[tor-project] January 2018 Report for the Tor Browser Team

[Georg Koppen]

Hi all!

This is the first report of our work we did in 2018. This month we
released a new major Tor Browser stable, 7.5[1] and the first alpha in
the 8.0 alpha series, 8.0a1[2].

We made major improvements into our 7.5 series regarding our bootstrap
process which should make it much easier for users to customize their
settings in case they need bridges to circumvent censorship.
Additionally, we finally enabled content sandboxing for our Windows
builds and fixed some annoying bugs sandboxing related bugs on Linux
that prevented the "Print to File" option from working. Tor Browser 7.5
is the first release with a stable Tor of the 0.3.2.x series (0.3.2.9)
which makes it possible to reach v3 .onion services with Tor Browser
from now on.

Apart from getting the new release out we worked in a number of
non-release areas: we finally completed the deployment of our own
Panopticlick-like fingerprinting measurement tool, FPCentral[3], and are
currently investigating how to tie it closer to our regular quality
assurance means. On the mobile side we further worked on integrating
Orfox and the additional mobile patches into our tor-browser git
repository[4] and started the Torbutton and TorLauncher port with
proposals on how to do that.[5][6] Feedback and concerns are still very
welcome!

The full list of tickets closed by the Tor Browser team in January is
accessible using the `TorBrowserTeam201801` keyword in our bug tracker.[7]

In February we hope to have Moat ready to be deployed in an alpha
release and plan to pick up the latest Tor 0.3.3.x-alpha for further
testing. Moreover, we have UX work going on to redo our circuit
display[8] and a proposal to redesign our security controls is currently
under discussion.[9] Please join we'd love to hear your feedback and
ideas! Additionally, the work on Tor Browser 8.0 has begun which means
our annual patch rebase to a new Firefox ESR version is under way[10]
and efforts to upstream as many of those patches to Mozilla have begun
and will continue during February.

All tickets on our radar for this month can be seen with the
`TorBrowserTeam201802` keyword in our bug tracker.[11]

Georg

[1] https://blog.torproject.org/tor-browser-75-released
[2] https://blog.torproject.org/tor-browser-80a1-released
[3] https://fpcentral.tbb.torproject.org/
[4] https://bugs.torproject.org/19675
[5] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tbb-dev/2018-January/000723.html
[6] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tbb-dev/2018-January/000735.html
[7]
https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/query?status=closed&keywords=~TorBrowserTeam201801
[8] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/24309
[9] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tbb-dev/2018-February/000756.html
[10] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tbb-dev/2018-January/000749.html
[11]
https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/query?status=accepted&status=assigned&status=merge_ready&status=needs_information&status=needs_review&status=needs_revision&status=new&status=reopened&keywords=~TorBrowserTeam201802&order=priority

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