[tor-reports] Pearl Crescent Report – July 2014

[Mark Smith]

Tor-related work that the Pearl Crescent team did in July
(Kathy Brade and Mark Smith):

* Firefox updater for Tor Browser:  We added support for symlinks
   to the Firefox updater code (to support meek).  We also provided
   design information r.e. Firefox certificate pinning preferences
   and the update responder script that will be hosted somewhere at
   torproject.org.  We did an initial rebase of the updater patches
   against Firefox ESR 31.
     https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/4234
     https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/12647
     https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/12623
     https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/12622
   Special thanks to Nicolas for agreeing to work on the update
   responder script (#12622).

* Tor Browser:  Assisted with bug triage and worked on various
   issues, including:
     "Create Browser UI for current circuit status and exit IP"
     https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/8641

     "Document how to report security vulnerabilities"
     https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/9186

     "Adapt Torbutton to the Australis UI"
     https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/10751

     "Onion logo and text on about:tor page may overlap"
     https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/11472

     "Update now link in old TBB does not point to latest version"
     https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/11789

     "Building mingw-w64 is failing intermittently"
     https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/12391

     "tbb-nightly-2014-07-13 chokes with "Bad password or
          authentication cookie on controller."
     https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/12624


* Tor Launcher:  Worked on various issues, including:
     "Show Tor log in TorBrowser"
     https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/9516

     "Change Tor Browser Bundle to Tor Browser"
     https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/11193

     "Improve Tor Launcher's behavior if tor exits"
     https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/11199

     "add option to hide TBB's logo"
     https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/12451

     "'Tor unexpectedly exited' if there is a wrong line in torrc"
     https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/12501


* Participated in the weekly Tor Browser dev meetings on IRC and
   in various design discussions on IRC and on the mailing lists.


Plans for August:

* Get the updater for Tor Browser (bug 4234) ready for alpha testing.
   We will help merge the updater patches into master (for TB 4.x) and
   work with other Tor Project team members to address deployment
   issues (update responder script, hosting of MAR files, etc.)

* Assist with migration of browser patches and our build system to
   the Firefox 31 code base.

* Continue to add polish to Tor Launcher with specific focus on
   usability issues.

-- 
Mark Smith
Pearl Crescent, LLC
http://pearlcrescent.com/