Published on 2019-12-26
Interview with Cindy Cohn, EFF Executive Director & Tor Board Member
https://blog.torproject.org/interview-cindy-cohn-eff-executive-director
Cindy Cohn, Executive Director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Board Member of the Tor Project, was named one of America's Top 50 Women in Tech 2018 by Forbes. As a tireless defender of digital rights, we wanted to get her take on the state of the internet today, recent victories and challenges ahead, and Torâs role in taking back the internet.
How would you describe the internet today?
Disempowering. Between surveillance business models, national security surveillance, and ineffective legal and technical protections, many people feel that they have no power to protect their security and privacy.
But the good news is that we can regain control and more people than ever are demanding a course change. Tor is a critical tool to helping us make that shift.
What do you think are some key victories that have happened in the past year to advance privacy and freedom online?
Tor and the Tor network just keeps getting stronger, more important, and easier to use. Thatâs amazing and a testament to the fierce, powerful and smart people who develop, support, maintain, and protect it.
Iâm also heartened by the growing recognition across the world that privacy and security are linked and that technical, legal, and policy work is all needed to protect them.
Iâm biased, but I think that a major step toward protecting peopleâs privacy as they cross the US border came in the Alasaad case EFF and the ACLU handled, where the court agreed with us that the US government needs reasonable suspicion to search the devices that people carry.
The ongoing efforts to encrypt the web and increase awareness about security tools and practices are also cause for celebration.
What challenges do you think privacy advocates and developers will face in the next year online?
I think the rise of authoritarianism around the world will continue to present challenges for privacy advocates and developers. One of the key things that would-be dictators know is that they have to prevent the people from being able to speak and learn things confidentially. This means more attacks on encryption.
I think that advocates and developers will need to continue to stand up for encryption and also ultimately will have to address the need to re-decentralize the internet. The pressures on the tech giants to make sure that no one can have a private conversation online will continue. We need to be ready and build out alternatives.
What is the internet you would like to see in the future?
We need to build a world where everyone has free (as in speech) access to read, speak, create, and control their experience, including creating their own tools and protecting their own privacy. A world where humans have the legal, policy, and cultural support and protection to do so. Where individuals have the strength and processing power to take on larger organizations, whether government or corporate, as well as to be protected from them. A world where our technology, whether as simple as an email or as complex as an AI system, is trustworthy and loyal to us.
Why do you think people should support and care about Tor?
If you care about maintaining (or creating) a society that can change â where ideas can grow and information can be learned free of control by governments or corporations â then Tor is one of the critical tools that you should support and care about.
Tor protects the canaries in the coal mines.
Even if you personally donât need the protection that Tor offers, standing up for Tor is standing with the people who take risks to keep the rest of us informed about some of the most dangerous and important facts and issues facing the planet.
The Next Chapter of Anti-Censorship
https://blog.torproject.org/next-chapter-anti-censorship
The video from the Tor Project Co-Founder Roger Dingledine's DEF CON 2019 talk ("The Tor Censorship Arms Race: The Next Chapter") is now up.
- YouTube version (for those who can tolerate surveillance capitalism): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZB8ODpw_om8
- Original mp4 from DEF CON's onion service (download it and play it locally, since playing it in a browser doesn't display video): m6rqq6kocsyugo2laitup5nn32bwm3lh677chuodjfmggczoafzwfcad.onion/DEF%20CON%2027/DEF%20CON%2027%20video%20and%20slides/DEF%20CON%2027%20Conference%20-%20Roger%20Dingledine%20-%20The%20Tor%20Censorship%20Arms%20Race%20The%20Next%20Chapter.mp4
- Backup mp4 for those who can't reach onion services: freehaven.net/~arma/DEF%20CON%2027%20Conference%20-%20Roger%20Dingledine%20-%20The%20Tor%20Censorship%20Arms%20Race%20The%20Next%20Chapter.mp4
- Slides (pdf): freehaven.net/~arma/slides-dc19.pdf
This talk gets you up to speed on all the ways governments have tried to block Tor, walks through our upcoming steps to stay ahead of the arms race, and gives you some newâeasierâways that let you help censored users reach the internet safely.
Digital Rights are Human Rights
https://blog.torproject.org/digital-rights-are-human-rights
At the Tor Project, we build technologies that defend and promote the human rights to privacy and freedom. More than just a way to exercise an individual right, itâs a collective collaboration and movement that generates a common good for all. Everyone can use this open and secure network as infrastructure that has privacy as a default feature of its design. The Tor network promotes a radical decentralization with onion services, so you can run your own service without a dedicated IP address or having a domain name, all done privately and securely. Tor also promotes net neutrality, since it doesn't modify the traffic based on who is accessing it or which sites they are visiting. In other words, it's what we've always wanted the internet to be. Find out about how we've been working directly with human rights defenders to help them protect themselves online.
Modularizing Key Aspects of the Tor Network, Supported by MOSS
https://blog.torproject.org/modularizing-key-aspects-tor-network-moss
In 2018, the Tor Project was awarded a grant from Mozillaâs Open Source Support (MOSS) programâs Mission Partners track to improve Tor's codebase. The network team spent the last 12 months working on creating a Tor network codebase that is:
- Easier to scale, more flexible, and faster in order to handle more users;
- Easier for Tor developers, third-party developers, and researchers to navigate; and
- Easier to adopt, contribute to, and improve.
In order to reach towards those goals, the network team:
- Reduced module complexity and maintenance burden;
- Developed new architecture for several key Tor modules;
- Implemented better tooling;
- Improved testing for several key Tor modules; and
- Improved our documentation.
The biggest change introduced thanks to this project is a generic publish-subscribe mechanism for delivering messages internally. It is meant to help us improve the modularity of our code by avoiding direct coupling between modules that don't actually need to invoke one another.
For example, there are numerous parts of our code that might need to take action when a circuit is completed: a controller might need to be informed, an onion service negotiation might need to be attached, a guard might need to be marked as working, or a client connection might need to be attached. But many of those actions occur at a higher layer than circuit completion: calling them directly is a layering violation and makes our code harder to understand and analyze. With message-passing, we can invert this layering violation: circuit completion can become a "message" that the circuit code publishes, and to which higher-level layers subscribe. This means that circuit handling can be decoupled from higher-level modules and stay nice and simple.
The network team also continued earlier work that began in Tor 0.3.5 to make our code behave more modularly with its startup and teardown logic. Many tor modules now function as "subsystems" that are initialized, shut down, and updated with a standard interface, rather than with the confusing system of calls that was used before. Read more: https://blog.torproject.org/modularizing-key-aspects-tor-network-moss
Take Back the Internet with Us
"Technology doesn't need to come at the expense of privacy. Connectivity doesn't need to cost us our self-determination. With your help, we can keep Tor growing and improving to be what the world needs: a way to help take back the internet for freedom and human rights." - Nick Mathewson, Co-Founder, The Tor Project
Donate today, and Mozilla will match your donation. https://torproject.org/donate/donate-tbi-tn3
New Releases
Tor Browser 9.5a3
https://blog.torproject.org/new-release-tor-browser-95a3
This new alpha release picks up security fixes for Firefox 68.3.0esr and updates our external extensions (NoScript and HTTPS Everywhere) to their latest versions. Among other things, we made some cleanups in torbutton and fixed localization in the Android bundles. We also add three new locales: lt (Lithuanian), ms (Maylay), and th (Thai).
Tor 0.4.2.5 (also 0.4.1.7, 0.4.0.6, and 0.3.5.9)
https://blog.torproject.org/new-release-0425-also-0417-0406-and-0359
This is the first stable release in the 0.4.2.x series. This series improves reliability and stability, and includes several stability and correctness improvements for onion services. It also fixes many smaller bugs present in previous series.
Tor Browser 9.0.2
https://blog.torproject.org/new-release-tor-browser-902
This new stable release is picks up security fixes for Firefox 68.3.0esr and updates our external extensions (NoScript and HTTPS Everywhere) to their latest versions. Apart from backports for patches that already landed in alpha releases and fixing an error in our circuit display and improving our letterboxing support, Tor Browser 9.0.2 provides properly localized Android bundles again as well.
Upcoming Events with Tor
Censorship Resistance fĂŒr den Anonymisierungsdienst Tor. Hagenberg, Austria. 9 January 2020. https://blog.torproject.org/events/censorship-resistance-fur-den-anonymisierungsdienst-tor-hagenberg
Join Our Community
Getting involved with Tor is easy. Run a relay to make the network faster and more decentralized: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/TorRelayGuide
Run a bridge to help censored users access Tor: https://blog.torproject.org/run-tor-bridges-defend-open-internet
Learn about each of our teams and start collaborating: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/WikiStart#Teams
Donate to help keep Tor fast, strong, and secure. https://torproject.org/donate/donate-tbi-tn2
--
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
Published on 2019-11-21
We Can Choose an Internet Without Surveillance
https://blog.torproject.org/we-can-choose-internet-without-surveillance
The surveillance dystopia is building up all around us, and the business model that has taken over the internet is largely to blame. In the surveillance economy, whenever we choose to use an application or a device, we are often forced to subject ourselves to unrestricted abuse of our private data. ISPs and big corporations are not only logging our activities, but often selling that information to third party data analysis and marketing companies like Cambridge Analytica and Dataminr.
The effects of the surveillance economy are terrifying. Our online activity has been used to influence elections by shaping how politically motivated entities can spread personally targeted misinformation. We have also seen these companies sign contracts with law enforcement and authoritarian governments to use this information to unjustly target activists, minorities, and at-risk communities.
Even if you have not immediately felt or experienced a direct consequence of being surveilled, the idea you may be surveilled can have chilling consequences on your daily life.
PEN America surveyed over 520 American writers to understand if and how surveillance was influencing their work. 1 in 6 writers said they had avoided speaking or writing on a topic they thought would subject them to surveillance.
Just the fear of surveillance can turn us into self-censors. This fear can stop us from exercising intellectual freedom and curiosity. If we think we are being watched, our behavior changes. Our mental state changes as well. According to research conducted by Christopher Burr at the Digital Ethics Lab at the University of Oxford, the effects of surveillance on the brain can "be just as mentally taxing as mental disorders like depression, and can even cause symptoms similar to post-traumatic stress disorder."
The spread of surveillance is not inevitable. We can fight against facial recognition technology and invasive searches, stand up for encryption, and demand privacy by design from service providers.
The internet is not just a network of computersâit's a network of people. We hold great power in deciding its future.
Our Website + Tor Browser Now Available in Catalan
Sabem que és més fà cil utilitzar alguna cosa en el vostre propi idioma. Si mai no heu provat el navegador Tor, avui és el dia. Prova-ho ara: https://torproject.org/ca
Take Back the Internet with Us
https://torproject.org/donate/donate-tbi-tn2
Donate today, and Mozilla will match your donation.
New Releases
Tor Browser 9.5a2
https://blog.torproject.org/new-release-tor-browser-95a2
This new alpha release contains various bug fixes and improvements. Among them, we improved the letterboxing experience.
Tor 0.4.2.4-rc
https://blog.torproject.org/new-release-candidate-tor-0424-rc
Tor 0.4.2.4-rc is the first release candidate in its series. Packages should be available over the coming weeks, with a new alpha Tor Browser release likely by Dec 3.
Tor Browser 9.0.1
https://blog.torproject.org/new-release-tor-browser-901
This release fixes regressions and improves upon our 9.0 release.
Upcoming Events with Tor
V Jornades Internacionals de dones en el sector TIC. Barcelona, Spain. 22 November 2019. https://blog.torproject.org/events/v-jornades-internacionals-de-dones-en-el-sector-tic-barcelona
WoSec and InfoSecGirls Workshop. Pune, India. 30 November 2019.
https://blog.torproject.org/events/wosec-and-infosecgirls-workshop-pune
Reproducible Builds Summit. Marrakesh, Morocco. 3-5 December 2019. https://blog.torproject.org/events/reproducible-builds-summit-marrakesh-2019
Hackers Next Door. Brooklyn, New York. 14-15 December 2019. https://blog.torproject.org/events/hackers-next-door-brooklyn
What We're Reading
Federal Court Rules Suspicionless Searches of Travelers' Phones and Laptops Unconstitutional. EFF.
"In a major victory for privacy rights at the border, a federal court in Boston ruled today that suspicionless searches of travelers' electronic devices by federal agents at airports and other U.S. ports of entry are unconstitutional." https://www.eff.org/press/releases/federal-court-rules-suspicionless-searches-travelers-phones-and-laptops
Join Our Community
Getting involved with Tor is easy. Run a relay to make the network faster and more decentralized: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/TorRelayGuide
Run a bridge to help censored users access Tor: https://blog.torproject.org/run-tor-bridges-defend-open-internet
Learn about each of our teams and start collaborating: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/WikiStart#Teams
Donate to help keep Tor fast, strong, and secure. https://torproject.org/donate/donate-tbi-tn2
--
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
Published on 2019-10-30
We Brought Big UX and Localization Improvements to Tor Browser
https://blog.torproject.org/new-release-tor-browser-90
We want everyone in the world to be able to enjoy the privacy and freedom online Tor provides, and that's why over the past couple years, we've been working hard to boost our UX and localization efforts, with the biggest gains first visible in Tor Browser 8.0.
In Tor Browser 9.0, we continued to build upon those efforts with sleeker integration and additional localization support so Tor Browser can work better for you.
Goodbye, Onion Button
We want your experience using Tor to be fully integrated within the browser so how you use Tor is more intuitive. That's why now, rather than using the onion button that was in the toolbar, you can see your path through the Tor network and request a New Circuit through the Tor network in [i] on the URL bar.
Hello, New Identity Button
Instead of going into the onion button to request a New Identity, we've made this important feature easier to access by giving it its own button in the toolbar.
You can also request a New Identity, and a New Circuit, from within the [=] menu on the toolbar.
Torbutton and Tor Launcher Integration
Now that both extensions are tightly integrated into Tor Browser, they'll no longer be found on the about:addons page.
Rather than being a submenu behind the onion button, Tor Network Settings, including the ability to fetch bridges to bypass censorship where Tor is blocked, are easier to access on about:preferences#tor.
Better Localization Support
If we want all people around the world to be able to use our software, then we need to make sure it's speaking their language. Since 8.0, Tor Browser has been available in 25 languages, and we added 5 locales more in Tor Browser 8.5. We added support for two additional languages: Macedonian (mk) and Romanian (ro), bringing the number of supported languages to 32.
We also fixed bugs in our previously shipped localized bundles (such as ar and ko).
Many thanks to everyone who helped with these, in particular to our translators.
And that's not all. Find out what else is new in Tor Browser 9: https://blog.torproject.org/new-release-tor-browser-90
Publish Anonymous, Uncensorable Websites with OnionShare
https://blog.torproject.org/new-version-onionshare-makes-it-easy-anyone-publish-anonymous-uncensorable-websites-0
OnionShare is an open source tool that lets you securely and anonymously share a file of any size.
In addition to the "Share Files" and "Receive Files" tabs, OnionShare 2.2 introduces the "Publish Website" tab. You drag all of the files that make up your website into the OnionShare window and click "Start sharing." It will start a web server to host your static website and give you a .onion URL. This website is only accessible from the Tor network, so people will need Tor Browser to visit it. People who visit your website will have no idea who you are \'96 they won\'92t have access to your IP address, and they won\'92t know your identity or your location. And, so long as your website visitors are able to access the Tor network, the website can\'92t be censored.
Read more about it and try it out: https://blog.torproject.org/new-version-onionshare-makes-it-easy-anyone-publish-anonymous-uncensorable-websites-0
We're Hiring a Shadow Simulation Developer
https://blog.torproject.org/were-hiring-shadow-simulation-developer
We are seeking an experienced programmer to help us develop cutting-edge network simulation / emulation software. This person will be responsible for the implementation, documentation, and testing of software to support research into privacy-enhancing technologies. In particular, this person will be contributing to software that constructs large, realistic, high fidelity simulations of anonymity networks, allowing other researchers to run existing software (e.g., Tor) on top of a virtualized network. As such, this person should be comfortable working with established codebases (github.com/shadow) and incrementally improving them through modular design.
The ideal candidate will have significant practical programming skills, specifically, expertise in parallel program design and development.
Learn more and how to apply: https://blog.torproject.org/were-hiring-shadow-simulation-developer
Take Back the Internet with Us
Donate today, and Mozilla will match your donation. https://torproject.org/donate/donate-tbi-tn1
More New Releases
Tor 0.4.2.3-alpha
https://blog.torproject.org/new-alpha-release-tor-0423-alpha
This release fixes several bugs from the previous alpha release, and from earlier versions of Tor.
Tor Browser 9.5a1
https://blog.torproject.org/new-release-tor-browser-95a1
This is the first alpha release in the 0.4.2.x series. It adds new defenses for denial-of-service attacks against onion services. It also includes numerous kinds of bugfixes and refactoring to help improve Tor's stability and ease of development.
Tails 4.0
https://blog.torproject.org/new-release-tails-40
The Tails team is especially proud to present you Tails 4.0, the first version of Tails based on Debian 10 (Buster). It brings new versions of most of the software included in Tails and some important usability and performance improvements. Tails 4.0 introduces more changes than any other version since years. This release also fixes many security issues.
Upcoming Events with Tor
Tor Sharing. Taipei, Taiwan. 31 October 2019. https://blog.torproject.org/events/tor-sharing-taipei
Driving IT. Copenhagen, Denmark. 1 November 2019. https://blog.torproject.org/events/driving-it-copenhagen
Internet e anonimato: la rete Tor. Firenze, Italy. 6 November 2019. https://blog.torproject.org/events/internet-e-anonimato-la-rete-tor-firenze
Tor Meetup. Brussels, Belgium. 8 November 2019. https://blog.torproject.org/events/tor-meetup-brussels
CriptoDunas. Fortaleza, Brazil. 11 November 2019 - 14 November 2019. https://blog.torproject.org/events/criptodunas-fortaleza-brazil
The Future of Speech Online. Washington, DC, USA. 15 November 2019. https://blog.torproject.org/events/future-speech-online-dc
What We're Reading
BBC Launches Tor Mirror Site To Thwart Media Censorship. NPR.
"In an effort to fight media censorship, the BBC has made a version of its website available on Tor, a privacy-focused browser that makes it more difficult to monitor a user's online activity." https://www.npr.org/2019/10/24/773060596/bbc-launches-tor-mirror-site-to-thwart-media-censorship
These watchdogs track secret online censorship across the globe. CNET.
"Researchers at OONI use a collection of network signals submitted by volunteers that mean little individually but can point to interference when combined. The signs can seem like random quirks of the internet: 404 error messages and odd pop-up windows. OONI's researchers, however, use their data to uncover the techniques behind censorship. This lets them map what's been made invisible." https://www.cnet.com/features/the-watchdogs-tracking-secret-online-censorship-across-the-globe-ooni/?ftag=COS-05-10aaa0b
Join Our Community
Getting involved with Tor is easy. Run a relay to make the network faster and more decentralized: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/TorRelayGuide
Run a bridge to help censored users access Tor: https://blog.torproject.org/run-tor-bridges-defend-open-internet
Learn about each of our teams and start collaborating: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/WikiStart#Teams
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
Published on 2019-10-02
Reaching People Where They Are
https://blog.torproject.org/reaching-people-where-they-are
Part of the Tor Project's mission is to further the popular understanding of privacy technologies, and we believe we can achieve it by combining educational efforts with usability efforts. Popular understanding is to not only be aware of such privacy technologies but to also be able to use and control them.
With that in mind, we decided to integrate user experience research into our digital security training with a single program called 'User Feedback Program
'92.
When we first launched this program two years ago, we aimed at a diverse and engaged audience of human rights defenders in the Global South. We are happy to share that, in a moderate estimate, these activities reached an audience of 800 people through 71 activities in 22 cities and seven countries: Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Uganda.
This was our first major effort to establish a training cycle aimed to strengthen and expand the understanding of privacy technologies and the Tor community in the Global South. Members of the UX and Community teams conducted these trainings in partnership with local non-profits, who helped us reach the communities from their countries who needed this type of education the most.
The results of interviews and usability tests were processed and analyzed by our UX team, and their work with users has led to different projects: a collection of personas to help guide our decisions when working on our tools, interface improvements, bugs fixed, and new features already deployed by the Tor Project developers. We are proud to say that today, the Tor Project has a software development cycle that puts the user at the center while respecting privacy.
That is a huge gain, but is not all we set out to do. We learned a lot running these trainings, and we don
'92t want to keep it to ourselves. We also want to share some insights into our experiences running trainings in the Global South to empower others to do the same. We know we can
'92t scale if we need to travel to these locations every time a group needs digital security training.
We must share our skills with our partners and help build local capacity that can help these communities on a continuous basis. Find out what we've learned so far: https://blog.torproject.org/reaching-people-where-they-are
Honoring Translators
https://blog.torproject.org/honoring-translators
We believe everyone should have private access to the open internet. That is what our tools aim to provide, but they're not doing any good if people are not able to use them in their own language.
As a small nonprofit organization, we are fortunate to have a community of volunteers who help us with many aspects of Tor, including running relays, research, outreach, and more.
To celebrate International Translation Day 30 September, the Tor Project would like to acknowledge all of the dedicated volunteer translators that contribute to the Tor Project on a daily basis. You help us make our software relevant for people who need it around the world. Thank you.
Browser Fingerprinting: An Introduction and the Challenges Ahead
https://blog.torproject.org/browser-fingerprinting-introduction-and-challenges-ahead
In the past few years, a technique called browser fingerprinting has received a lot of attention because of the risks it can pose to privacy. If one attribute of your browser fingerprint (or the combination of several) is unique, your device can be identified and tracked online. We started to guard against this since 2007, before the term "browser fingerprinting" was coined.
Find out what it is, how it is used, and what we're doing to protect against it.
Tor's Bug Smash Fund: $86K Raised!
https://blog.torproject.org/tors-bug-smash-fund-86k-raised
To the Tor community: we owe you a thank you!
At the beginning of August, we asked you to help us build our very first Bug Smash Fund. This fund will ensure that the Tor Project has a healthy reserve earmarked for maintenance work and smashing the bugs necessary to keep Tor Browser, the Tor network, and the many tools that rely on Tor strong, safe, and running smoothly.
Together we raised $86,081. You made the Bug Smash Fund campaign more successful than we could have predicted. Here's what's next: https://blog.torproject.org/tors-bug-smash-fund-86k-raised
New Releases
Tor 0.4.1.6
https://blog.torproject.org/new-release-tor-0416
This release backports several bugfixes to improve stability and correctness. Anyone experiencing build problems or crashes with 0.4.1.5, or experiencing reliability issues with single onion services, should upgrade.
Tor 0.4.2.1-alpha
https://blog.torproject.org/new-alpha-release-tor-0421-alpha
This is the first alpha release in the 0.4.2.x series. It adds new defenses for denial-of-service attacks against onion services. It also includes numerous kinds of bugfixes and refactoring to help improve Tor's stability and ease of development.
Tor Browser 8.5.5
https://blog.torproject.org/new-release-tor-browser-855
This release is updating Firefox to 60.9.0esr, Tor to 0.4.1.5, and NoScript to 11.0.3. This release also includes various bug fixes. On the Windows side, we should now have support for accessibility tools. On the Android side, we added support for arm64-v8a devices.
Tor Browser 8.5.6
https://blog.torproject.org/new-release-tor-browser-856
This version is for Android only, the latest version for Linux, macOS and Windows is still 8.5.5.
Tor Browser 9.0a6
https://blog.torproject.org/new-release-tor-browser-90a6
This is the first alpha release based on Firefox ESR68, and therefore contains several important changes such as the rebasing of our Firefox patches, toolchain updates, integration of Torbutton directly into the browser and updates to Tor Launcher to make it compatible with ESR68.
Upcoming Events with Tor //
MozFest. London, England. 21-27 October 2019. https://blog.torproject.org/events/mozfest-london
Swiss Web Security Day. Bern, Switzerland. 30 October 2019. https://blog.torproject.org/events/swiss-web-security-day-bern
Driving IT. Copenhagen, Denmark. 1 November 2019. https://blog.torproject.org/events/driving-it-copenhagen
What We're Reading
After 6 Years in Exile, Edward Snowden Explains Himself. WIRED.
"In a new memoir and interview, the world
'92s most famous whistle-blower elucidates as never before why he stood up to mass surveillance
'97and his love for an internet that no longer exists." https://www.wired.com/story/after-six-years-in-exile-edward-snowden-explains-himself/
PTA not empowered to block any website: IHC. The Express Tribune. "The Islamabad High Court (IHC) has declared that the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) is not empowered to block any website in violation of the due process and without hearing the viewpoint of the other party." https://tribune.com.pk/story/2061933/1-pta-not-empowered-block-website-ihc
Revealed: how TikTok censors videos that do not please Beijing. The Guardian. "TikTok, the popular Chinese-owned social network, instructs its moderators to censor videos that mention Tiananmen Square, Tibetan independence, or the banned religious group Falun Gong, according to leaked documents detailing the site
'92s moderation guidelines." https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/sep/25/revealed-how-tiktok-censors-videos-that-do-not-please-beijing
Join Our Community
Getting involved with Tor is easy. Run a relay to make the network faster and more decentralized: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/TorRelayGuide
Run a bridge to help censored users access Tor: https://blog.torproject.org/run-tor-bridges-defend-open-internet
Learn about each of our teams and start collaborating: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/WikiStart#Teams
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
Published on 2019-08-30
Run a Tor Bridge to Defend the Open Internet
https://blog.torproject.org/run-tor-bridges-defend-open-internet
We believe everyone should have private access to the open internet, but not everyone is able to enjoy the luxury Tor provides. Freedom to publish, share, and access information online is critical for a healthy society, yet governments and entities around the world deny people this universal human right. All of the relays that make up the Tor network are publicly listed, so that means one way to try to prevent people from using Tor is to blacklist the public IP addresses of all of the thousands of Tor relays.
For example, the governments of China, Iran, and Kazakhstan exercise information control by trying to block Tor.
However, thanks to bridges, Tor users are still able to connect to the network when the public Tor relays are blocked. Bridges are private Tor relays that serve as stepping stones into the network. Not only are bridges private, they can also modify their network packets in a way that it's difficult for an observer to conclude that somebody is using Tor. Censored users are able to select bridges from BridgeDB or directly in Tor Browserâs Network Settings.
We currently have approximately 1,000 bridges, 600 of which support the obfs4 obfuscation protocol. Unfortunately, these numbers have been stagnant for a while. It's not enough to have many bridges: eventually, all of them could find themselves in block lists. We therefore need a constant trickle of new bridges that aren't blocked anywhere yet. This is where we need your help.
By setting up an obfs4 bridge, you can help censored users connect to the open internet through Tor. We will randomly select 10 new bridge operators to receive a metallic roots Tor t-shirt as a token of our gratitude for your help defending the open internet. Set up your bridge and email us by September 30 to qualify. Learn how: https://blog.torproject.org/run-tor-bridges-defend-open-internet
Join Our DocsHackathon Starting September 2nd
https://blog.torproject.org/join-tors-docshackathon-next-week
Documentation is extremely valuable to the health of open source software projects, but it is often overlooked. Due to the amount of interest we received during our search for a Google Season of Docs candidate, we're kicking off a week-long documentation hackathon Monday 2nd September 00:00UTC to Friday 6th September 23:59UTC. This is your opportunity to help us keep our documentation up to date and relevant for millions of Tor users around the world. Weâll also be rewarding the top 3 contributors with prizes at the end of the week.
We are looking for copywriters, front-end devs, testers, and content reviewers to help us improve our documentation and its relevancy. Don't feel like any of these apply to you but still want to help out? Chat with us on IRC (#tor-www - irc.oftc.net) or the community team mailing list to join us and get involved.
Learn how to register and get started: https://blog.torproject.org/join-tors-docshackathon-next-week
We are a small nonprofit with a big mission, and we sincerely appreciate your help getting our documentation up to speed. We're looking forward to working with you next week.
New Releases
Tor 0.4.1.5
After months of work, we have a new stable release series. This is the first stable release in the 0.4.1.x series. This series adds experimental circuit-level padding, authenticated SENDME cells to defend against certain attacks, and several performance improvements to save on CPU consumption. It fixes bugs in bootstrapping and v3 onion services. It also includes numerous smaller features and bugfixes on earlier versions. Full changelog: https://blog.torproject.org/new-release-tor-0415
Tor Browser 9.0a5
This version is for Android only, the latest alpha version for Linux, macOS and Windows is still 9.0a4. Note: this is an alpha release, an experimental version for users who want to help us test new features. For everyone else, we recommend downloading the latest stable release instead. Full changelog: https://blog.torproject.org/new-release-tor-browser-90a5
Upcoming Events with Tor
APIdays.io. Barcelona, Spain. 12-13 September 2019. https://www.apidays.co/barcelona
What We're Reading
Resurgence of Internet Censorship in Ethiopia: Blocking of WhatsApp, Facebook, and African Arguments. OONI. "On 22nd June 2019, following an alleged coup attempt in the Amhara region, access to the internet was shut down again. Once internet access was restored, access to WhatsApp was blocked again. This time though, we observe the blocking of Facebook (facebook.com and Facebook Messenger), instead of Telegram (which was/is accessible). A few weeks later, we noticed the blocking of the African Arguments website as well, a pan-African platform covering investigative stories. In this report, we share OONI network measurement data on these ongoing censorship events."
https://ooni.io/post/resurgence-internet-censorship-ethiopia-2019/
West Papua: thousands take to streets after week of violence. The Guardian. "Fake news" is being used as an excuse to shut down the internet in West Papua amid protests. This is dangerous: It's hard to get or share critical information without it. The Indonesian government needs to #KeepItOn. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/26/west-papua-thousands-expected-at-fresh-protests-after-week-of-violence
https://twitter.com/hashtag/KeepItOn?src=hashtag_click
Fresh wave of phishing attacks targeting journalists and human rights activists in MENA. Amnesty International. "Attackers who use phishing scams to target human rights defenders in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) are developing increasingly sophisticated techniques to infiltrate their accounts and evade digital security tools." https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2019/08/fresh-wave-of-phishing-attacks-targeting-journalists-and-human-rights-activists-in-mena/
Join Our Community
Getting involved with Tor is easy. Run a relay to make the network faster and more decentralized: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/TorRelayGuide
Run a bridge to help censored users access Tor: https://blog.torproject.org/run-tor-bridges-defend-open-internet
Learn about each of our teams and start collaborating: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/WikiStart#Teams
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
Published on 2019-07-29
Our New Anti-Censorship Team is Defending The Open Internet
https://blog.torproject.org/tors-new-anti-censorship-team-defending-open-internet
At the non-profit organization level, the Tor Project consists of several teams. The network team works on part of the back-end: the program called tor, network simulators, onion services, etc.; the metrics team collects and publishes Tor network metrics; the applications team maintains Tor Browser and other user-facing applications; the UX team improves user experience across all projects; the community team fosters a healthy community around Tor; OONI maintains a global observation network for detecting censorship, surveillance, and traffic manipulation on the internet; the communications team gets our message out to the world; and the fundraising team rallies people to financially support our vision so we can keep Tor strong for millions around the world.
All of our teams share a common vision: for people around the world to enjoy privacy and freedom online. As censorship has increased around the world and internet freedom has declined, we realized we needed to step up our game to outpace the censors preventing people from enjoying the human right to freedom of expression and access to information on the internet.
In February, we created a brand new anti-censorship team. This team consists of two software engineers with research backgrounds and a project manager, but there are many other people who contribute to the teamâs workâby adding valuable code, insight into past work, infrastructure, and resources. The goal of the anti-censorship team is to understand network censorship and build technology to circumvent it so the Tor network can be accessible to everyone.
To kick things off, we've released a technical report called "Addressing Denial of Service Attacks on Free and Open Communication on the Internet." This report, part of the first project the team engaged in, provides a comprehensive overview of the state of our anti-censorship roadmap. The report outlines recent improvements and open challenges around BridgeDB, GetTor, snowflake, pluggable transports, censorship analysis, and censorship-related user experience.
Are you interested in following the anti-censorship team's work or joining the team? Then check out our wiki page. It has all details regarding our weekly IRC meeting, our public mailing list, and the software projects we maintain: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/teams/AntiCensorshipTeam
We are determined to make privacy and freedom online accessible to all, and we hope youâll join us. If youâre unable to volunteer, your donation can help us tackle this critical challenge: https://donate.torproject.org
Reflections from Our Stockholm All Hands
https://blog.torproject.org/reflections-our-stockholm-all-hands
This month, the Tor Project held our biannual all hands meeting, this time in Stockholm, Sweden. During our all hands meetings, we bring together staff, key volunteers, and collaborators from partner organizations like Freedom of the Press Foundation, Tails, the Guardian Project, and Mozilla. Our goal at our all hands meetings is to reflect on the last six months, address challenges and successes, plan our work for the next six months, and have important in-person conversations that are only possible when all teams are in the same location.
For this meetingâs location and venue, we relied on one of Torâs biggest strengths--our people.
On the first night in Stockholm, one of our local volunteers organized a âdo it yourselfâ welcome dinner for all attendees at Kafe 44, a long-standing nonprofit co-op cafe operating as a cultural social center in the heart of Stockholm.
We were also blessed with an amazing donation from KTH Royal Institute of Technology, which let us use their facilities for our three day meeting where we spread out across classrooms and engaged in back-to-back sessions organized and led by peers.
During these three days we had a local collective, Kafé Ingenstans, responsible for our lunch. They only cook vegan food with local ingredients and we had the most amazing food. We were even able to give them a big tip that we heard they will use to buy bicycles for their delivery. They also got connected with Kafe 44 after our welcome dinner and now will be serving food there.
Through partnership with our community and our communityâs broader connections, we turned limited resources into a safe space to cultivate connections, collaboration, and progress toward the vision and values that we are all working towards at Tor. Find out how it went: https://blog.torproject.org/reflections-our-stockholm-all-hands
New Releases
Tor Browser 8.5.4
Tor Browser 8.5.4 contains updates to a number of its components. Above all, we include Firefox 60.8.0esr which contains important security fixes. Moreover, after some testing in the alpha series, we start shipping Tor 0.4.0.5 and update OpenSSL to 1.0.2s for the desktop platforms. Full changelog: https://blog.torproject.org/new-release-tor-browser-854
Tor Browser 9.0a4
Tor Browser 9.0a4 contains updates to a number of bundle parts, most importantly Firefox (60.8.0esr) and Tor (0.4.1.3-alpha). We also implemented fixes for accessibility support on Windows systems (big thanks to Richard Pospesel for the hard work here), which now deserve a wider testing. Full changelog:
https://blog.torproject.org/new-release-tor-browser-90a4
Upcoming Events with Tor
Def Con. Las Vegas, US. 8-11 August, 2019. Roger Dingledine is giving a mainline talk: The Tor Censorship Arms Race: The Next Chapter. Plus, we'll have a booth in the vendor area. https://blog.torproject.org/events/def-con-las-vegas-0
BornHack. Funen, Denmark. 8-15 August, 2019. https://blog.torproject.org/events/bornhack-funen-denmark
USENIX. Santa Clara, US. 14-16 August, 2019. https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity19
What We're Reading
It's time you ditched Chrome for a privacy-first web browser. Wired UK. "...the Tor network, with its layers of encryption and routing through various locations, is the best way to protect your identity online. Plus, in recent years it's become simpler to use." https://www.wired.co.uk/article/best-privacy-browsers-and-chrome-alternatives
Oakland becomes third U.S. city to ban police use of facial recognition. Salon. "Oakland now joins San Francisco and Somerville, Mass., which banned the technology in May and June respectively in a bid to protect the privacy of their citizens."
https://www.salon.com/2019/07/21/oakland-becomes-third-us-city-to-ban-police-use-of-facial-recognition_partner/
EFF Hits AT&T With Class Action Lawsuit for Selling Customersâ Location to Bounty Hunters. Motherboard. "The lawsuit, which comes after multiple Motherboard investigations into phone location data selling, is seeking an injunction against AT&T which would try to enforce the deletion of any sold data." https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/43j99g/eff-hits-atandt-with-class-action-lawsuit-for-selling-customers-location-to-bounty-hunters
Join Our Community
Getting involved with Tor is easy. Run a relay to make the network faster and more decentralized: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/TorRelayGuide
Learn about each of our teams and start collaborating: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/WikiStart#Teams
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
Published on 2019-06-27
Pride and Privacy
Fifty years ago, in New York Cityâs Greenwich Village, the NYPD raided a gay bar. This wasnât a new occurrence. Patrons at the Stonewall Inn were familiar with being targeted by the police, arrested for âcross dressing,â hassled for being gender nonconforming or queer or transgender or otherwise outside of the rigid expectations around morality.
Something different happened, though, on June 28, 1969. The patrons at the Stonewall Inn resisted the police raid and fought back. Their resistance sparked a week of protests and decades of collaborative activism in the name of LGBTQ+ recognition and safety.
In the fifty years since the resistance at Stonewall, the global LGBTQ+ community has fought for, and in some cases won, important visibility and protections.
Pride and the month of June can serve as a reminder of this progress. Pride can be an opportunity to celebrate without shame. Pride can be a reminder that all people deserve to safely gather, build community, swap resources, tell their stories, and be unapologetically who they are.
Pride can also be an opportunity to reflect on how many LGBTQ+ people still face prejudice, injustice, and violence. In the same way safety was not a given in 1969 at the Stonewall Inn, safety is still not a given for LGBTQ+ people in 2019, particularly in places where there are negative social stigmas around being queer or transgender.
Today, despite our progress, not all LGBTQ+ people can be public about their identities. Many people still face extreme consequences for being who they are, and risk being abandoned by family and friends, harassed, fired, deported, jailed, or killed for being outâor outed. The internet is not safe from these consequences. In fact, the proliferation of dating sites and social media has been used to track down and entrap LGBTQ+ people.
To put it simply, privacy can be critical to safety.
The fact that many LGBTQ+ people need a private, anonymous internet to communicate with their peers or find important resources without being tracked and outed is one of the many reasons why we do what we do at the Tor Project.
Tor stories, transgender user quote
That is why we monitor the availability of LGBTQ+ sites in OONI tests, so we can better understand which countries are censoring these sites and who needs circumvention technology. Thatâs why we travel to countries where governments outlaw or punish being LGBTQ+ and lead workshops for community organizations about how to protect their privacy online. Thatâs why we partner with LGBTQ+, feminist, sex worker, and human rights groups to ensure that weâre learning about how they use privacy tech, and what they need from Tor in order to stay safe when using the internet.
We are proud that our tools can serve the LGBTQ+ community. We hope that by offering a way to privately access the internet, allowing people to get online without fear, that we can communicate with one another to change the world. We all deserve to live in a world where we can express who we are without shame.
This June and year round, the Tor Project stands in solidarity with the LGBTQ+ community. Happy Pride!
https://blog.torproject.org/pride-and-privacy
Bridges to Circumvent Censorship Online
Our users rely on bridges if their ISPs or governments block access to the Tor network. In essence, bridges are private Tor relays we hand out to users who need them. The difficulty lies in handing out bridges to censored users but not to censors. We tackle this problem with the tool BridgeDB, which makes it easy to get some bridges, but hard to get many. BridgeDB allows users to request bridges over a web page, over email, and directly in Tor Browser.
We just released BridgeDB version 0.7.1, which features many improvements. Find out what they are: https://blog.torproject.org/new-release-bridgedb-071
New Releases
Tor 0.4.1.3-alpha
Tor 0.4.1.3-alpha resolves numerous bugs left over from the previous alpha, most of them from earlier release series. Full changelog. Full changelog: https://blog.torproject.org/new-alpha-release-tor-0413-alpha
Tor Browser 9.0a3
Similar to Tor Browser 8.5.2 and Tor Browser 8.5.3 on the stable series, this release is fixing critical security updates in Firefox (mfsa2019-18 and mfsa2019-19). Full changelog
https://blog.torproject.org/new-release-tor-browser-90a3
Tor Browser 8.5.3
This release includes an important security update in Firefox, a sandbox escape bug. Full changelog:
https://blog.torproject.org/new-release-tor-browser-853
Upcoming Events with Tor
RightsCon. Tunis, Tunisia. 11-14 June, 2019. https://rightscon.org
Congresso Abraji. SĂŁo Paulo, Brasil. 27-29 June, 2019. https://congresso.abraji.org.br/
PETS. Stockholm, Sweden. 16-20 July, 2019. https://petsymposium.org/2019/index.php
Def Con. Las Vegas, US. 8-11 August, 2019. https://blog.torproject.org/events/def-con-las-vegas-0
BornHack. Funen, Denmark. 8-15 August, 2019. https://blog.torproject.org/events/bornhack-funen-denmark
USENIX. Santa Clara, US. 14-16 August, 2019. https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity19
Join Our Community
Getting involved with Tor is easy. Run a relay to make the network faster and more decentralized: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/TorRelayGuide
Learn about each of our teams and start collaborating: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/WikiStart#Teams
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
Published on 2019-05-22
Tor Browser is Stable on Android
Since we released the first alpha version of Tor Browser for Android in September, we've been hard at work making sure we can provide the protections users already enjoying on desktop to the Android platform. Mobile browsing is increasing around the world, and in some parts, it is commonly the only way people access the internet. In these same areas, there is often heavy surveillance and censorship online, so we made it a priority to reach these users with a mobile Tor Browser release. The stable version of Tor Browser for Android is now available for download from Google Play, F-Droid, and our website:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.torproject.torbrowser
https://www.f-droid.org/
https://torproject.org
We made sure there are no proxy bypasses, that first-party isolation is enabled to protect you from cross-site tracking, and that most of the fingerprinting defenses are working. While there are still feature gaps between the desktop and Android Tor Browser, we are confident that Tor Browser for Android provides essentially the same protections that can be found on desktop platforms. These protections are unmatched by any other browser.
The latest version of Tor Browser across all platforms also features UX and branding improvements in line with developments begun last year with the release of Tor Browser 8: https://blog.torproject.org/new-release-tor-browser-85
As always, we rely on feedback to improve our software. So if you have any suggestions or find a bug, please let us know: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/doc/community/HowToReportBugFeedback
Mozilla Research Call: Tune up Tor for Integration and Scale
What alternative protocol architectures and route selection protocols would offer acceptable gains in Tor performance? Would they preserve Tor properties? Is it possible to improve Tor performance without changing protocols? Is it truly possible to deploy Tor at scale? And what would the full integration of Tor and Firefox look like? Those are some of the questions that Mozilla is calling researchers to answer in the privacy & security part of their Mozilla Research Grants program.
Integrating Tor into Firefox would bring real private browsing and a safer internet experience to an unprecedented number of people around the world. But Tor has never been deployed at this scale, and there are a lot of considerations to research before Mozilla gives this a try.
Find out more about the areas needing research and how you can apply. The deadline for applications is May 31: https://blog.torproject.org/mozilla-research-call-tune-tor-integration-and-scale
Google Season of Docs 2019: Help Tor Improve Our Documentation
There are a few elements that are critical for the sustainability of an open source project. One of them is good documentation.
Although often neglected, documentation can be crucial for open source projects to provide meaningful guides on how to start contributing and guides on the architecture of the technology being developed.
These resources help not only newcomers and contributors to understand the technological aspects of a project but can also expose both decision making and work processes, outlining the best way to contribute.
This year Google has launched Season of Docs, and we've been accepted as a mentoring organization. The program runs for approximately 3 months from September to November 2019 and there is additionally the option of a "long-running project" which goes on for approximately 5 months, from September 2019 to February 2020.
We're a small nonprofit organization that develops free and open source software used by millions around the world, and our community of contributors and users would greatly benefit from improved documentation. If you can help us out, learn more about how to apply: https://blog.torproject.org/google-season-docs-2019-help-tor-improve-our-documentation
New Releases
Tor Browser 8.5
After months of work and including feedback from our users, Tor Browser 8.5 includes our first stable release for Android plus many new features across platforms. Full changelog: https://blog.torproject.org/new-release-tor-browser-85
Tor Browser 8.5a12
This is an alpha release, an experimental version for users who want to help us test new features. This release fixes the issue which caused NoScript and all other Firefox extensions signed by Mozilla to be disabled. Full changelog: https://blog.torproject.org/new-release-tor-browser-85a12
Tor 0.4.0.5
This is the first stable release in the 0.4.0.x series. It contains improvements for power management and bootstrap reporting, as well as preliminary backend support for circuit padding to prevent some kinds of traffic analysis. It also continues our work in refactoring Tor for long-term maintainability. Full changelog: https://blog.torproject.org/new-release-tor-0405
Upcoming Events with Tor
RightsCon. Tunis, Tunisia. 11-14 June, 2019. https://rightscon.org
Congresso Abraji. Sao Paulo, Brasil. 27-29 June, 2019. https://congresso.abraji.org.br/
PETS. Stockholm, Sweden. 16-20 July, 2019. https://petsymposium.org/2019/index.php
Join Our Community
Getting involved with Tor is easy. Run a relay to make the network faster and more decentralized: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/TorRelayGuide
Learn about each of our teams and start collaborating: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/WikiStart#Teams
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
Published on 2019-04-30
Advocating for Anonymity in Mozilla's 2019 Internet Health Report
Mozilla released its third annual examination of the internet, its impact on society and how it influences our everyday lives. The report includes a feature on Tor, In defense of anonymity, calling out the benefits of Tor software for upholding civil liberties:
"Our ability to communicate, work, and learn on the internet free from the glare of others enables very good things to happen."
Check out the feature: https://internethealthreport.org/2019/in-defense-of-anonymity/
You can help us continue to defend anonymity by making a donation to help us keep Tor robust and secure: https://donate.torproject.org
How Bandwidth Scanners Monitor The Tor Network
The Tor network is comprised of thousands of volunteer-run relays around the world, and millions of people rely on it for privacy and freedom online everyday. To monitor the Tor network's performance, detect attacks on it, and better distribute load across the network, we employ what we call Tor bandwidth scanners.
Tor relays report their own bandwidth based on the traffic they have sent and received. But this reported bandwidth is not verified by other relays. Bandwidth scanners help verify relay bandwidths. They also provide some initial traffic to new relays, so those relays can report a useful amount of bandwidth.
Learn more about our bandwidth scanners, recent updates to them, and how we'd like them to improve.
https://blog.torproject.org/how-bandwidth-scanners-monitor-tor-network
Collecting, Aggregating, and Presenting Data from The Tor Network
As the makers of software dedicated to privacy and freedom online, Tor must take special precautions when collecting data to ensure the privacy of its users while ensuring the integrity of its services.
Tor Metrics is the central mechanism that the Tor Project uses to evaluate the functionality and ongoing relevance of its technologies. Tor Metrics consists of several services that work together to collect, aggregate, and present data from the Tor network and related services. We're always looking for ways to improve, and we recently completed a project to document our pipeline and identify areas that could benefit from modernization. Read more about the project: https://blog.torproject.org/collecting-aggregating-and-presenting-data-tor-network
New Releases
Tor 0.4.0.4-rc
This is the first release candidate in its series; it fixes several bugs from earlier versions, including some that had affected stability, and one that prevented relays from working with NSS. Full changelog: https://blog.torproject.org/new-release-tor-0404-rc
Upcoming Events with Tor
CryptoRave. Sao Paulo, Brazil. 3-4 May, 2019. https://cryptorave.org/
RightsCon. Tunis, Tunisia. 11-14 June, 2019. https://rightscon.org
PETS. Stockholm, Sweden. 16-20 July, 2019. https://petsymposium.org/2019/index.php
Join Our Community
Getting involved with Tor is easy. Run a relay to make the network faster and more decentralized: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/TorRelayGuide
Learn about each of our teams and start collaborating: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/WikiStart#Teams
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: https://mastodon.social/@torproject
Published on 2019-03-29
Meet The New TorProject.org
Two years ago, we launched our styleguide[1] as our first step in creating a consistent visual look and feel across the entire Tor Project ecosystem. We are very happy to announce the launch of our brand new website[2].
Besides bringing more consistency to our visual look, which reinforces community identity and helps us to build user trust by identification, our new website is one part of our goal to ensure that everyone on the planet can use Tor. Last year, we worked hard on making important usability improvements to our browser[3], including bringing a version of it to Android[4].
But, it is through our homepage that most people first learn about Tor and decide to download our browser. And our previous site was doing a poor job at helping potential users understand what Tor was all about. We had way too much information for a person to consume, and none of it was localized. With that in mind, we decided to redesign our website to focus on new users and make it mobile-friendly. Most importantly with our new website, we want Tor Browser to be easy to download and its benefits easy to understand. Most importantly with our new website, we want Tor Browser to be easy to download and its benefits easy to understand.
We want to make sure that people around the world, using Tor in an array of contexts, can use Tor without barriers. Tor Browser itself is available in 24 different languages, but our website isn't. With this refresh, torproject.org is now available in 7 different languages: English, German, Portuguese, Spanish, French, Italian, and Russian, and there are more on the way. If you would like to help us with translations, here's how[5].
In addition to this update, we are also better organizing all the other content into different portals. For instance, last year we launched our support portal[6] to host all the content related to user support. Coming next will be our community.torproject.org portal that will feature content related to the different ways you can join our community and spread the word about Tor. The portal for all of our free software projects will soon be dev.torproject.org. If you are looking for any content that existed in the old site and is not on the new one, you can access it here[7].
These efforts are taking the collaboration of many people across Tor teams and the help of dedicated volunteers. We're very proud to start rolling these changes out.
We are a group of people united by the belief that everyone should have private access to the open web, and we hope our new site makes that easier to achieve.
[1]https://styleguide.torproject.org
[2]https://torproject.org
[3]https://blog.torproject.org/new-release-tor-browser-80
[4]https://blog.torproject.org/new-alpha-release-tor-browser-android
[5]https://wiki.localizationlab.org/index.php/Tor
[6]https://support.torproject.org
[7]https://2019.www.torproject.org/
We Now Accept Donations in Multiple Cryptocurrencies
You can now donate several different types of cryptocurrencies to the Tor Project: Augur (REP), Bitcoin (XBT), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Dash (DASH), Ether (ETH), Litecoin (LTC), Monero (XMR), Stellar Lumen (XLM), Dogecoin (XDG), and Zcash (ZEC). https://donate.torproject.org/cryptocurrency
Donations from individuals like you, whether they be in cryptocurrency or not, make it possible for us to allocate funds to pressing projects not covered by grants, such as the launch of our new website.
Donate today to help keep Tor robust and secure and to ensure we can continue to make Tor more accessible to people around the world: https://donate.torproject.org
New Releases
Tor Browser 8.0.8
The main change in this new release is the update of Firefox to 60.6.1esr, fixing bugs found during the Pwn2Own contest. Full changelog: https://blog.torproject.org/new-release-tor-browser-808
Tor Browser 8.5a10
This release features important security updates to Firefox. The main change in this new release is the update of Firefox to 60.6.1esr. Full changelog: https://blog.torproject.org/new-release-tor-browser-85a10
Tor 0.4.0.3-alpha
This release is the third in its series; it fixes several small bugs from earlier versions. Full changelog: https://blog.torproject.org/new-release-tor-0403-alpha
Upcoming Events with Tor
Join Our Community
Getting involved with Tor is easy. Run a relay to make the network faster and more decentralized: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/TorRelayGuide
Learn about each of our teams and start collaborating: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/WikiStart#Teams
Donate to help keep Tor fast, strong, and secure. https://donate.torproject.org
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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.
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