Tor Browser 7.0a3 is now available from the Tor Browser Project page and also from our distribution directory.
This release features important security updates to Firefox.
This is the first alpha release which is based on Firefox ESR 52. We updated all of our patches that did not get upstreamed yet and made Torbutton and Tor Launcher multiprocess (e10s) compatible. After the first nightly build based on ESR52 went out we already fixed a number of bugs associated with this switch. But more remain, please help!
We hope having e10s and Mozilla's content sandbox enabled will be one of the major new features in the upcoming Tor Browser 7.0 series, both security- and performance-wise. While we are still working on the sandboxing part for Windows, both Linux and macOS have e10s and content sandboxing enabled by default in Tor Browser 7.0a3. There are already a number of bugs related to that on our radar which can be found on our bug tracker and which are tagged with the `tbb-e10s` keyword. If you find more, please report them!
The switch to Firefox ESR 52 raises the system requirements for Tor Browser on Windows and macOS. Computers running Windows and are not SSE2-capable are not supported anymore. On Apple computers with OS X < 10.9 Tor Browser won't run anymore either.
We updated our toolchains during the ESR transition as well. In particular we retired the old GCC-based one for our macOS cross-compilation and rely solely on clang/cctools now. As with previous releases building 7.0a3 is fully reproducible on all three supported platforms, even though we needed to deploy a last minute patch for Linux bundles this time.
Apart from switching to the new ESR and dealing with related issues we included a new Tor alpha (0.3.0.5-rc) and updated our NoScript (5.0.2) and HTTPS-Everywhere versions (5.2.14). The Sandboxed Tor Browser for Linux got updated to 0.0.6 making sure it is compatible with Firefox ESR 52.
As in Tor Browser 6.5.2 we provide a fix for Tor Browser crashing on github.com on Windows and for Twitter issues that got reported already a while ago. We update our security slider as well taking newer JIT preferences into account.
A note to Windows users: We signed the .exe files with a new codesigning certificate as the old one is about to expire. If there are issues with that new certificate, e.g. scary warnings showing up after downloading a Tor Browser .exe file and double-clicking on it, please let us know.
The full changelog since Tor Browser 7.0a2 is:
- All Platforms
- Update Firefox to 52.1.0esr
- Tor to 0.3.0.5-rc
- Update Torbutton to 1.9.7.2
- Bug 21865: Update our JIT preferences in the security slider
- Bug 21747: Make 'New Tor Circuit for this Site' work in ESR52
- Bug 21745: Fix handling of catch-all circuit
- Bug 21547: Fix circuit display under e10s
- Bug 21268: e10s compatibility for New Identity
- Bug 21267: Remove window resize implementation for now
- Bug 21201: Make Torbutton multiprocess compatible
- Translations update
- Update Tor Launcher to 0.2.12
- Update HTTPS-Everywhere to 5.2.14
- Update NoScript to 5.0.2
- Update sandboxed-tor-browser to 0.0.6
- Bug 21764: Use bubblewrap's `--die-with-parent` when supported
- Fix e10s Web Content crash on systems with grsec kernels
- Bug 21928: Force a reinstall if an existing hardened bundle is present
- Bug 21929: Remove hardened/ASAN related code
- Bug 21927: Remove the ability to install/update the hardened bundle
- Bug 21244: Update the MAR signing key for 7.0
- Bug 21536: Remove asn's scramblesuit bridge from Tor Browser
- Add back old MAR signing key to not break updating Tor Browser stable
- Add `prlimit64` to the firefox system call whitelist
- Fix compilation with Go 1.8
- Use Config.Clone() to clone TLS configs when available
- Update Go to 1.7.5 (bug 21709)
- Bug 21555+16450: Don't remove Authorization header on subdomains (e.g. Twitter)
- Bug 21887: Fix broken error pages on higher security levels
- Bug 21876: Enable e10s by default on all supported platforms
- Bug 21876: Always use esr policies for e10s
- Bug 20905: Fix resizing issues after moving to a direct Firefox patch
- Bug 21875: Modal dialogs are maximized in ESR52 nightly builds
- Bug 21885: SVG is not disabled in Tor Browser based on ESR52
- Bug 17334: Hide Referer when leaving a .onion domain (improved patch)
- Bug 3246: Double-key cookies
- Bug 8842: Fix XML parsing error
- Bug 16886: 16886: "Add-on compatibility check dialog" contains Firefox logo
- Bug 19192: Untrust Blue Coat CA
- Bug 19955: Avoid confusing warning that favicon load request got cancelled
- Bug 20005: Backport fixes for memory leaks investigation
- Bug 20755: ltn.com.tw is broken in Tor Browser
- Bug 21896: Commenting on website is broken due to CAPTCHA not being displayed
- Bug 20680: Rebase Tor Browser patches to 52 ESR
- Bug 21917: Add new obfs4 bridges
- Bug 21918: Move meek-amazon to d2cly7j4zqgua7.cloudfront.net backend
- Windows
- OS X
- Linux
- Build system
- Windows
- OS X
- Bug 21328: Updating to clang 3.8.0
- Bug 21754: Remove old GCC toolchain and macOS SDK
- Bug 19783: Remove unused macOS helper scripts
- Bug 10369: Don't use old GCC toolchain anymore for utils
- Bug 21753: Replace our old GCC toolchain in PT descriptor
- Bug 18530: ESR52 based Tor Browser only runs on macOS 10.9+
- Linux