00 UTC

Join us for part 2 of State of the Onion: Community Day. Building on this year's theme, we've invited other members of the Tor community to share insights from their work and how they are supporting the fight to FREE THE INTERNET. Find more information about how to join live via X, YouTube, or using an Onion Service: https://blog.torproject.org/community-day-state-of-the-onion-2025/.

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