The new version of the browser for anonymity Tor 9.5 is here

After six months of development the release of a new version was announced important of the popular specialized browser for anonymous browsing Tor Browser 9.5«, In which it is continued development of functionality based on the ESR branch of Firefox 68.

For those who are unfamiliar with the browser, they should know that Tor focuses on ensuring anonymity, security and privacy, all traffic is redirected only through the Tor network. It is impossible to access directly through the regular network connection of the current system, which does not allow is to trace the real IP of the user.

To provide additional protection, the package includes HTTPS Everywhere plugin, which allows encryption of traffic on all sites whenever possible.

To reduce the threat of attacks that use JavaScript and block plugins by default, the NoScript plugin is included.

Main new features of Tor 9.5

Among the main novelties that stand out in this new version, we can find that a indicator of the availability of a version of the site that works in the form of a hidden service, which is displayed in the address bar when viewing a normal website.

When you open the site for the first time, also accessible through the onion address, a dialog box appears with a suggestion to continue automatically switching to the onion site when you open the website. The site owner transmits the accessibility information via the .onion address using the HTTP Alt-Svc header.

The hidden service owners who want to restrict access to their resources now can establish a set of keys for access control and authentication. The user can save the transferred password on their system and use the Onion service authentication interface in "about: preferences # privacy" to manage the keys.

Another of the changes that stands out in this new version of Tor 9.5, are the extended security indicators in the address bar, for a transition has been made to indicate a secure connection to indicate a security problem. Secure onion connections are no longer highlighted and are marked with a normal gray icon.

If an insufficient level of connection protection is detected when accessing the service, the connection indicator is crossed out with a red line. If a mixed resource loading page is detected on the page, an additional warning is displayed in the form of an icon with an exclamation point.

On the other hand, we can find the separate options for pages displayed when connecting to services failing (Previously, Firefox standard error pages were displayed, same as for websites.) The new pages include additional information pTo diagnose the reasons for the inability to connect to a hidden service, allowing you to judge problems in address, service, customer, or network infrastructure.

For greater visual access to .onion sites, has been provided a posibility experimental linking symbolic names, which solves the problems of remembering and looking up addresses.

To simplify access, together with the organizations FPF (Freedom of the Press Foundation) and EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation), A prototype name catalog based on the HTTPS Everywhere plugin has been implemented. Currently, symbolic names for the SecureDrop onion services have been proposed for testing: theintercept.securedrop.tor.onion and lucyparsonslabs.securedrop.tor.onion.

Of the other changes:

• Updated versions of third-party components, including NoScript 11.0.26, Firefox 68.9.0esr, HTTPS-Everywhere 2020.5.20, NoScript 11.0.26, Tor Launcher 0.2.21.8 and Tor 0.4.3.5.
• The Android version provides a warning about the possible work bypassing the proxy when opening external applications.
• Fixed issues using obfs4.

How to install Tor on Ubuntu and derivatives?

For those who are interested in being able to install the browser, they are going to open a terminal and in it they are going to type the following.

In the case that they are Ubuntu 18.04 LTS users, we are going to add the browser repository to the system with:

sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list

And we add at the end:

deb https://deb.torproject.org/torproject.org bionic main

deb-src https://deb.torproject.org/torproject.org bionic main

In the case of 20.04 users:

deb https://deb.torproject.org/torproject.org focal main

deb-src https://deb.torproject.org/torproject.org focal main

We save with Ctrl + O and close with Ctrl + X.

Then we type:

curl https://deb.torproject.org/torproject.org/A3C4F0F979CAA22CDBA8F512EE8CBC9E886DDD89.asc | gpg --import

gpg --export A3C4F0F979CAA22CDBA8F512EE8CBC9E886DDD89 | apt-key add -

And to install the browser:

sudo apt update

sudo apt install tor deb.torproject.org-keyring