Archive

On September 25, 2009, the Great Firewall of China blocked the public list of relays and directory authorities by simple IP address blocks. Currently, about 80% of the public relays are blocked by IP address and TCP port combination. Tor users are still connecting to the network through bridges. At the simplest level, bridges are non-public relays that don't exit traffic, but instead send it on to the rest of the Tor network.

If you want to help people in China get access to the uncensored Internet, run a bridge.

Feel free to mirror this post, or the Tor website. We have a list of mirrors at https://www.torproject.org/mirrors.html.en or search for tor mirrors via Google, Yahoo, Baidu, etc.

Links to other helpful sites (not run by us): read more »

• http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/9ofr7/we_need_more_tor_bridg...

New releases

On August 4, we released Tor Browser Bundle 1.2.7. It is updated primarily due to Firefox 3.0.13 with its ssl fixes.

The full changelist is:
1.2.7: Released 2009-08-04

• update Firefox to 3.0.13
• add Polish translation
• update libevent to 1.4.12

On August 19, we released Tor Browser Bundle 1.2.8. The big changes are the inclusion of statically linked openssl dlls to resolve a few geoip lookup and functionality issues with Vidalia, and the upgrade to the new Vidalia 0.2.2.

The full list of updates and fixes: read more »

• update Torbutton to 1.2.2
• update Vidalia to 0.2.2
• compile OpenSSL 0.9.8k with Visual C to make dlls
• update Pidgin to 2.6.1

This summer I was working on a set of scripts that would make it possible to translate the Tor Project website via Pootle on translation.torproject.org. The website is based on a set of .wml files, but Pootle only takes files in the .pot and po format. The goal was to find a solution that would make it easy to not only translate from .wml to .po and back, but enable us to convert and keep the already translated documents. read more »

There have been some recent stories in the news about various "anonymous" bloggers and commenters being unmasked by court order. A business promises not to give up your identity unless forced to do so via court order. This is anonymity by policy. If a business doesn't have your identity, then there is nothing to divulge. This is anonymity by design. read more »

This summer I have been working on new feature for the Torbutton Firefox extension with Mike Perry as my mentor. The Tor Project volunteer page describes this project as requiring a high skill and effort level. Initially, I was confident in the effort that I was capable of putting forth, however I was doubtful of my skill level. My knowledge of XUL (an xml based markup language for the Mozilla Framework) and Javascript was a medium at best. Knowing that I was going to have to spend a good amount of time becoming adept with these languages, I took on writing three new features for Torbutton.

The first feature is handling tor:// and tors:// urls. I implemented these protocols to be handled by Torbutton, and will be opened in your Tor connection. If you do not have Tor enabled, you will be prompted to enable it. In addition, I added options in any link’s context menu for copying Tor URLs and opening them in a new window or tab. read more »

Tor Browser Bundle 1.2.9 is released today. It updates Firefox and Pidgin Instant Messaging client to address the security issues in the older versions, and includes the latest and greatest Vidalia.

TBB can be downloaded from https://www.torproject.org/torbrowser.

The details of the changes are:

• update Vidalia to 0.2.4
• update Qt to 4.5.2
• update Pidgin to 2.6.2
• update Firefox to 3.0.14

Over the summer for GSoC 2009, I worked on Polipo, Tor's favored Web proxy for bridging the gap between HTTP and SOCKS protocols. The proxy also provides an efficient memory cache to help speed up browsing. I had an opportunity to learn about Polipo and Libevent, and I had a chance to attend PETS, a privacy conference, and meet some of the Tor folks in person. Polipo is authored by Juliusz Chroboczek. Libevent is developed by Nick Mathewson and Niels Provos. Nick Mathewson also happens to work for the Tor Project and was my GSoC mentor over the summer. read more »

As a returning Google Summer of Code student for the second year in a row, I was thrilled to hear that I had been accepted again.

My task was to add BitTorrent support to Thandy, the secure automated updater developed by the Tor project, along with setting up and testing the necessary infrastructure. The goal is to better mitigate load spikes following the release of new software versions and allowing volunteers to easily help users to fetch Tor. read more »