[tor-talk] Tor Weekly News -- March 14th, 2016

[TWN]

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Tor Weekly News                                         March 14th, 2016
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Welcome to the 3rd issue in 2016 of TWN, the weekly or biweekly
collection of Tor-related news.

Contents
--------

  1. Google Summer of Code
  2. Tails 2.2, Qubes OS 3.1, Subgraph OS Alpha released
  3. Tor Browser 5.5.3 and 6.0a3 released
  4. Tor Messenger 0.1.0b5 released
  5. Miscellaneous News

Google Summer of Code
---------------------

Tor was accepted into Google's Summer of Code, an annual program that
pays students to work on free software projects for three months. See
the announcement [1] for project ideas and how to apply.

  [1]: https://blog.torproject.org/blog/tor-google-summer-code-2016

Tails 2.2, Qubes OS 3.1, and Subgraph OS Alpha released
-------------------------------------------------------

Tails has a new release [2]: in addition to security updates, new
features include libdvdcss2 (so users can watch DRM-protected DVDs
out-of-the-box) and an in-house replacement of Vidalia to inspect Tor
circuits.

At the Logan Center for Investigative Journalism Symposium last weekend,
Tor's Jake Appelbaum hosted a discussion [3] on the future of secure
operating systems with developers from Tails, Qubes OS, and Subgraph OS.
It was recorded, and there should be a video posted soon. Last week,
Qubes [4] hit version 3.1 and Subgraph [5] released their first alpha
version.

  [2]: https://blog.torproject.org/blog/tails-22-out
  [3]: https://logancij.com/session-9-future-os/
  [4]: https://www.qubes-os.org/news/2016/03/09/qubes-os-3-1-has-been-released/
  [5]: https://subgraph.com/sgos/

Tor Browser 5.5.3 and 6.0a3 released
------------------------------------

The Tor Browser team put out releases on the stable [6] and alpha [7]
branches. Most important is bumping Firefox to ESR 38.7, which includes
many security improvements. These releases also bump the versions of
OpenSSL, NoScript, and HTTPS-Everywhere, and the alpha branch
additionally includes an alpha version of Tor and some minor
feature-adds. As usual, the alpha branch is available also in a hardened
build [8], with ASan and UBSan enabled.

  [6]: https://blog.torproject.org/blog/tor-browser-553-released
  [7]: https://blog.torproject.org/blog/tor-browser-60a3-released
  [8]: https://blog.torproject.org/blog/tor-browser-60a3-hardened-released

Tor Messenger 0.1.0b5 released
------------------------------

The Tor Messenger put out their third beta release last week [9]. In
case you missed it, Tor Messenger first appeared last October [10]. It's
based on Mozilla's Instantbird, sends all traffic over Tor, uses OTR
encryption by default, and supports Twitter DMs, Jabber/XMPP, IRC,
Google Talk, Yahoo, and other messaging services [11].

   [9]: https://blog.torproject.org/blog/tor-messenger-010b5-released
  [10]: https://blog.torproject.org/blog/tor-messenger-beta-chat-over-tor-easily/
  [11]: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/doc/TorMessenger/DesignDoc

Miscellaneous News
------------------

The New Hampsire House of Representatives passed a bill (268 to 62)
affirming the right of libraries to install privacy-enhancing software
such as Tor [12].

  [12]: http://www.dailydot.com/politics/tor-libraries-privacy-new-hampshire-house-pass-bill/

There was a dialogue about the CloudFlare CAPTCHAs Tor users may have
noticed [13].

  [13]: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/18361

There are some notes on the Wiki from the Dev Meeting in Valencia [14].

  [14]: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/meetings/2016WinterDevMeeting/Notes

There is a new IRC channel for Tor-enabled mobile applications:
#tor-mobile on irc.oftc.net.

Colophon
--------

This issue of Tor Weekly News has been assembled by jl.

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