Hi Tor people!

November has passed and here comes an update on what happened in the Tor Browser world during this time.

November was one of the rare months where no Tor Browser releases got out. We spent most of our time on getting the next major alpha release for Tor Browser on Android into shape. Highlights are including Orbot into Tor Browser directly[1], which makes installing a separate app unnecessary, and the full integration of the mobile build process into tor-browser-build[2], allowing us to finally tackle remaining reproducibility issues[3]. Additionally, we have worked on a bunch of UX improvements for mobile, e.g. own about:tor page[4] and .onion indicators in the URL bar, similar to those we already see on desktop platforms[5].

Apart from working on our mobile-only tasks we managed to land fixes for two long-term first-party isolation bugs: saving images etc. via the context menu is now isolated to the URL bar domain[6] as is loading PDF documents that issue range requests[7].

The full list of tickets closed by the Tor Browser team in November is accessible using the `TorBrowserTeam201811` keyword in our bug tracker.[8]

For December we plan to work on further mobile improvements, including better localization support[9] and fixups to issues that come up after our alpha relases[10]. We might finally tackle transitioning Orfox users to Tor Browser for Android as well.[11] Furthermore, we hope to make significant progress in implementing our security control redesign[12] and to consolidate our testing and QA efforts[13].

All tickets on our radar for this month can be seen with the `TorBrowserTeam201812` keyword in our bug tracker.[14]

Georg

[1] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/28051 [2] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/26693 [3] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/25164 [4] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/27111 [5] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/26690 [6] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/22343 [7] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/26540 [8] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/query?status=closed&keywords=~T... [9] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/26782 [10] For an important first one, see: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/28705 [11] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/27399 [12] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/25658 [13] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/27105 [14] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/query?status=accepted&status=as...