Hi all!
In April we shipped one Tor Browser alpha release, 8.0a6[1]. It contains Tor 0.3.3.5-rc to give the release candidate a wider testing and updates a bunch of other components as well. It's the first alpha release using GCC 6.4 for compiling Linux and Windows bundles, which is part of our toolchain updates we plan to do for our switch to Firefox ESR60.
Non-release work in April concentrated on two areas: preparations for our switch to Firefox 60 ESR and the first alpha for Tor Browser on Android. For the former we rebased all our patches[2] and are currently reviewing those changes. Furthermore, we got our build setup ready to build Rust code[3] that comes with Firefox and started to look into necessary updates for our own extensions, Torbutton and Tor Launcher[4].
We made progress on our Tor Browser for Android roadmap as well: we updated the Orfox patches to make them ready for Firefox 61[5], which the first alpha version will be based on. Additionally, we further investigated possible proxy bypasses on mobile and the state of the fingerprinting/linkability defenses we already have available on desktop.
The full list of tickets closed by the Tor Browser team in April is accessible using the `TorBrowserTeam201804` keyword in our bug tracker.[6]
For May we'll focus on getting our toolchains ready for Tor Browser 8 and have nightly builds available, being able to test our changes further. For that we plan to have our test suite functioning and adapted to Firefox 60 ESR as well. Moreover, we'll do the necessary proxy safety audit taking changes between Firefox 52 ESR and Firefox 60 ESR into account[7] and start reviewing new features[8] to make sure we can patch the code where needed.
For Tor Browser on Android we aim at having our mobile-specific patches updated and available on a separate branch, following the regular Firefox release cycle and fix as much proxy bypass problems and fingerprinting/linkability issues as we can.
All tickets on our radar for this month can be seen with the `TorBrowserTeam201805` keyword in our bug tracker.[9]
Georg
[1] https://blog.torproject.org/tor-browser-80a6-released [2] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/25543 [3] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/25220 and child tickets [4] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/25750 [5] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/25741 [6] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/query?status=closed&keywords=~T... [7] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/22176 [8] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/22074 [9] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/query?status=accepted&status=as...