[tor-project] PieroV's Monthly Status Report, October 2024

[Pier Angelo Vendrame]

Hi everyone!
Here is my status report for October 2024.

Ten days ago, we finally released Tor Browser 14.0 after several months 
of work on it 🎉 [0].
Therefore, in the first weeks of October, I mostly fixed minor 
bugs/details and tried to help my colleagues resolve other problems for 
the big release.
I also spent a considerable amount of time doing QA. While doing it, I 
created new resources to make the QA process faster.
I added all of them to the tests for self-signed HTTPS Onion Sites I 
created a while ago [1].

I also restarted my upstream effort. I think the upstreaming of Bug 
1556002 [2] and Bug 1923264 [3] were the fastest I have ever had 😄.
I also tried to start a conversation about ignoring 
`content-disposition: attachment` in some cases [4], but that will need 
more work downstream first.

After the release, I returned to working on issues we didn't want to 
rush for the stable, such as moving FontConfig's fonts.conf [5].
While doing so, I also found a compatibility problem between the modern 
Python version we self-compile to be able to build Firefox and the 
legacy OpenSSL version we still have in our old build environment [6].
I fixed it by downgrading Python to 3.9.20, which is still officially 
supported by the PSF and the various build systems we use. That was the 
less-impacting solution, but not the only possible one. Also, we really 
needed to fix it quickly, as it would have prevented us from building 
14.0.1.

Currently, I am working on fixing the "Proxy server refuses connection" 
problem that some Android devices (mostly Samsung phones) show [7].
I think a workaround would be to return to TCP sockets for the SOCKS 
connections. I prefer Unix domain sockets, as they can be used only by 
the browser with our configuration, whereas TCP sockets will be 
available to other apps as well, which is a linkability concern.
If you have an Android device with this behavior and think you can help 
debug it, please consider commenting on that GitLab issue [7].
With this effort, we will also get closer to solving an 11-year-old 
issue, a new record for me 😄 [8].

Finally, I did the usual maintenance work. I rebased our browsers (the 
128-based stable and the 115-based legacy channel) and started the new 
branches for the 14.5 series.
I also prepared the 14.0.1 Tor Browser stable release and built it.

Best,
Pier

[0] https://blog.torproject.org/new-release-tor-browser-140/
[1] https://onion-tests.pierov.org/
[2] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1556002
[3] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1923264
[4] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1923368
[5] 
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser/-/issues/43140
[6] 
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser-build/-/issues/41282
[7] 
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser/-/issues/42714
[8] 
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-launcher/-/issues/10439