Hi, Matrix rooms will be "upgraded" next week due to a security issue with the old room version. This involves clicking a link in your Matrix client to keep communicating over Matrix in Tor rooms. # What? Concretely, this means you will see a message like this from me or another Matrix admin in many rooms you are in:
this room will be upgraded to v12 as per https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/team/-/issues/42240
Then a message in your Matrix client directing you to the new room. For example, in Element, you will see:
This room has been replaced and is no longer active. *The conversation continues here.*
The latter is a link, and you should click it to join the new room. Once you do, you should see a message, again from me, like:
this room was upgraded to v12 as per https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/team/-/issues/42240
That is all normal, even if it looks really fishy. Sorry, this is how Matrix protocol upgrades work. In theory, most room settings should be retained and everything should work as normal. The new room doesn't have the history of the old room, but the old room is still there and *that* history is still available. In practice, let us know (in the above issue) if you find any *new* issue with the rooms. # Who? I'll be doing this work, and most people shouldn't be affected. There is a small fraction (2-3% of users) who are on home servers that do *not* support the new room versions. Those users will not be able to join the new rooms, and are encouraged to help their home server administrators to upgrade, or to switch to an up to date home server. If you use matrix.org or matrix.debian.social, you should be fine: those servers are updated and your clients should follow the upgrade without problem. # When? Some time next week. I don't have a precise coordinated time because I need # How? This change is done for Security Reasons, across the entire Matrix federation. It affects only servers (like matrix.org and matrix.debian.social) that federate with other servers, so it affects us. The details upstream are somewhat scarce, but we're following this announcement: https://matrix.org/blog/2025/07/security-predisclosure/ ... along with other news and documentation we find online. The issue is tracked at TPA in: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/team/-/issues/42240 # Where? The list of rooms that will be migrated, and the progress of the migration, is tracked in the summary of the aforementioned issue. A. -- Antoine Beaupré torproject.org system administration