[tor-project] December 2017 Report for the Tor Browser Team

[Georg Koppen]

Hello!

Here comes the Tor Browser status report for December 2017. In that
month the team made three releases, Tor Browser 7.0.11[1], 7.5a9[2], and
7.5a10[3].

The first two releases were mainly concerned with including new Tor
versions (0.3.1.9 and 0.3.2.6-alpha respectively) and fixing Firefox
security bugs.

Tor Browser 7.5a10 tested various fixes for inclusion in the upcoming
Tor Browser 7.5. Most notably we sorted out why "Print to File" on Linux
was broken[4][5], updated the security slider copy to get it more in
line with what is shipped with Orfox on Android[6], and made sure CSS
line-height does not reveal the user platform[7].

Non-release work focused on making progress on our remaining Sponsor 4
deliverables: getting Moat[8] and FPCentral[9] deployed. Alas, we did
not finish those items in December but we plan to do so this month.

Moreover, we coordinated with the UX and the network team to get several
usability improvements into Tor Browser, starting from a better circuit
display[10] over redirecting users to .onion websites[11] to
communicating the security state of .onions better[12].

On the mobile side we worked on including all the Orfox changes into our
tor-browser.git repository.[13] That way we can easily build all flavors
of Tor Browser from a single repository. Additionally, work got started
to make Torbutton and Tor Launcher compatible with mobile requirements.

The full list of tickets closed by the Tor Browser team in December is
accessible using the `TorBrowserTeam201712` keyword in our bug tracker.[14]

In January we plan to get Tor Browser 7.5 out, containing lots of
improvements worked on in the past weeks and months. We'll continue
working with the UX team on making progress on the above mentioned
projects and plan to write a proposal for streamlining the security
controls visible on the Tor Browser toolbar.

We plan to finally get FPCentral and Moat deployed and on our mobile
side of things we hope to have all Orfox patches merged and work will be
under way to adapt Torbutton and Tor Launcher to mobile requirements. A
first proposal for Torbutton got already posted on the tbb-dev mailing
list.[15]

All tickets on our radar for this month can be seen with the
`TorBrowserTeam201801` keyword in our bug tracker.[16]

Georg

[1] https://blog.torproject.org/tor-browser-7011-released
[2] https://blog.torproject.org/tor-browser-75a9-released
[3] https://blog.torproject.org/tor-browser-75a10-released
[4] https://bugs.torproject.org/23970
[5] https://bugs.torproject.org/23016
[6] https://bugs.torproject.org/21847
[7] https://bugs.torproject.org/23104
[8] https://bugs.torproject.org/24689
[9] https://bugs.torproject.org/6119
[10] https://bugs.torproject.org/24309
[11] See:
https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2017-December/012660.html
and follow-up emails
[12] https://bugs.torproject.org/23247
[13] https://bugs.torproject.org/19675
[14]
https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/query?status=closed&keywords=~TorBrowserTeam201712
[15] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tbb-dev/2018-January/000723.html
[16]
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=~TorBrowserTeam201801&order=priority

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