[tor-talk] Tor Weekly News — October 24th, 2015
Harmony
harmony01 at riseup.net
Sat Oct 24 14:36:14 UTC 2015
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Tor Weekly News October 24th, 2015
========================================================================
Welcome to the thirty-sixth issue in 2015 of Tor Weekly News, the weekly
newsletter that covers what’s happening in the Tor community.
Contents
--------
1. Tails 1.6 is out
2. Orfox reaches beta
3. Final Tor Summer of Privacy reports
4. Monthly status reports for September 2015
5. Miscellaneous news
6. Upcoming events
Tails 1.6 is out
----------------
Tails 1.6 [1], a minor release of the anonymous live operating system,
was put out one month ago on September 22, following a Firefox security
announcement. As well as Tor Browser 5.0.3, this release includes
updates to key software, and fixes to important security issues [2].
All Tails users must upgrade as soon as possible, if they haven’t
already done so; see the announcement for download instructions.
[1]: https://tails.boum.org/news/version_1.6/
[2]: https://tails.boum.org/security/Numerous_security_holes_in_1.5.1/
Orfox reaches Beta
------------------
The Orfox team released the first beta version of the Tor Browser-like
Android web browser on Google Play [3] and the Guardian Project F-Droid
repos [4]. This is a public testing release, so as usual please do not
rely on it for strong anonymity just yet.
If you want to stay updated with this effort, keep an eye on the team’s
homepage [5]. The project is trying to improve communications with both
Mozilla and the Tor Browser team in order to have as much work merged
upstream as possible!
[3]: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=info.guardianproject.orfox
[4]: https://guardianproject.info/fdroid/repo/
[5]: https://dev.guardianproject.info/projects/orfox-private-browser
Final Tor Summer of Privacy reports
-----------------------------------
The “southern hemisphere” schedule for Tor’s first-ever Summer of
Privacy came to an end, and the two remaining students submitted their
final progress reports. Israel Leiva’s [6] revamp of GetTor, the
alternative Tor software distributor, now supports additional content
delivery networks including Github and Google Drive, xmpp requests (with
Twitter compatibility on the way), multiple languages, and more. Israel
will continue to work on GetTor as a regular contributor, so expect more
progress reports from this important project.
Cristóbal Leiva’s [7] relay web status dashboard, erebus, now includes
core frontend and backend functionality, along with a basic UI and full
code documentation. Cristóbal will also be continuing to work on his
project over the coming months. Congratulations to both on finishing the
season with their projects in such good shape!
[6]: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-reports/2015-October/000932.html
[7]: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-reports/2015-October/000933.html
Monthly status reports for September 2015
-----------------------------------------
Tor Project members submitted their regular monthly status reports for
September. Griffin Boyce [8] gave an account of his activities over the
summer; Pearl Crescent [9] worked on development of Tor Browser; Karsten
Loesing [10] helped organize the Tor Metrics team and develop the network
tools; Sebastian Hahn [11] worked on donation- and outreach-related
website improvements; Georg Koppen [12] coded and reviewed for the
latest Tor Browser releases; Damian Johnson [13] worked on Nyx, Stem,
DocTor, and code review for metrics-lib; Leiah Jansen [14] completed
graphic designs for Tor’s website and for a campaign T-shirt; Colin
Childs [15] organized the new support team and coordinated translations;
the Tor Browser team [16] put out new alpha and stable releases; and
George Kadianakis [17] worked on Tor network security.
George also sent out the report for SponsorR [18], while Isabela
Bagueros sent out a progress report for SponsorU [19].
[8]: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-reports/2015-September/000917.html
[9]: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-reports/2015-September/000919.html
[10]: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-reports/2015-September/000920.html
[11]: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-reports/2015-October/000923.html
[12]: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-reports/2015-October/000924.html
[13]: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-reports/2015-October/000925.html
[14]: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-reports/2015-October/000927.html
[15]: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-reports/2015-October/000928.html
[16]: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-reports/2015-October/000929.html
[17]: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-reports/2015-October/000930.html
[18]: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-reports/2015-October/000926.html
[19]: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-reports/2015-October/000931.html
Miscellaneous news
------------------
David Fifield sent out the regular summary of costs [20] for the meek
pluggable transport. David also announced that the Microsoft Azure
backend for meek is now rate-limited to the same speed as the Amazon and
Google bridges, as the free grant has expired [21].
[20]: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2015-October/009672.html
[21]: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-talk/2015-October/039169.html
Karsten Loesing announced [22] that the upcoming version 3.0 of the
Onionoo protocol will support searching for relays by space-separated
fingerprints (e.g. “9695 DFC3 5FFE B861 329B 9F1A B04C 4639 7020 CE31”)
in addition to unseparated ones.
[22]: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2015-October/009690.html
There is currently no standard definition of “membership” in the Tor
Project, although there are various “membership-like” features such as
internal mailing lists, LDAP accounts, and @torproject.org email
addresses. Now that the Tor community is growing much more rapidly, a
discussion was held at the recent Tor dev meeting to try and come up
with some criteria against which a contributor can be categorized as a
Tor Project “member”. Discussion is still ongoing, but a summary of the
ideas so far is available on the wiki [23].
[23]: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/meetings/2015SummerDevMeeting/MembershipProcess
On Thursday, Jacob Appelbaum, Trevor Paglen, and Leif Ryge unveiled the
latest exhibit at the Edith-Russ-Haus für Medienkunst in Oldenburg,
Germany — an “Autonomy Cube” [24], comprising a fast Tor exit relay
housed in a transparent case. Until January 3rd, visitors to the gallery
can use the Cube’s network to access the Internet over Tor, or just
contemplate all the encrypted traffic passing right under their noses on
its way around the world. In the basement below the exhibition space, a
reading room and video gallery will explore some of the installation’s
themes in greater depth, and the whole exhibition will be accompanied by
a book of essays.
[24]: http://www.edith-russ-haus.de/ausstellungen/ausstellungen/aktuell.html
Upcoming events
---------------
Oct 26 17:00 UTC | OONI team meeting
| #ooni, itc.oftc.net
|
Oct 26 19:00 UTC | Tor Browser meeting
| #tor-dev, irc.oftc.net
|
Oct 27 16:00 UTC | SponsorR meeting
| #tor-dev, irc.oftc.net
|
Oct 27 18:00 UTC | Core Tor patch workshop
| #tor-dev, irc.oftc.net
|
Oct 28 14:30 UTC | Network team meeting
| #tor-dev, irc.oftc.net
|
Oct 29 15:00 UTC | 1-1-1 task exchange meeting
| #tor-dev, irc.oftc.net
|
Nov 03 18:00 UTC | Applications team meeting
| #tor-project, irc.oftc.net
| https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2015-October/009680.html
|
Nov 03 19:00 UTC | Tails contributors meeting
| #tails-dev, irc.oftc.net
| https://mailman.boum.org/pipermail/tails-project/2015-October/000335.html
This issue of Tor Weekly News has been assembled by Harmony, Lunar,
Amogh Pradeep, teor, Karsten Loesing, and the Tails developers.
Want to continue reading TWN? Please help us create this newsletter.
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[25]: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/TorWeeklyNews
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