Congestion control arrives, ban on Tor overturned in Russia, GSoC

Published on 2022-06-03

Congestion Control Arrives in Tor 0.4.7-stable!

https://blog.torproject.org/congestion-contrl-047/

We've released Tor 0.4.7.7, the first stable Tor release with support for congestion control. Congestion control eliminates the speed limit of current Tor, as well as reduces latency by minimizing queue lengths at relays. This results in significant performance improvements in Tor, as well as increased utilization of our network capacity. That means: faster Tor!

Tor Browser users: Upgrade to the latest version of Tor Browser, and you'll get the speed improvement benefits made possible with congestion control.

Exit relay operators: In order for users to see the benefits of congestion control improvements, we need our Exit relay operators to upgrade to the new Tor 0.4.7 stable series, asap! Packages for Debian, Ubuntu, and Fedora/CentOS/RHEL are already available.

All relay operators: Non-exit relay operators do not need to upgrade for congestion control to work, but this also means you may be surprised by the network effects of congestion control traffic running through your relays. You may need to set bandwidth limits.

Ban on Tor's website overturned in Russian court

With the help of digital rights group Roskomsvoboda, we successfully overturned a ban on the Tor Project's website in Russia! This means that the Russian governmental agency responsible for censorship will have to remove Tor from its block list.

While this is a huge victory for Tor and internet freedom, the fight is not over.

We will be returning to court for more hearings and litigation, and this time, Google is included as a third party in the case, as the Russian authorities are demanding that Tor Browser for Android be removed from the Play Store. We will keep you updated on new developments as they happen. Today, we celebrate the victory! Read more about the case on Roskomsvoboda's blog in Russian.

The Tor Project + OONI + Google Summer of Code

We are happy that the Tor Project is again participating in Google Summer of Code. Mentorship programs are very important for open source projects as they help us have one more way of bringing new contributors to our projects. Starting in June this year we will have three contributors working with mentors and their projects through Google Summer of Code:

Arti 0.4.0 is released: Robustness and API improvements

https://blog.torproject.org/arti_040_released/

Arti is our ongoing project to create a working embeddable Tor client in Rust. Arti 0.4.0 wraps up our changes to the configuration logic (https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/core/arti/-/issues/285), detects several kinds of unsafe filesystem configuration (https://docs.rs/fs-mistrust/latest/fs_mistrust/), and has a refactored directory manager to help us tolerate far more kinds of bootstrap failures (https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/core/arti/-/issues/329).

Next, we're working for feature-parity with Tor in netflow resistance and congestion control. We hope to have some progress by our next release, but we might not be finished by then.

We need your help to test Arti, find bugs, and suggest improvements! Visit our blog for more details about Arti 0.4.0 and how to get involved.

New Releases

Upcoming Events

What We're Reading

Join Our Community

Getting involved with Tor is easy. Run a relay to make the network faster and more decentralized: https://community.torproject.org/relay/

Run a bridge to help censored users access Tor: https://blog.torproject.org/run-tor-bridges-defend-open-internet

Learn about more opportunities to start collaborating: https://community.torproject.org/

Donate to help keep Tor fast, strong, and secure. https://torproject.org/donate/donate-phr-tn1

-- 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.

Health of the Tor network, Tor in the news, Arti 0.2.0

Published on 2022-05-01

Malicious relays and the health of the Tor network

https://blog.torproject.org/malicious-relays-health-tor-network/

Running relays is a significant contribution to our project and we've designed that process so that the barrier of entry is low, making it possible for a variety of people with different backgrounds to participate. This openness is important as it makes our network (and the privacy guarantees it offers) more robust and resilient to attacks. However, that low threshold of contributing to our network also makes it easier for malicious operators to attack our users, e.g. via Man-in-the-Middle (MitM) attacks at exit nodes.

Our latest blog post explains what we're doing to detect malicious actors (and remove their relays), how we developed these strategies, and what we're working on to make it harder for bad operators to run attacks. Additionally, we want to shine some light on this part of our day-to-day work at Tor. Because this is an arms race, we have to balance being transparent with effective detection of malicious actors. In this post we hope to offer more transparency about our approach without compromising the methods we use to keep our users safe.

Tor in the news

https://blog.torproject.org/tor-media-2021/

For the past few years, we’ve shared a post summarizing media related to Tor that was published during the previous year. On our blog (https://blog.torproject.org/tor-media-2021/), take a look at the moments Tor landed in the headlines in 2021, including coverage of onion service advancements, cryptocurrency donation records, our advocacy work, and changes in the censorship arms race.

Arti 0.2.0 is released: Your somewhat-stable API is here!

https://blog.torproject.org/arti_010_released/

Arti is our ongoing project to create a working embeddable Tor client in Rust. With version 0.2.0, our focus is on making Arti production-quality, by stress-testing the code, hunting for likely bugs and adding missing features that we know from experience that users will need.

From a user's point of view, most of the changes in Arti 0.2.0 are for improved performance and reliability. For developers, the most important change to be aware of is the new configuration code.

Whether you're a user or a developer, please give Arti a try, and let us know what you think. The sooner we learn what you need, the better our chances of getting it into an early milestone! Learn about Arti 0.2.0 and how to give it a try on our blog: https://blog.torproject.org/arti_020_released/.

New Releases

Upcoming Events

What We're Reading

Join Our Community

Getting involved with Tor is easy. Run a relay to make the network faster and more decentralized: https://community.torproject.org/relay/

Run a bridge to help censored users access Tor: https://blog.torproject.org/run-tor-bridges-defend-open-internet

Learn about more opportunities to start collaborating: https://community.torproject.org/

Donate to help keep Tor fast, strong, and secure. https://torproject.org/donate/donate-phr-tn1

--

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.

Thousands of new Tor bridges, supporting our community, fighting Russian censorship

Published on 2022-03-07

More than 1,000 new bridges added to the Tor network

https://blog.torproject.org/wrapping-up-bridges-campaign/

Last November, the Tor Project launched a campaign to get more bridges (https://blog.torproject.org/run-a-bridge-campaign/). The campaign goal was to increase the Tor network size and get 200 new obfs4 bridges. Not only did we achieve our modest goal, but we also reverted the trend of declining bridges in the network. The Tor network now has 2470 running bridges—meaning the number of Tor bridges has almost doubled!

The campaign was such a success for a couple of reasons. First, if you check the number of relays, you can see that in 10 days after the campaign began, we had already achieved the goal of 200 new bridges (https://metrics.torproject.org/networksize.csv?start=2021-10-30&end=2022-01-28). The community was really engaged and very excited to help other Tor users. Plus, it's nice to get Tor swag.

Second, following the relay metrics graph, you can see that after December 7th, the bridges graph increased considerably. This spike happened after we called everyone to fight against the emergent Tor censorship in Russia (https://blog.torproject.org/tor-censorship-in-russia/). Russia has the second largest number of Tor users, just after the United States. As censors are blocking Tor bridges, adding new bridges will help users connect to the Tor network. Read more about the results of the bridge campaign on our blog (https://blog.torproject.org/wrapping-up-bridges-campaign/).

Supporting the Tor community

https://blog.torproject.org/tor-community-partners/

The goal to help internet users privately access an uncensored web has united lots of different people from different places. Fostering this community is very important to us. Because of htis, over the last several years, we've invested in fundraising and operations staff who work together on something we affectionately call the “money machine.” This cross-organizational group handles the behind-the-scenes details of identifying, securing, and managing the resources that make Tor, and the Tor Project, possible.

We envisioned that this infrastructure would benefit more than just the organization, that it would allow us to give back to our community as well. We can be more successful if we could fight for human rights and privacy online in an interconnected, interdependent way–as a community, together.

Over the last year, part of this vision has come to life!

We are happy to share that now the Tor Project has been able to earn grants that include partners, or “subgrantees,” that are paid to help Tor complete a project. We would like to take the opportunity to highlight our partners, the work we’re doing together, and invite you to support them too (https://blog.torproject.org/tor-community-partners/).

Arti 0.1.0 is released: Your somewhat-stable API is here!

https://blog.torproject.org/arti_010_released/

Arti is our ongoing project to create a working embeddable Tor client in Rust. This month, we've reached our 0.1.0 milestone: this means that we now consider Arti's high-level APIs to be "mostly stable", and ready for experimental embedding in other projects.

We rely on users and volunteers to find problems in our software and suggest directions for its improvement. Although Arti isn't yet ready for production use, you can test it as a SOCKS proxy (if you're willing to compile from source) and as an embeddable library (if you don't mind a little API instability).

Whether you're a user or a developer, please give Arti a try, and let us know what you think. The sooner we learn what you need, the better our chances of getting it into an early milestone! Learn about Arti 0.1.0 and how to give it a try on our blog (https://blog.torproject.org/arti_010_released/).

Fighting back against Russia's censorship of Tor

https://tor.roskomsvoboda.org/en

In December 2021, the Russian government began blocking access to https://torproject.org. The Russian digital rights nonprofit Roskomsvoboda (Роскомсвобода, https://twitter.com/RuBlackListNET) and their legal team, representing the interests of The Tor Project and the entire Tor user community in Russia, has submitted a request for annulment of a judicial decision that led to the blocking of Tor.

Roskomsvoboda and the Tor Project believe that the decision of the court is unlawful and a subject to discharge due to the following circumstances:

  • The case was heard without the attendance of representatives of the Tor party, which violated their procedural rights and breached of the adversarial proceeding;
  • The decision violates the constitutional right to freely provide, receive and disseminate information and protect privacy;

Roskomsvoboda is representing Tor and fighting for privacy in Russia pro bono. Please consider making a donation to support their work (https://tor.roskomsvoboda.org/en).

New Release

Tor Browser 11.5a5 (Android) https://blog.torproject.org/new-release-tor-browser-115a5/ (March 3) Tor Browser 11.5a5 updates Firefox to 96.3.0 and includes bugfixes and stability improvements. Notably: we fixed a bug that was preventing users of Android Q and later from downloading files.

Arti 0.1.0 https://blog.torproject.org/arti_010_released/ (March 1) Primary new features are our builder API for constructing TorClient instances, and the ability to create unbootstrapped and bootstrap-on-demand TorClient instances.

Tor Browser 11.5a4 (Windows/macOS/Linux) https://blog.torproject.org/new-release-tor-browser-115a4/ (Feb. 18) This version includes important security updates to Firefox.

Tor Browser 11.0.6 (Windows, macOS, Linux, Android) https://blog.torproject.org/new-release-tor-browser-1106/ (Feb. 9) This version includes important security updates to Firefox. Tor Browser 11.0.6 updates Firefox on Windows, macOS, and Linux to 91.6.0esr.

Tor Browser 11.0.5 (Android) https://blog.torproject.org/new-release-tor-browser-1105/ (Feb. 7) This version includes important security updates to Firefox. Tor Browser 11.0.5 updates Firefox to 94.1.1 and includes bugfixes and stability improvements.

Arti 0.0.4 https://blog.torproject.org/arti_004_released/ (Feb. 1) There are features in our API for developers who need to isolate all circuits from one another, and for setting per-stream preferences across all streams opened through a client handle. The interfaces for creating and using the main TorClient type are also improved.

Upcoming Events

Tor Localization Hangout, March 18, 2022 https://blog.torproject.org/event/localization_hangout/

RightsCon, June 6, 2022 – June 10, 2022 https://blog.torproject.org/event/rightscon-2022/

Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium (PETS), July 11, 2022 – July 15, 2022 https://blog.torproject.org/event/pets-2022/

May Contain Hackers (MCH2022) - NL, July 22, 2022 – July 26, 2022 https://blog.torproject.org/event/mch2022/

Usenix Security, August 10, 2022 – August 12, 2022 https://blog.torproject.org/event/usenix-security-2022/

DEF CON (Las Vegas), August 11, 2022 – August 14, 2022 https://blog.torproject.org/event/defcon-2022/

What We're Reading

Tor users surge in Russia and Ukraine to access news and circumvent restrictions, Finbold. https://finbold.com/tor-users-surge-in-russia-and-ukraine-to-access-news-and-circumvent-restrictions/

How to use Tor and Snowflake to circumvent censorship, TNW. https://thenextweb.com/news/tor-snowflake-to-circumvent-censorship-guide

Behind the stalkerware network spilling the private phone data of hundreds of thousands, TechCrunch. https://techcrunch.com/2022/02/22/stalkerware-network-spilling-data/

We Need Answers About the CIA’s Mass Surveillance, EFF. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/02/we-need-answers-about-cias-mass-surveillance

IRS will end use of facial recognition after widespread privacy concerns, The Verge. https://www.theverge.com/2022/2/7/22922212/irs-id-me-facial-recognition-end-privacy-concerns

Experts Challenge Govt's Anti-Encryption Campaign, Open Rights Group. https://www.openrightsgroup.org/publications/experts-challenge-govts-anti-encryption-campaign/

Join Our Community

Getting involved with Tor is easy. Run a relay to make the network faster and more decentralized: https://community.torproject.org/relay/

Run a bridge to help censored users access Tor: https://blog.torproject.org/run-tor-bridges-defend-open-internet

Learn about more opportunities to start collaborating: https://community.torproject.org/

Donate to help keep Tor fast, strong, and secure. https://torproject.org/donate/donate-phr-tn1

-- 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.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/torproject Facebook: https://facebook.com/torproject Instagram: https://instagram.com/torproject Mastodon: http://mastodon.social/@torproject Tor Forum: https://forum.torproject.net/

Tor Browser's legacy in privacy, 2021 fundraising results, new Arti release

Published on 2022-02-01

Tor Browser: a legacy of advancing private browsing innovation

https://blog.torproject.org/tor-browser-advancing-privacy-innovation/

You probably know that our user-facing product for providing privacy, safety, and security online is Tor Browser. Tor Browser allows millions of people to easily exercise their human right to privacy, within the framework of a familiar web browser.

For many years, Tor Browser was the only web browser available that provided anything like its level of anti-tracking, anti-fingerprinting, and holistic privacy protections.

Today, we want to share a little bit of Tor Browser history with you--the origins of our features and designs, and how many of our innovative privacy and security features have been adopted by other browsers. Read about the history of Tor Browser, and what's still left to do, on our blog: https://blog.torproject.org/tor-browser-advancing-privacy-innovation/.

2021 Fundraising results: thank you!

https://blog.torproject.org/fundraising-2021-results/

During the last months of each year, the Tor Project (a 501(c)(3) nonprofit) holds a fundraiser to ask for your support. Let’s start with the basics—first being THANK YOU to everyone who contributed to this campaign! We want to share some of the results of this effort.

Last year during the same fundraising period, you contributed $376,315. This year, you contributed $940,361 towards helping people exercise their human right to privacy. Year over year, that’s a 150% increase! This includes a generous match from our Friends of Tor—Aspiration, Jon Callas, Craig Newmark, Jesse Powell, Wendy Seltzer, and several anonymous supporters.

Last year, you donated $58,296 in cryptocurrency. This year, about 58% of the total amount you contributed came to us in the form of cryptocurrencies, for a total of $548,647—that’s an 841% increase. Wow! Find out more about fundraising in 2021 at the Tor Project on our blog: https://blog.torproject.org/fundraising-2021-results/.

New Foundations for Tor Network Experimentation

https://blog.torproject.org/new-foundations-tor-network-experimentation/

Network experimentation is of vital importance to the Tor Project's research, development, and deployment processes. Experiments help us understand and estimate the viability of new research ideas, to test out newly written code, and to measure the real world effects of new features. Measurements taken during experiments help us gain confidence that Tor is working how we expect it should be.

Justin Tracey, Ian Goldberg, and Rob Jansen recently published work--Once is Never Enough: Foundations for Sound Statistical Inference in Tor Network Experimentation--that makes it easier to run Tor network experiments under simulation and helps us do a better job of quantifying confidence in simulation results. The research article, video presentation, and slides are available online.

To learn more about this research, read a summary of the article on our blog: https://blog.torproject.org/new-foundations-tor-network-experimentation/.

Arti 0.0.3 is released: Configuration, predictive circuits, and more!

https://blog.torproject.org/arti_003_released/

Arti is our ongoing project to create a working embeddable Tor client in Rust. It’s nowhere near ready to replace the main Tor implementation in C, but we believe that it’s the future.

We're working towards our 0.1.0 milestone in early March, where our main current priorities are stabilizing our APIs, and resolving issues that prevent integration. We're planning to do releases every month or so until we get to that milestone.

We need your help! We need feedback on our APIs. Sure, we think we're making them more complete and ergonomic… but it's the users' opinion that matters! Check out how to give feedback on Arti, and find out what's new in the latest release, on our blog.

New Releases

What We're Reading

We're Hiring

Join Our Community

Getting involved with Tor is easy. Run a relay to make the network faster and more decentralized: https://community.torproject.org/relay/

Run a bridge to help censored users access Tor: https://blog.torproject.org/run-tor-bridges-defend-open-internet

Learn about more opportunities to start collaborating: https://community.torproject.org/

Donate to help keep Tor fast, strong, and secure. https://torproject.org/donate/donate-phr-tn1

--

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.

Tor in 2022, Russian Censorship, PrivChat #6

Published on 2021-12-21

Tor in 2022, from the Tor Project's Executive Director

It has become a tradition for me to write a blog post at the end of each year, sharing my vision for the Tor Project for the upcoming year. Before talking about what I see for us in 2022, I want to reflect on 2021 and how this has been a year of resilience for Tor.

I'm very proud of every single person who contributed to Tor in 2021: the Tor Project staff, our core contributors, our community, and our supporters. 2020 was a year of sacrifice, but none of the stones thrown in our way stopped us from looking ahead and dreaming of a greater future. And in 2021, we bounced back to continue to shape this greater future.

My vision for 2022 is to keep Tor on this track, and our users are our priority when building this strategy. Visit our blog to read more about what you've help accomplish in 2021, and where I see our organization and community headed in the next year.

Responding to Tor censorship in Russia

https://blog.torproject.org/tor-censorship-in-russia/

Since December 1st, Internet providers in Russia have started to block access to Tor (https://meduza.io/news/2021/12/03/zhiteli-rossii-pozhalovalis-na-blokirovku-tor). As of Dec. 6, the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media (Roskomnadzor), a Russian government bureaucratic entity, also began to censor our website and subdomains (https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/community/support/-/issues/40050#note_2764565).

Russia is the country with the second largest number of Tor users, with more than 300,000 daily users or 15% of all Tor users (https://metrics.torproject.org/userstats-relay-table.html).

As it seems this situation may escalate to a country-wide Tor block, it's urgent that we respond to this censorship. Find out about how you can help users in Russia stay connected: blog.torproject.org/tor-censorship-in-russia/.

At the moment, Bridges bundled directly into Tor Browser are blocked for some users in Russia. You will need to get a working obfs4 bridge. Here's how, with instructions in Russian: https://forum.torproject.net/t/tor-blocked-in-russia-how-to-circumvent-censorship/982.

В настоящее время мосты, встроенные непосредственно в Tor Browser, в России заблокированы. Вам нужно получить работающий мост obfs4. О том, как использовать мосты Tor, можно прочесть здесь (на русском языке): https://forum.torproject.net/t/tor-blocked-in-russia-how-to-circumvent-censorship/982.

Privacy-Preserving and Incrementally-Deployable Support for Certificate Transparency in Tor

https://blog.torproject.org/tor-certificate-transparency/

In case you are not familiar with TLS certificates, websites present them to visitors in an attempt to prove their identities. For example, "I'm www.torproject.org and not some imposter". The problem is that certificates can be issued by many different central authorities. If one of these authorities gets the issuance process wrong, e.g. due to mistakes, coercion, or compromise, there may be a mis-issued certificate for some domain name.

The goal of Certificate Transparency is to ensure that certificate mis-issuance does not go unnoticed. The idea is that before a browser accepts a certificate as valid, it must be visible in a public Certificate Transparency log. The second issue of PETS 2021 featured a paper that brings Certificate Transparency to Tor. The authors of the paper--Rasmus Dahlberg, Tobias Pulls, Tom Ritter, and Paul Syverson--shared a summary of this work on the Tor blog: https://blog.torproject.org/tor-certificate-transparency/.

ICYMI: PrivChat #6 - Privacy is a Human Right

https://www.torproject.org/privchat/

In this edition of PrivChat, we're brought together a group of panelists with direct experience as activists or working with activist groups to talk about privacy and why it is so important to the fight for human rights.

Hear from panelist Ali Gharavi, Senior Programme Specialist, Swedish International Development Agency; Nadya Tolokonnika, artist, activist, and founding member of Pussy Riot; and Nicholas Merrill, founder and Executive Director, the Calyx Institute; and Cindy Cohn, Executive Director of EFF as host. Watch the recorded event on the Tor Project's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttQiA_GfI6s.

New Releases

What We're Reading

We're Hiring

Join Our Community

Getting involved with Tor is easy. Run a relay to make the network faster and more decentralized: https://community.torproject.org/relay/

Run a bridge to help censored users access Tor: https://blog.torproject.org/run-tor-bridges-defend-open-internet

Learn about more opportunities to start collaborating: https://community.torproject.org/

Donate to help keep Tor fast, strong, and secure. https://torproject.org/donate/donate-phr-tn1

-- 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.

Tor Browser 11, run a Tor bridge, & Tor user stories

Published on 2021-12-02

Help censored users, run a Tor bridge

https://blog.torproject.org/run-a-bridge-campaign/

Bridges are private Tor relays that serve as stepping stones into the network. When the Tor network is blocked, users can get a bridge to circumvent censorship. Thanks to our community of bridge operators, users in China, Belarus, Iran, and Kazakhstan can connect to the Tor network and access the free and open Internet.

We currently have approximately 1,200 bridges, 900 of which support the obfs4 obfuscation protocol. Unfortunately, these numbers have been decreasing since the beginning of this year. This is where we need your help. We need you to run a Tor bridge!

To show our appreciation for your volunteer work, we're offering unique and exclusive Tor reward kits. For example, if you run 10 obfs4 bridges for one year, you can get the Golden Gate bridge kit, including 1 Tor hoodie, 2 Tor T-shirts, and a sticker pack. Find out about running a bridge, helping censored users, and winning Tor swag! https://blog.torproject.org/run-a-bridge-campaign/

Tor and the humans who use it: the impact of your donation

https://blog.torproject.org/tor-and-the-humans-who-use-it/

We're in the middle of our annual fundraising campaign (https://torproject.org/donate/donate-phr-tn2) with the theme Privacy is a Human Right. The best way to demonstrate what you're making possible with your donation is to share the stories of people who use our tools and how Tor makes it possible for these people to exercise their human right to privacy. We went through the many excellent anonymous submissions to our Tor Stories survey and picked out some stories that demonstrate clearly what Tor makes possible for millions of every day.

What do you make possible with your donation to Tor?

Privacy.

  • "I use Tor as [my] everyday browser. Especially when I research doctors and other very personal stuff, it feels better, 'cause hopefully there won't be data for sale, telling the world about my assumed medical condition."

Censorship circumvention.

  • "I'm Chinese. In China, Google and Wikipedia are blocked. I can't stand [it]. Sometimes I use Tor to [get] across the GFW... Tor has provided me with a lot of help."

And more. Read more stories about using Tor for safety, dissent, and freedom from real Tor users on our blog: https://blog.torproject.org/run-a-bridge-campaign/.

Celebrating the first Global Encryption Day

https://blog.torproject.org/first-global-encryption-day

This month we celebrated the very first Global Encryption Day, organized by the Global Encryption Coalition, where we are a member. Global Encryption Day is an opportunity for businesses, civil society organizations, technologists, and millions of Internet users worldwide to show our communities why encryption matters. It's also a day for all of us to pledge to Make the Switch to encrypted services (like Tor!) and prioritize our privacy and security online.

On our blog, learn more about Global Encryption Day and the Global Encryption Day Statement, which the Tor Project and more than 140 other organizations signed this year: https://blog.torproject.org/first-global-encryption-day.

What's new in Tor Browser 11?

https://blog.torproject.org/new-release-tor-browser-11-0/

This month we released Tor Browser 11, which brought a new look to Tor Browser. Earlier this year, Firefox's user interface underwent a significant redesign aimed at simplifying the browser chrome, streamlining menus and featuring an all-new tab design. The redesign came to Tor Browser in this release.

To ensure it lives up to the new experience, each piece of custom UI in Tor Browser has been modernized to match Firefox's new look and feel. That includes everything from updating the fundamentals like color, typography and buttons to redrawing each of our icons to match the new thinner icon style.

We also rolled out the the final deprecation of v2 onion services. In Tor Browser 11, v2 onion services are no longer reachable, and users receive an "Invalid Onion Site Address" error instead. Read more about all things Tor Browser 11 on our blog: https://blog.torproject.org/new-release-tor-browser-11-0/.

ICYMI: State of the Onion 2021

This year, we held our second virtual State of the Onion, a compilation of updates from the Tor Project's different teams discussing highlights of their work during the year and what we are excited about in the upcoming year. Watch the full recording of the State of the Onion event: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNhIjtXuVzk.

Upcoming Events

New Releases

What We're Reading

We're Hiring

Join Our Community

Getting involved with Tor is easy. Run a relay to make the network faster and more decentralized: https://community.torproject.org/relay/

Run a bridge to help censored users access Tor: https://blog.torproject.org/run-a-bridge-campaign/

Learn about more opportunities to start collaborating: https://community.torproject.org/

Donate to help keep Tor fast, strong, and secure. https://torproject.org/donate/donate-phr-tn1

-- 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.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/torproject Facebook: https://facebook.com/torproject Instagram: https://instagram.com/torproject Mastodon: http://mastodon.social/@torproject YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TorProjectInc

Privacy is a human right, the Tor Forum, Tor + Matrix

Published on 2021-11-01

Stand up for the human right to privacy

Every year, the 501(c)(3) nonprofit that builds and distributes the technology behind the Tor network and Tor Browser holds a fundraiser and we ask for your support. And every year, we unveil new gifts and a slogan that highlight our values and the importance of Tor.

This year, our message is simple: Privacy is a human right. Privacy is about protecting what makes us humans: our day-to-day behavior, our personality, our fears, our relationships, and our vulnerabilities. Everyone deserves privacy.

However, governments, corporations, and other powerful entities block us from exercising our right to privacy in many different ways. And that's why Tor is here—to help you exercise your human right to privacy even when it's not easy.

Stand up for the human right to privacy by supporting Tor. Your donations will be matched, 1:1, by Friends of Tor now through the end of the year: https://torproject.org/donate/donate-phr-tn1.

Tor Forum: a new discussion platform for the Tor Community

Communicating and finding help online is crucial to building a solid community. After many years of using emails, mailing lists, blog comments, and IRC to help Tor users, we believe that time has come to improve our discussion channels.

Today, we're happy to announce a new discussion and user support platform: the Tor Forum. The new forum is powered by Discourse: a modern, friendly, and free and open source software.

We invite the Tor community to join the Tor Forum and contribute with us! https://blog.torproject.org/tor-forum-a-new-discussion-platform

Celebrating the first Global Encryption Day

This month we celebrated the very first Global Encryption Day, organized by the Global Encryption Coalition, where we are a member. Global Encryption Day is an opportunity for businesses, civil society organizations, technologists, and millions of Internet users worldwide to show our communities why encryption matters. It's also a day for all of us to pledge to Make the Switch to encrypted services (like Tor!) and prioritize our privacy and security online.

On our blog, learn more about Global Encryption Day and the Global Encryption Day Statement, which the Tor Project and more than 140 other organizations signed this year: https://blog.torproject.org/first-global-encryption-day.

Tor entering the Matrix

For a long time, the Tor community has been running many day-to-day activities using the IRC network known as OFTC. IRC has worked out well for us, and our community on IRC has been evolving over the years with new people joining in and new channels appearing for specific needs in the organization.

Now, we are happy to announce an expansion of the Tor community's day-to-day conversations by bridging our IRC community the Matrix platform. For regular Tor users, it means that you can chat with us using a friendly App like Element. We are looking forward to seeing new community members in our new Matrix bridged community!

Learn more about Tor + Matrix on our blog: https://blog.torproject.org/entering-the-matrix.

Upcoming Events

New Releases

What We're Reading

Join Our Community

Getting involved with Tor is easy. Run a relay to make the network faster and more decentralized: https://community.torproject.org/relay/

Run a bridge to help censored users access Tor: https://blog.torproject.org/run-tor-bridges-defend-open-internet

Learn about more opportunities to start collaborating: https://community.torproject.org/

Donate to help keep Tor fast, strong, and secure. https://torproject.org/donate/donate-phr-tn1

The state of onion services & PrivChat #5

Published on 2021-10-01

Tor Browser 11 will end support for v2 onion services

https://blog.torproject.org/v2-deprecation-timeline

As we announced last year, when Tor Browser 11 stable moves to Tor 0.4.6.x in October 2021, v2 onion addresses will be completely unreachable via Tor Browser.

If you are a Tor Browser user, you do not need to take any action, download any new software, or otherwise make changes to how you use Tor Browser. Once you upgrade to Tor Browser 11 stable, when you attempt to visit an onion site with a v2 onion address, you will see an error message. It is the responsibility of onion site administrators to upgrade their sites to the correct version of onion services.

Read more about the deprecation on our blog: https://blog.torproject.org/v2-deprecation-timeline

On the state of v3 onion services usage

https://blog.torproject.org/v3-onion-services-usage

Guest post by Tobias Höller

With the deprecation of v2 onion services right around the corner, it is a good time to talk about v3 onion services and their current adoption. Thanks to the privacy improvements of v3 onion services, they leak much less sensitive information when compared to v2 onion services. However, these changes do not completely stop the hidden service directory from revealing interesting metadata about their usage so far.

The results On the state of V3 onion services (by T. Hoeller, M. Roland, R. Mayrhofer) give a first good estimate on the total number of v3 onion services, and show that the number of deployed v3 onion services has been on the rise throughout 2021. So if you still operate only a v2 onion service, now would be a great time to get on board and upgrade to v3.

Read more the state of v3 onion services on our blog: https://blog.torproject.org/v3-onion-services-usage.

PrivChat #5: Protection against Pegasus

https://torproject.org/privchat

Every year, governments, law enforcement agencies, militaries, and corporations invest billions of dollars into building and buying malicious spyware--software designed to silently infiltrate a user's device and allow attackers to view the contents without detection.

This year, the Pegasus Project revealed that users of this kind of spyware, known as Pegasus and built by the NSO group, had targeted the phones that belong to thousands of people in more than 50 countries, including business executives, politicians, journalists, and human rights activists.

In the latest edition of PrivChat, Likhita and Etienne Maynier of Amnesty International and John Scott-Railton of Citizen Lab to discuss these issues with Roger Dingledine of the Tor Project.

Watch the recording of PrivChat 5: Protection against Pegasus on our YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ovmcZtaacY.

Upcoming Events

New Releases

What We're Reading

Join Our Community

Getting involved with Tor is easy. Run a relay to make the network faster and more decentralized: https://community.torproject.org/relay/

Run a bridge to help censored users access Tor: https://blog.torproject.org/run-tor-bridges-defend-open-internet

Learn about more opportunities to start collaborating: https://community.torproject.org/

Donate to help keep Tor fast, strong, and secure. https://donate.torproject.org

DocsHackathon, Localization Hangouts, ISO bridge operators

Published on 2021-09-02

Onion service admins must upgrade to v3 onion services as soon as possible

https://blog.torproject.org/v2-deprecation-timeline

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.

Read more about the deprecation on our blog: https://blog.torproject.org/v2-deprecation-timeline

This Week: Documentation Hackathon, August 30 - September 3

https://blog.torproject.org/docshackathon-2021

Between August 30 and September 3, the Tor Project will host the third edition of our user documentation hackathon, the DocsHackathon.

If you've never volunteered with us before, this is a great opportunity for you to become involved in the community, get closer to our work, and make meaningful contributions. The DocsHackathon is a totally remote and online event.

Find out how to join the event on our blog! https://blog.torproject.org/docshackathon-2021

Join Monthly Tor Localization Hangouts

https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/community/l10n/-/wikis/Monthly-Tor-Localization-Hangouts

Every third Friday of the month, the Tor Localization team meets for our Monthly Localization Hangout. We use this time to translate together, share tricks, have fun while translating, meet fellow translators, and find out about the l10n priorities for the Tor Project.

NEXT HANGOUT: September 17, 2021 @ 12:00 UTC (see other timezones: https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?msg=L10n+Hangout+Friday&iso=20210820T12&p1=141&ah=8)

If you are not a translator yet, you still have time to become one! https://community.torproject.org/localization/becoming-tor-translator/

Find out more about Localization Hangouts and how to join us: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/community/l10n/-/wikis/Monthly-Tor-Localization-Hangouts

Get Involved with Arti Development

https://blog.torproject.org/announcing-arti

Over the past year or so, we've been working on "Arti", a project to rewrite Tor in Rust (https://blog.torproject.org/announcing-arti). Thanks to funding from Zcash Open Major Grants (ZOMG), we can finally put the Arti project up in our priorities list!

We meet every two weeks to discuss development progress, and all meetings are open to the public, plus recordings are uploaded to our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwyU2dZ3LJErozq7cTtImuWkSn_34pEpq.

If you're interested in contributing to Arti, get started here: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/core/arti/-/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md.

ISO: Tor Bridge Operators

Bridge relays are Tor relays that are not listed in the public Tor directory. Bridges are useful for Tor users under oppressive regimes that have blocked access to the regular Tor network, because they help those users circumvent that censorship.

We need your help to run more bridges! Bridges are relatively easy and low bandwidth to operate, but they have a big impact on people impacted by internet censorship. By running a Tor bridge, you help people bypass censorship to browse freely and privately.

Learn how to set up a bridge today with our easy step-by-step guide: https://community.torproject.org/relay/setup/bridge/.

New Releases

What We're Reading

Join Our Community

Getting involved with Tor is easy. Run a relay to make the network faster and more decentralized: https://community.torproject.org/relay/

Run a bridge to help censored users access Tor: https://blog.torproject.org/run-tor-bridges-defend-open-internet

Learn about more opportunities to start collaborating: https://community.torproject.org/

Donate to help keep Tor fast, strong, and secure. https://donate.torproject.org

-- 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.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/torproject Facebook: https://facebook.com/torproject Instagram: https://instagram.com/torproject Mastodon: http://mastodon.social/@torproject

v2 onion services deprecation, Bug Smash 2021, Announcing Arti

Published on 2021-07-29

Onion service admins must upgrade to v3 onion services as soon as possible

https://blog.torproject.org/v2-deprecation-timeline

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.

Read more about the deprecation on our blog: https://blog.torproject.org/v2-deprecation-timeline

Help Tor Smash Bugs: August 1-31!

https://blog.torproject.org/tors-bug-smash-fund-2021

The Bug Smash Fund is back for its third year!

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.

For more on how you can contribute to the Bug Smash Fund, visit our blog: https://blog.torproject.org/tors-bug-smash-fund-2021

New Release: Tor Browser 10.5

https://blog.torproject.org/new-release-tor-browser-105

Tor Browser 10.5 is now available from the Tor Browser download page and also from our distribution directory.

This new Tor Browser release is focused on improving the internet access of users connecting through Tor in censored contexts.

What's New?

  • V2 Onion Services Deprecation
  • Snowflake is now available as a bridge
  • Improving the user experience of connecting to Tor

Read more here: https://blog.torproject.org/new-release-tor-browser-105

Announcing Arti, a pure-Rust Tor implementation

https://blog.torproject.org/announcing-arti

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.

Read more about why we're doing this project, what it means for Tor users and operators, where it's going in the future, and how people can help: https://blog.torproject.org/announcing-arti

Transparency, Openness, and Our 2020 Financials

https://blog.torproject.org/transparency-openness-and-our-2019-and-2020-financials

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.

Read full 2020 financial report at our blog: https://blog.torproject.org/transparency-openness-and-our-2019-and-2020-financials

Upcoming Events with Tor

II Seminário Criptografia, Política e Direitos Fundamentais | August 5, 2021 https://blog.torproject.org/node/2058

Free and Open Communications on the Internet (FOCI) workshop | August 27, 2021 https://blog.torproject.org/node/2024

New Releases

What We're Reading

We're hiring

One Software Developer for Anti-Censorship Team. https://www.torproject.org/about/jobs/software-developer-anticensorship-2/

Two Software Developers, Rust. https://www.torproject.org/about/jobs/rust-dev/

Two Software Engineers for Application Team (Browser, Android App) https://www.torproject.org/about/jobs/software-engineer-applications-team/

Join Our Community

Getting involved with Tor is easy. Run a relay to make the network faster and more decentralized: https://community.torproject.org/relay/

Run a bridge to help censored users access Tor: https://blog.torproject.org/run-tor-bridges-defend-open-internet

Learn about more opportunities to start collaborating: https://community.torproject.org/

Donate to help keep Tor fast, strong, and secure. https://donate.torproject.org

--

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.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/torproject Facebook: https://facebook.com/torproject Instagram: https://instagram.com/torproject Mastodon: http://mastodon.social/@torproject YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TorProjectInc