Stem Release 1.3

by atagar | December 22, 2014

Greetings wonderful people of the world! After months down in the engine room I'm delighted to announce the 1.3.0 release of Stem.

For those who aren't familiar with it, Stem is a Python library for interacting with Tor. With it you can script against your relay, descriptor data, or even write applications similar to arm and Vidalia.

https://stem.torproject.org/

So what's new in this release?

Better Hidden Service Support

Now it's easier than ever to spin up hidden services!

Thanks to contributions from Federico Ceratto and Patrick O'Doherty we now have a set of methods specifically for working with hidden services. Check it out in our new tutorial...

Over the River and Through the Wood

Faster Descriptor Parsing

This release dramatically improves the speed at which Stem can parse decriptors. Thanks to optimizations from Nick Mathewson and Ossi Herrala we can now read descriptors 40% faster!

This is just the tip of the iceberg. For a full rundown on the myriad of improvements and fixes in this release see...

https://stem.torproject.org/change_log.html#version-1-3

Cheers! -Damian

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Anonymous

Anonymous (not verified) said:

December 22, 2014

Permalink

hello dear TOR guys
I had a question: is that safe to add this add-on on my TOR? do you guys -as web security experts- recommend that? https://services.addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/discovery/addon/secur…
thanks for all your efforts to make web safer and more reachable for us.
p.s. I apologize for irrelevant comment. I didn't know where the right place is to ask these kind of questions. sorry :)
a big fan from Iran

I looked at it very very briefly. My guess is that there's a good chance it bypasses Tor and uploads everything that you visit to a bunch of different antivirus companies. If that's true, it sounds like a terrible idea to use.

wow! I have more than 10 add-ons on my TOR, some for comfort, some for security! I don't know how many of them -as you told now- are bypassing my TOR and reducing my security! add-ons like "down them all", "flash-got", "download manager(s3)", "aniweather", "ad block plus", "scrapbook", "screenshoter","quick translator", ... .
anyway, thanks a lot again TOR guys

No, this was a misunderstanding from months ago. Keep looking and you'll find some statements from Comcast saying no, they like Tor and they even use it.

Anonymous

Anonymous (not verified) said:

December 23, 2014

Permalink

i have two question:

I- would like to know could the cyber police track through hardware?if "YES" how ?by mac address?

2-It is true that every user has an algorithm to own ISP?
Suppose I leave a comment on the site(using Tor ) They identify the IP is Related to Tor then They go in search of who have used Tor in that time?

i really wonder how someone is arrested while using tor?

sounds cool！ BTW what if I leave a post on a website without SSL encrypted via the latest Tor browser leaving JS on.... Will those government's lapdog be able to excavate, exhume and dredge me out by my IP address?
Hope can help.
Thank you~

Hello,

is it possible to implement VPN on TOR. Virtual Private Networks. thanks a lot

This is indeed good news. Although this post won't make such an impression as the one before it, it is good to see that Tor Project is actively developing it's several applications and making the entire Tor Ecosystem better, faster, and easier to use.

Sad how funding can sometimes be disproportional. A lot of people want to pay for people in China to use Tor, but apparently there is not a lot of people willing to pay for people in EVERYWHERE to use instant messaging and email (considering how little funding and therefore development TIMB and Torbirdy have received).

Is it a stupid idea to try crowdfunding in those projects? Maybe I don't see the whole picture.

Why is there a sudden increase in the number of relays from 6000+ to 10000+ in a matter of a day?.
And while starting up for first time during the "loading information" stage I got a malware popup sighting one of the relays.
There is no information about these anywhere here.

Yep. It wasn't a big deal -- the relays would have been a threat if we'd let them stick around long enough, but we didn't.

http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1sjg365

"This looks like a regular attempt at a Sybil attack: the attackers have signed up
many new relays in hopes of becoming a large fraction of the network.
But even though they are running thousands of new relays, their relays
currently make up less than 1% of the Tor network by capacity. We are
working now to remove these relays from the network before they become
a threat, and we don't expect any anonymity or performance effects based
on what we've seen so far."

There was also some discussion on the tor-talk mailing list.

(As for your 'malware sighting', it sounds like a problem with your antivirus system. See also https://www.torproject.org/docs/faq#VirusFalsePositives )