Tor Browser 5.5a3 is released

by gk | September 22, 2015

A new alpha Tor Browser release is available for download in the 5.5a3 distribution directory and on the alpha download page.

This release features important security updates to Firefox.

Beginning with this alpha version Tor Browser is available in Japanese as well. In addition to that it contains usability improvements for our font fingerprinting defense, a better notification of Tor Browser changes after an update and regression fixes that were caused by our switch to ESR 38 back in August.

Here is the complete changelog since 5.5a2:

  • All Platforms
    • Update Firefox to 38.3.0esr
    • Update Torbutton to 1.9.4
      • Bug 16937: Don't translate the hompepage/spellchecker dictionary string
      • Bug 16735: about:tor should accommodate different fonts/font sizes
      • Bug 16887: Update intl.accept_languages value
      • Bug 15493: Update circuit display on new circuit info
      • Bug 16797: brandShorterName is missing from brand.properties
      • Translation updates
    • Bug 10140: Add new Tor Browser locale (Japanese)
    • Bug 17102: Don't crash while opening a second Tor Browser
    • Bug 16983: Isolate favicon requests caused by the tab list dropdown
    • Bug 13512: Load a static tab with change notes after an update
    • Bug 16937: Remove the en-US dictionary from non en-US Tor Browser bundles
    • Bug 7446: Tor Browser should not "fix up" .onion domains (or any domains)
    • Bug 16837: Disable Firefox Hotfix updates
    • Bug 16855: Allow blobs to be downloaded on first-party pages (fixes mega.nz)
    • Bug 16781: Allow saving pdf files in built-in pdf viewer
    • Bug 16842: Restore Media tab on Page information dialog
    • Bug 16727: Disable about:healthreport page
    • Bug 16783: Normalize NoScript default whitelist
    • Bug 16775: Fix preferences dialog with security slider set to "High"
    • Bug 13579: Update download progress bar automatically
    • Bug 15646: Reduce keyboard layout fingerprinting in KeyboardEvent
    • Bug 17046: Event.timeStamp should not reveal startup time
    • Bug 16872: Fix warnings when opening about:downloads
    • Bug 17097: Fix intermittent crashes when using the print dialog
  • Windows
    • Bug 16906: Fix Mingw-w64 compilation breakage
    • Bug 16707: Allow more system fonts to get used on Windows
  • OS X
    • Bug 16910: Update copyright year in OS X bundles
    • Bug 16707: Allow more system fonts to get used on OS X
  • Linux
    • Bug 16672: Don't use font whitelisting for Linux users

Update: It seems claiming that our builds are reproducible with LXC as well now was a bit premature (see bug 12240 for details). Thus, this part got removed from the changelog.

Tags
tor browser
tbb
tbb-5.5
Anonymous

Anonymous (not verified) said:

October 09, 2015

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Did I understand that TOR cannot protect you from programs spying on you? Then what program can?

It depends on what you mean by programs spying on you; Tor can protect you from some attacks from programs running on external computers. For attacks from programs running on the local computer you're going to need protection at the OS level itself. Tails may be a better option than Tor Browser for you threat model.

Anonymous

Anonymous (not verified) said:

October 11, 2015

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Tor can only offer partial protection from dirwct identification,( you can still be identified even if using tor) if you really want to protect yourself from malicious programs you need to do additional housekeeping over and above using tor..

Anonymous

Anonymous (not verified) said:

October 11, 2015

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Why did they make Torbrowser bundle slower?

example: TorBrowser Bundle 4.53 surfs faster and has less connection timeouts than newer TBB versions. Anyone have any info about this change? I have not been able to find any info related to the bottlenecking that happens on TBB versions higher than 4.53. Any info would be great.

Anonymous

Anonymous (not verified) said:

October 15, 2015

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Latest versions of Tor (stable and Alpha) not working on Mac OsX from China. I can only use a Tor 4.0 version I have. Newer versions don't connect throw me mismatch identity errors.

Anonymous

Anonymous (not verified) said:

October 21, 2015

Permalink

Hi, thank you all for your great work.
But could you PLEASE integrate a function so we can minimize to tray the Tor Browser (Windows) ? There was an extension before, but it stopped wortking...
Many thanks :-)

Anonymous

Anonymous (not verified) said:

October 29, 2015

Permalink

I understand from some users above that using TAILS would offer better security, however, while using TAILS, i noticed that there is no default bridges such as OBFS4, scrambleSuit, etc. The only option that they gave was to add in your own protocol and for the non-tech savy, we wont know how to use it. Thus, wont TAILS's NON-Bridged traffic be easier to identify?

If you're worried about the situation where some adversary is trying to identify your traffic (i.e. learn whether you are a Tor user), then using the default bridges is probably not a wise plan for you -- they can look for traffic to those known IP addresses, even if it's hard to do Deep Packet Inspection on the traffic flows themselves.