Next-Gen Onions, Bastet, KIST, Mobile Browsing, Events

Published on 2017-11-08

We've got a lot to tell you.

To keep you informed with updates and opportunities from across the organization, we're starting Tor News again and will send it around once a month to start. This format is a little different than what some of you originally signed up for, but we hope you'll stick around and hear what Tor is doing to protect internet freedom. We're now using CiviCRM to send Tor News, and as in the past, we will not publish, sell, trade, share, or rent any information about you. If you'd rather unsubscribe, you can in the footer below. As always, we have team-specific mailing lists you can join.

Here's what we've been up to.

Our New Harvest: the Next Generation of Onion Services

We are hyped to present the next generation of onion services! We've been working on this project non-stop for the past 4 years and we officially launched it a couple weeks ago by publishing our first alpha releases.

We are assuming you are familiar with traditional onion services: fun little sites that look like nytimes3xbfgragh.onion. Onion services have been around for over 10 years and are used for all sorts of tasty things. News organizations use them for private information disclosure (see SecureDrop). Websites use them to defeat censorship and provide a secure gateway for their users (e.g. ProPublica). The cryptocurrency ecosystem uses them to perform private transactions and mining. People use them for their reachability and permanent onion address if they are behind NAT or dynamic IP.

We believe that being able to express yourself and publish content with privacy is as important as being able to browse the web privately, and hence we consider onion services a critical part of the internet.

So let's get a taste of the improvements these next generation onions provide us with:

On the cryptography side, we are looking at cutting-edge crypto algorithms and improved authentication schemes. On the protocol end, we redesigned the directory system to defend against info leaks and reduce the overall attack surface. Read more: blog.torproject.org/tors-fall-harvest-next-generation-onion-services

Introducing Bastet: Our New Directory Authority

How does the network choose the route that Tor traffic takes through the network? How does every Tor user get the same information on relays? How does Tor authenticate the connection to any given relay?

The answer is through directory authorities - dedicated servers which tell Tor clients which relays make up the Tor network. Information about these directory authorities, located around the world and maintained by super trusted we-know-you-and-have-had-many-beers-with-you Tor volunteers, are hard-coded into Tor. Every hour, these volunteer-run directory authorities vote on and reach a consensus on the relays that make up the Tor network.

We added a new directory authority last month, increasing the diversity and stability of the directory authority system. The latest authority, named "Bastet" after the ancient Egyptian goddess, is run by Tor contributor Stefani. Continue reading: blog.torproject.org/introducing-bastet-our-new-directory-authority

Tor's Traffic Got KIST

Starting with Tor 0.3.2.1-alpha, we've had a new feature to address traffic congestion in the Tor network. The new algorithm -Kernel Informed Socket Transport (KIST)- prevents connections between Tor relays from becoming overwhelmed by changing how traffic is distributed throughout the Tor network.

The previous design often meant too much data was being written to each Tor relay connection, which would overwhelm relays and lead to traffic delays. KIST, on the other hand, intelligently considers how to write data across all connections to other relays in a way that allows traffic to pass through the network more quickly. Clients can run KIST, but the benefits accrue when it's widely used by relays. Currently, KIST is only available on Linux-like systems because of how they handle TCP information, but a variant, KISTlite, runs on all systems. Learn more: blog.torproject.org/kist-and-tell-tors-new-traffic-scheduling-feature

We're Upping Our Support to Mobile Browsing

Around a year ago, folks from the Tor Project and the Guardian Project met to discuss the future of Tor Browser on mobile devices. The discussion began with Orfox, a Google Summer of Code (GSoC) project for mobile browsing over the Tor network. Since then, we have been working towards Orfox having similar functionality and security guarantees as Tor Browser for desktop.

Our first improvement was to port the Security Slider from Tor Browser desktop to Orfox. To adapt this feature from a desktop application into a mobile application, we had to change how the UI works for the mobile screen. Learn more about our plans for mobile: blog.torproject.org/blog/upping-support-mobile-browsing

Upcoming Events with Tor: https://blog.torproject.org/events/month

Vasilis at ENUCOMP, ParnaĂ­ba, Brazil; November 15-17, 2017 Alison at the International Forum Freedom of Research; Paris, France; November 16-18, 201 Vasilis at V INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM LAVITS 2017, Santiago, Chile; November 29, 2017 - December 01, 2017 ilv, gus, vasilis and others at Primavera Hacker 17, Santiago, Chile; December 02-03, 2017

Take a Stand Against Tracking, Censorship, and Surveillance

There's never been a better time to donate to the Tor Project. Give today, and Mozilla will match your donation. We're standing up for privacy and powering digital resistance. Join us: https://www.torproject.org/donate-email2

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.

Power Digital Resistance with Tor!

Published on 2017-10-27

Power Digital Resistance with Tor!

"I think Tor is the most important privacy-enhancing technology project being used today." -Edward Snowden

Friend,

Thank you so much for being a member of the Tor community. As part of the Tor Project's end-of-year fundraising campaign, we're highlighting how Tor powers digital resistance and promotes and protects essential human rights around the world.

And if you donate now, Mozilla will match your donation up to a total of $500,000!

MAKE A DONATION: https://donate.torproject.org

For the past decade, we've been building and distributing software that saves lives. Activists and journalists use Tor to alert the world to human rights abuses, people in countries that censor the internet use Tor to access critical resources, and ordinary users use Tor to evade pervasive surveillance and tracking. Millions of people rely on Tor every day for a safer, more secure way to access the internet.

This vital work is made possible thanks, in no small part, to supporters like you.

Corporate whistleblowers, health care workers, politicians, lawyers, and members of marginalized communities all depend on Tor to protect themselves. We've got big plans for improving Tor in 2018, bringing its privacy protections to mobile devices and encouraging more third-party developers to integrate Tor's protection into their apps.

Let's fight for free expression together. Donate today, get some cool swag, and have your gift matched by Mozilla's generous matching program.

We rely on the generous support of our donors, and you can help us make the world's strongest privacy tool even stronger by lending a hand. Whether you can give $5 or $500, you'll be helping promote basic human rights worldwide. Join the digital resistance and support the Tor Project today!

Yours in privacy, Tommy

Tommy Collison Writer/Editor The Tor Project

MAKE A DONATION: https://donate.torproject.org

Sandboxing, Tor Metrics Library, Hackfest, Job Opening, Upcoming Events

Published on 2017-07-07

Tor Browser Now Protects Your Privacy with Sandboxing

Tor Browser now protects your privacy with sandboxing: https://blog.torproject.org/blog/tor-browser-70-released While we are still working on the sandboxing part for Windows, both Linux and macOS have had content sandboxing enabled by default since Tor Browser 7.0. Sandboxing creates a separate environment within your computer, so it's harder for exploits to reveal your identity. The idea is that exploits targeting Tor Browser are trapped inside the sandbox and can't get out and mess with the rest of your computer or deanonymize you. To learn more, check out this Q&A with Yawning Angel, a longtime Tor developer, about his work on a Linux prototype for a Tor Browser sandbox: https://blog.torproject.org/blog/q-and-yawning-angel

The Wilmington Watch: A Tor Hackfest

The Tor network team is a small team responsible for developing the core Tor daemon. They're located around the globe, so they periodically meet in person for team hackfests to keep our team fresh and up to date with all things Tor, and to fast-track features and improvements.

They worked intensely for several days and nights in Wilmington, researching, planning, and cooking meals for each other. Find out what they worked on: https://blog.torproject.org/blog/network-team-hackfest-wilmington-watch

Tor Descriptors Ă  la carte: Tor Metrics Library 2

We're often asked by researchers, users, and journalists for Tor network data. How can you find out how many people use the Tor network daily? How many relays make up the network? How many times has Tor Browser been downloaded in your language? In order to get to these answers from archived data, we have to continuously fetch, parse, and evaluate Tor descriptors. We do this with the Tor Metrics Library. The Tor Metrics Team has proudly announced major improvements and launched Tor Metrics Library version 2.0.0: https://blog.torproject.org/blog/tor-descriptors-la-carte-tor-metrics-library-2

We're Hiring a Browser Developer

As a browser developer, your job would be to work closely with other members of the Tor Browser development team on C++ patches to our Firefox-based browser, writing new APIs, altering functionality for privacy and security, and making improvements to our collection of Firefox add-ons (JavaScript code). Learn more: https://www.torproject.org/about/jobs-browserdeveloper.html.en

Upcoming Events with Tor

Help Us Protect Your Privacy and Anonymity. Make a Donation: 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.