release candidate

Tor Browser Bundle 1.2.3 and 1.2.4 Released

phobos — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 20:50:41 -0700

Tor Browser Bundle 1.2.3 was released on July 8, 2009. It contains the following changes:

Update Vidalia to 0.1.14
Update Tor to 0.2.1.17-rc
Update Pidgin to 2.5.8

TBB 1.2.3 was replaced by 1.2.4 on July 11, 2009 to include:

Include libeay32.dll from OpenSSL 0.9.8k to make QT happy
Update Vidalia to 0.1.15

TBB 1.2.4 is available at https://torproject.org/torbrowser.

Tor 0.2.1.17-rc released

phobos — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 20:47:06 -0700

Tor 0.2.1.17-rc marks the fourth -- and hopefully last -- release
candidate for the 0.2.1.x series. It lays the groundwork for further
client performance improvements, and also fixes a big bug with directory
authorities that were causing them to assign Guard and Stable flags
poorly.

The Windows bundles also finally include the geoip database that we
thought we'd been shipping since 0.2.0.x (oops), and the OS X bundles
should actually install Torbutton rather than giving you a cryptic
failure message (oops).

This is a release candidate! That means that we don't know of any
remaining show-stopping bugs, and 0.2.1.18 will be the new stable if
there are no problems. Please test it, and tell us about any problems
that you find.

https://www.torproject.org/download

Changes in version 0.2.1.17-rc - 2009-07-02
Major features:

Clients now use the bandwidth values in the consensus, rather than
the bandwidth values in each relay descriptor. This approach opens
the door to more accurate bandwidth estimates once the directory
authorities start doing active measurements. Implements more of
proposal 141.

Major bugfixes:

When Tor clients restart after 1-5 days, they discard all their
cached descriptors as too old, but they still use the cached
consensus document. This approach is good for robustness, but
bad for performance: since they don't know any bandwidths, they
end up choosing at random rather than weighting their choice by
speed. Fixed by the above feature of putting bandwidths in the
consensus. Bugfix on 0.2.0.x.
Directory authorities were neglecting to mark relays down in their
internal histories if the relays fall off the routerlist without
ever being found unreachable. So there were relays in the histories
that haven't been seen for eight months, and are listed as being
up for eight months. This wreaked havoc on the "median wfu"
and "median mtbf" calculations, in turn making Guard and Stable
flags very wrong, hurting network performance. Fixes bugs 696 and
969. Bugfix on 0.2.0.6-alpha.

Minor bugfixes:

Serve the DirPortFrontPage page even when we have been approaching
our quotas recently. Fixes bug 1013; bugfix on 0.2.1.8-alpha.
The control port would close the connection before flushing long
replies, such as the network consensus, if a QUIT command was issued
before the reply had completed. Now, the control port flushes all
pending replies before closing the connection. Also fixed a spurious
warning when a QUIT command is issued after a malformed or rejected
AUTHENTICATE command, but before the connection was closed. Patch
by Marcus Griep. Bugfix on 0.2.0.x; fixes bugs 1015 and 1016.
When we can't find an intro key for a v2 hidden service descriptor,
fall back to the v0 hidden service descriptor and log a bug message.
Workaround for bug 1024.

Minor features:

If we're a relay and we change our IP address, be more verbose
about the reason that made us change. Should help track down
further bugs for relays on dynamic IP addresses.

Tor 0.2.1.16-rc Release Candidate now available

phobos — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 07:32:45 -0700

Tor 0.2.1.16-rc speeds up performance for fast exit relays, and fixes
a bunch of minor bugs.

https://www.torproject.org/download

Changes in version 0.2.1.16-rc - 2009-06-20
Security fixes:

Fix an edge case where a malicious exit relay could convince a
controller that the client's DNS question resolves to an internal IP
address. Bug found and fixed by "optimist"; bugfix on 0.1.2.8-beta.

Major performance improvements (on 0.2.0.x):

Disable and refactor some debugging checks that forced a linear scan
over the whole server-side DNS cache. These accounted for over 50%
of CPU time on a relatively busy exit node's gprof profile. Found
by Jacob.
Disable some debugging checks that appeared in exit node profile
data.

Minor features:

Update to the "June 3 2009" ip-to-country file.
Do not have tor-resolve automatically refuse all .onion addresses;
if AutomapHostsOnResolve is set in your torrc, this will work fine.

Minor bugfixes (on 0.2.0.x):

Log correct error messages for DNS-related network errors on
Windows.
Fix a race condition that could cause crashes or memory corruption
when running as a server with a controller listening for log
messages.
Avoid crashing when we have a policy specified in a DirPolicy or
SocksPolicy or ReachableAddresses option with ports set on it,
and we re-load the policy. May fix bug 996.
Hidden service clients didn't use a cached service descriptor that
was older than 15 minutes, but wouldn't fetch a new one either,
because there was already one in the cache. Now, fetch a v2
descriptor unless the same descriptor was added to the cache within
the last 15 minutes. Fixes bug 997; reported by Marcus Griep.

Minor bugfixes (on 0.2.1.x):

Don't warn users about low port and hibernation mix when they
provide a *ListenAddress directive to fix that. Bugfix on
0.2.1.15-rc.
When switching back and forth between bridge mode, do not start
gathering GeoIP data until two hours have passed.
Do not complain that the user has requested an excluded node as
an exit when the node is not really an exit. This could happen
because the circuit was for testing, or an introduction point.
Fix for bug 984.

The original announcement can be found at http://archives.seul.org/or/talk/Jun-2009/msg00288.html

Tor Browser Bundle 1.2.1 release candidate

phobos — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 20:53:08 -0700

In continuing to improve TBB for a vast array of users, here's the release candidate for Tor Browser Bundle 1.2.1.

I appreciate your feedback, comments, and bugs filed so far about TBB 1.2.1-dev.

You can find here the updated TBB 1.2.1-1-dev, sig, and sha1 files.

The changes since the last test are:

Update Pidgin to 2.5.6r2
Update Firefox to 3.0.11
Include OpenSSL 0.9.8k DLL and stop using the system ssl dll

Tor 0.2.1.15-rc released

phobos — Sun, 31 May 2009 18:04:49 -0700

Tor 0.2.1.15-rc marks the second release candidate for the 0.2.1.x
series. It fixes a major bug on fast exit relays, as well as a variety
of more minor bugs.

This is a release candidate! That means that we don't know of any
remaining show-stopping bugs, and this will become the new stable if
there are no problems. Please test it, and tell us about any problems
that you find.

https://www.torproject.org/download

Changes in version 0.2.1.15-rc - 2009-05-25

Major bugfixes (on 0.2.0.x):

Fix a timing-dependent, allocator-dependent, DNS-related crash bug that would occur on some exit nodes when DNS failures and timeouts occurred in certain patterns. Fix for bug 957.

Minor bugfixes (on 0.2.0.x):

Actually return -1 in the error case for read_bandwidth_usage().
Harmless bug, since we currently don't care about the return value
anywhere. Bugfix on 0.2.0.9-alpha.
Provide a more useful log message if bug 977 (related to buffer
freelists) ever reappears, and do not crash right away.
Fix an assertion failure on 64-bit platforms when we allocated
memory right up to the end of a memarea, then realigned the memory
one step beyond the end. Fixes a possible cause of bug 930.
Protect the count of open sockets with a mutex, so we can't
corrupt it when two threads are closing or opening sockets at once.
Fix for bug 939. Bugfix on 0.2.0.1-alpha.
Don't allow a bridge to publish its router descriptor to a
non-bridge directory authority. Fixes part of bug 932.
When we change to or from being a bridge, reset our counts of
client usage by country. Fixes bug 932.
Fix a bug that made stream bandwidth get misreported to the
controller.
Stop using malloc_usable_size() to use more area than we had
actually allocated: it was safe, but made valgrind really unhappy.
Fix a memory leak when v3 directory authorities load their keys
and cert from disk. Bugfix on 0.2.0.1-alpha.

Minor bugfixes (on 0.2.1.x):

Fix use of freed memory when deciding to mark a non-addable
descriptor as never-downloadable. Bugfix on 0.2.1.9-alpha.

The original release announcement can be found at http://archives.seul.org/or/talk/May-2009/msg00133.html

Tor 0.2.1.14-rc released

phobos — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 15:25:39 -0700

Changes in version 0.2.1.14-rc - 2009-04-12
Major features:

Clients replace entry guards that were chosen more than a few months ago. This change should significantly improve client performance, especially once more people upgrade, since relays that have been a guard for a long time are currently overloaded.

Major bugfixes (on 0.2.0):

Finally fix the bug where dynamic-IP relays disappear when their IP address changes: directory mirrors were mistakenly telling them their old address if they asked via begin_dir, so they never got an accurate answer about their new address, so they just vanished after a day. For belt-and-suspenders, relays that don't set Address in their config now avoid using begin_dir for all direct connections. Should fix bugs 827, 883, and 900.
Relays were falling out of the networkstatus consensus for part of a day if they changed their local config but the authorities discarded their new descriptor as "not sufficiently different". Now directory authorities accept a descriptor as changed if bandwidthrate or bandwidthburst changed. Partial fix for bug 962; patch by Sebastian.
Avoid crashing in the presence of certain malformed descriptors. Found by lark, and by automated fuzzing.

Minor features:

When generating circuit events with verbose nicknames for controllers, try harder to look up nicknames for routers on a circuit. (Previously, we would look in the router descriptors we had for nicknames, but not in the consensus.) Partial fix for bug 941.
If the bridge config line doesn't specify a port, assume 443. This makes bridge lines a bit smaller and easier for users to understand.
Raise the minimum bandwidth to be a relay from 20000 bytes to 20480 bytes (aka 20KB/s), to match our documentation. Also update directory authorities so they always assign the Fast flag to relays with 20KB/s of capacity. Now people running relays won't suddenly find themselves not seeing any use, if the network gets faster on average.
Update to the "April 3 2009" ip-to-country file.

Minor bugfixes:

Avoid trying to print raw memory to the logs when we decide to give up on downloading a given relay descriptor. Bugfix on 0.2.1.9-alpha.
In tor-resolve, when the Tor client to use is specified by :, actually use the specified port rather than defaulting to 9050. Bugfix on 0.2.1.6-alpha.
Make directory usage recording work again. Bugfix on 0.2.1.6-alpha.
When starting with a cache over a few days old, do not leak memory for the obsolete router descriptors in it. Bugfix on 0.2.0.33.
Avoid double-free on list of successfully uploaded hidden service discriptors. Fix for bug 948. Bugfix on 0.2.1.6-alpha.
Change memarea_strndup() implementation to work even when duplicating a string at the end of a page. This bug was harmless for now, but could have meant crashes later. Fix by lark. Bugfix on 0.2.1.1-alpha.
Limit uploaded directory documents to be 16M rather than 500K. The directory authorities were refusing v3 consensus votes from other authorities, since the votes are now 504K. Fixes bug 959; bugfix on 0.0.2pre17 (where we raised it from 50K to 500K ;).
Directory authorities should never send a 503 "busy" response to requests for votes or keys. Bugfix on 0.2.0.8-alpha; exposed by bug 959.

April 2008 Progress Report

phobos — Wed, 14 May 2008 09:53:24 -0700

Tor 0.2.0.24-rc (released Apr 22) adds dizum (run by Alex de Joode)
as the new sixth v3 directory authority, makes relays with dynamic IP
addresses and no DirPort notice more quickly when their IP address
changes, fixes a few rare crashes and memory leaks, and fixes a few
other miscellaneous bugs. Tor 0.2.0.25-rc (released Apr 23) makes Tor
work again on OS X and certain BSDs.
http://archives.seul.org/or/talk/May-2008/msg00014.html

Torbutton 1.1.18 (released Apr 17) fixes many usability and interoperability
items, in an attempt to make the new Torbutton not so obnoxious in its
zeal to protect the user. It also includes new translations for French,
Russian, Farsi, Italian, and Spanish.

We did a complete overhaul of the https://check.torproject.org/
page. Now it accepts a language choice,
e.g. https://check.torproject.org/?lang=fa-IR
Available languages are German, English, Spanish, Italian, Farsi,
Japanese, Polish, Portugese, Russian, and Chinese. The Tor Browser
Bundle automatically uses the appropriate language as its home page,
based on which language of the Browser Bundle was downloaded.

Started on a documentation page to explain to users what bridges are,
how they can decide whether they need one, and how to configure their
Tor client to use them:
https://www.torproject.org/bridges.html

We've also started working on a design proposal for making it easier
to set up a private or testing Tor network. With the advent of the v3
directory protocol, it currently takes up to 30 minutes before a test
network will produce a useful networkstatus consensus. Also, there are
a dozen different config options that need to be set correctly for
a Tor network running on a single IP address to not trigger various
security defenses. This approach should let more people set up their
own Tor networks, either for testing or because they can't reach the
main Tor network.
https://www.torproject.org/svn/trunk/doc/spec/proposals/135-private-tor-...

We have the beginnings of a grand plan for how to successfully scale
the Tor network to orders of magnitude more relays than we have
currently. Much more work and thinking remain.
https://www.torproject.org/svn/trunk/doc/spec/proposals/ideas/xxx-grand-...

We also did a retrospective on currently open but not finished design
proposals, so we don't have as many "open" proposals in the pipeline
but not getting attention:
http://archives.seul.org/or/dev/Apr-2008/msg00009.html

We added several more research papers that we'd like to see written to
the https://www.torproject.org/volunteer#Research page. In May we'll add
a few more and then start pointing academic professors at the new list.

The development version of Vidalia now has GUI boxes to configure an http
proxy that Vidalia should launch when it starts. (The Tor Browser Bundle
already uses these config options internally to launch Polipo when it
starts.) The next steps are to make sure that Polipo (our preferred new
http proxy) is stable enough on Windows, and then start shipping some
new standard bundles with Polipo rather than Privoxy.

We cleaned up the Torbutton install in the OS X bundles so it installs
Torbutton for the local user, rather than global. Hopefully this will
make OS X users happier.

We're making progress on integrating a UPnP library into Vidalia. This
feature will allow users who want to set up a Tor relay but don't want
to muck with manual port forwarding on their router/firewall to just
click a button and have Vidalia interact with their router/firewall
automatically. This approach won't work in all cases, but it should work
in at least some. We hope to land the first version of this in May.

Steven Murdoch and Robert Watson worked towards a final version of
their PETS 2008 paper called "Metrics for Security and Performance in
Low-Latency Anonymity Systems." The final version will be available in
May at:
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~sjm217/papers/pets08metrics.pdf

So far there appear to be no free-software zip splitters that work
on Windows and produce self-contained exe files for automatically
reconstructing the file. Rather than using a closed-source shareware
application (as it seems a shame to put a trust gap in our build process
when we don't need to), the current plan is to write some instructions
for users to fetch the 7zip program, and then fetch a set of blocks,
and run a batch file to reconstruct them. We're in the process of trying
to learn how large the blocks can be -- preliminary guess is 2MB.

We have a first draft of a translation portal up here:
https://www.torproject.org/translation-portal

The Vidalia GUI now has (manual) translation instructions:
http://trac.vidalia-project.net/wiki/Translations

We've registered the Vidalia project on "LaunchPad", which is a
web-based translation site that is compatible with Vidalia's string
format:
https://translations.launchpad.net/vidalia/trunk/+pots/vidalia
We're currently working to try to upload our current translations into
the LaunchPad interface.

We've registered the Torbutton project on "BabelZilla", which is a
web-based translation site designed specifically for Firefox extensions.
We've uploaded the current translation strings:
http://www.babelzilla.org/index.php?option=com_wts&Itemid=88&extension=3...

Lastly, we've begun developer-oriented documentation for how to manage
and maintain these various translation web-interfaces:
https://www.torproject.org/svn/trunk/doc/translations.txt

Security critical Tor-0.2.0.26-rc released

phobos — Tue, 13 May 2008 09:38:48 -0700

Tor-0.2.0.26-rc replaces several V3 directory authority keys affected by a recent Debian OpenSSL bug.

This is a security-critical release.

Everybody running any version in the 0.2.0.x series should upgrade, whether
they are running Debian or not. Also, all servers running any version of Tor
whose keys were generated by Debian, Ubuntu, or any derived distribution may
have to replace their identity keys. See our security advisory for full details. As always, you can find Tor 0.2.0.26-rc on the downloads page.

Changes in version 0.2.0.26-rc - 2008-05-13
Major security fixes:

Use new V3 directory authority keys on the tor26, gabelmoo, and moria1 V3 directory authorities. The old keys were generated with a vulnerable version of Debian's OpenSSL package, and must be considered compromised. Other authorities' keys were not generatedwith an affected version of OpenSSL.

Major bugfixes:

List authority signatures as "unrecognized" based on DirServer lines, not on cert cache. Bugfix on 0.2.0.x.

Minor features:

Add a new V3AuthUseLegacyKey option to make it easier for authorities to change their identity keys if they have to.

March 2008 Progress Report

phobos — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 19:02:18 -0700

Tor 0.2.0.23-rc (released Mar 24) is the fourth release candidate for the 0.2.0 series. It makes bootstrapping faster if the first directory mirror you contact is down. The bundles also include the new Vidalia 0.1.2 release.
http://archives.seul.org/or/talk/Mar-2008/msg00204.html

Tor 0.2.0.22-rc (released Mar 18) is the third release candidate for the 0.2.0 series. It enables encrypted directory connections by default for non-relays, fixes some broken TLS behavior we added in 0.2.0.20-rc, and resolves many other bugs. The bundles also include Vidalia 0.1.1 and Torbutton 1.1.17.
http://archives.seul.org/or/talk/Mar-2008/msg00136.html

Tor 0.2.0.21-rc (released Mar 2) is the second release candidate for the 0.2.0 series. It makes Tor work well with Vidalia again, fixes a rare assert bug, and fixes a pair of more minor bugs. The bundles also include Vidalia 0.1.0 and Torbutton 1.1.16.
http://archives.seul.org/or/talk/Mar-2008/msg00025.html

Torbutton 1.1.16 (released Mar 3) and 1.1.17 (released Mar 15) fix many more potential privacy and identity leaks, mostly based on exploits found by Greg Fleischer, and try to start adding support for Firefox 3.
https://torbutton.torproject.org/dev/CHANGELOG

Vidalia 0.1.0 (released Mar 1), 0.1.1 (released Mar 17), and 0.1.2 (released Mar 24) changes the build process from make to cmake, starts doing encrypted geoip fetches rather than plaintext geoip fetches, checks if the user is running a dangerous or obsolete version of Tor and pops up a window warning them, waits to turn the Vidalia taskbar onion green until Tor reports that it has established a circuit, folds in the patches from Tor Browser Bundle to have Vidalia launch a browser and/or an http proxy, and fixes many miscellaneous bugs.
http://trac.vidalia-project.net/browser/vidalia/tags/vidalia-0.1.2/CHANG...

From the Tor 0.2.0.23-rc ChangeLog:
“When a tunneled directory request is made to a directory server that's down, notice after 30 seconds rather than 120 seconds. Also, fail any begindir streams that are pending on it, so they can retry elsewhere. This was causing multi-minute delays on bootstrap.”

From the Tor 0.2.0.22-rc ChangeLog:
“Enable encrypted directory connections by default for non-relays, so censor tools that block Tor directory connections based on their plaintext patterns will no longer work. This means Tor works in certain censored countries by default again.”

From the Vidalia 0.1.1 ChangeLog:
“TunnelDirConns and PreferTunneledDirConns are now enabled by default as of Tor 0.2.0.22-rc. Don't check the 'My ISP blocks connections to the Tor network' box simply because TunnelDirConns is enabled. Checking the box still enables encrypted directory connections on older Tors.”

From the Vidlia 0.1.0 ChangeLog:
“Listen for the DANGEROUS_VERSION general status event and warn the user if their version of Tor is no longer recommended.”
“Listen for the CIRCUIT_ESTABLISHED client status event and only turn the yellow onion status icon green after Tor has successfully established a circuit.”
“Add a "How do I find a bridge?" link and corresponding help text to the 'Network' settings page.”
“Add a 'BrowserExecutable' configuration option to launch a Web browser when Tor has built a circuit, and exit Vidalia when the browser is closed.”
“Add 'ProxyExecutable' and 'ProxyExecutableArguments' configuration options to launch a proxy application with given parameters when Vidalia starts, and close it when Vidalia exits.”
“Rename the 'Relay' settings page to the 'Sharing' settings page.”

From the Tor 0.2.0.21-rc ChangeLog:
“We were sometimes miscounting the number of bytes read from the network, causing our rate limiting to not be followed exactly. Bugfix on 0.2.0.16-alpha. Reported by lodger.”

From the Vidalia 0.1.2 ChangeLog:
“Bridges are no longer required to have a DirPort set as of Tor 0.2.0.13-alpha, so stop forcing it on for bridges. At some point, we'll likely start forcing DirPort to be disabled for bridges, and on by default but optional for normal relays.”

Tor Browser Bundle 1.0.0 (released Mar 20) and 1.0.1 (released Mar 26) makes it work correctly with Polipo again, updates the versions of many of its components, and makes it easier to build the Bundle with custom included "jar" (plug-in) files as well as "xpi" (extension) files.
https://tor-svn.freehaven.net/svn/torbrowser/trunk/README

We moved the Tor Browser Bundle website into the main Tor website, so it can re-use our translation infrastructure. Currently its frontpage is available in English, German, Italian, Polish, and Russian.

February 2008 Progress Report

phobos — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 17:47:23 -0700

Tor 0.2.0.20-rc (released Feb 24) is the first release candidate for the 0.2.0 series. It makes more progress towards normalizing Tor's TLS handshake, makes hidden services work better again, helps relays bootstrap if they don't know their IP address, adds optional support for linking in openbsd's allocator or tcmalloc, allows really fast relays to scale past 15000 sockets, and fixes a bunch of minor bugs reported by Veracode.
http://archives.seul.org/or/talk/Feb-2008/msg00279.html

Tor 0.2.0.19-alpha (released Feb 9) makes more progress towards normalizing Tor's TLS handshake, makes path selection for relays more secure and IP address guessing more robust, and generally fixes a lot of bugs in preparation for calling the 0.2.0 branch stable.
http://archives.seul.org/or/talk/Feb-2008/msg00134.html

Torbutton 1.1.13 (released Feb 1), 1.1.14 (released Feb 24), and 1.1.15 (released Feb 26) fix many more potential privacy and identity leaks, mostly based on exploits found by Greg Fleischer. They also add support for automatic updates via the usual Firefox extension upgrade approach.
https://torbutton.torproject.org/dev/CHANGELOG

Work continued toward the upcoming Vidalia 0.1.0 release (which came out March 1): support for launching Firefox and Polipo as supporting applications; support for learning from Tor when the first circuit is ready so it can inform the user; and many other bugfixes including a few security fixes.
http://trac.vidalia-project.net/browser/vidalia/releases/vidalia-0.1.0/C...

The Tor 0.2.0.19-alpha release contained many security-related cleanups based on an anonymously submitted code review from a static analysis tool. The Tor 0.2.0.20-rc release contained even more security-related cleanups, based on an external security analysis and audit by Veracode. Hopefully cleanups at this stage will reduce the number of times we need to push out an urgent new stable "0.2.0" release for security reasons.

From the Tor 0.2.0.19-alpha ChangeLog:
“When connecting to a bridge without specifying its key, insert the connection into the identity-to-connection map as soon as a key is learned. This prevents the Tor user's log from showing a confusing complaint periodically.”
“When our consensus networkstatus has been expired for a while, stop being willing to build circuits using it. Now clients won't give themselves away by behaving uniquely if they start up with an old networkstatus view.”

From the Tor 0.2.0.20-rc ChangeLog:
“Choose which bridge to use proportional to its advertised bandwidth, rather than uniformly at random. This should speed up Tor for bridge users. Also do this for people who set StrictEntryNodes.”

From the Tor 0.2.0.19-alpha ChangeLog:
“If we're a relay, avoid picking ourselves as an introduction point, a rendezvous point, or as the final hop for internal circuits.”
“Directory caches now fetch certificates from all authorities listed in a networkstatus consensus, even when they do not recognize them. This bugfix is particularly important for bridge users, since the bridges are their only contact point for fetching new directory information.”

From the Tor 0.2.0.20-rc ChangeLog:
“Servers that don't know their own IP address should go to the authorities for their first directory fetch, even if their DirPort is off or if they don't know they're reachable yet. This will help them bootstrap better.”

From the Tor 0.2.0.20-rc ChangeLog:
“We were comparing the raw BridgePassword entry with a base64'ed version of it, when handling a "/tor/networkstatus-bridges" directory request. Now compare correctly. This bugfix should allow bridge communities (formerly known as bridge families) to work better. Noticed by Veracode.”

From the Tor 0.2.0.19-alpha ChangeLog:
“Do not include recognizeable strings in the commonname part of Tor's x509 certificates.”

From the Tor 0.2.0.20-rc ChangeLog:
“Enable the revised TLS handshake based on the one designed by Steven Murdoch in proposal 124, as revised in proposal 130. It includes version negotiation for OR connections as described in proposal 105. The new handshake is meant to be harder for censors to fingerprint, and it adds the ability to detect certain kinds of man-in-the-middle traffic analysis attacks. The version negotiation feature will allow us to improve Tor's link protocol more safely in the future.”

From the Tor 0.2.0.20-rc ChangeLog:
“Tune parameters for cell pool allocation to minimize amount of RAM overhead used.”
“Add OpenBSD malloc code from phk as an optional malloc replacement on Linux: some glibc libraries do very poorly with Tor's memory allocation patterns. Pass --enable-openbsd-malloc to get the replacement malloc code.”
“Stop imposing an arbitrary maximum on the number of file descriptors used for extremely high-throughput servers. Bug reported by Olaf Selke; patch from Sebastian Hahn.”

From the Tor 0.2.0.19-alpha ChangeLog:
“Patch from "Andrew S. Lists" to catch when we contact a directory mirror at IP address X and he says we look like we're coming from IP address X. This was causing some Tor relays to test their reachability by testing the wrong address, and never actually publish to the main list.”

We cleaned up the Tor Browser Bundle's webpage and instructions based on feedback from users who were visiting Iran and Burma. Also started preparations to make it easy for our translators to provide an alternate languages. As of March 10, we have English, German, Italian, Polish, and Russian translations. We are working to coordinate an Arabic translation too.
https://torbrowser.torproject.org/

The new Tor Browser Bundle 0.0.7 (released Feb 8) and 0.0.8 (released Feb 15) include security updates for Firefox (2.0.12), security updates for Torbutton (1.1.13), automate generation of internationalized bundles, allow optional extensions to be placed in build-scripts/extensions, build Polipo with regular expression support (activating the forbiddenFile option), and update Polipo configuration based on suggestions from Incognito's Polipo configuration:
https://tor-svn.freehaven.net/svn/torbrowser/branches/stable/README