This post explores how Tor onion services can be integrated into existing web services, making them more secure. This integration will use the “publish / subscribe” pattern over Tor to trigger re-builds of the txtorcon documentation (which is hosted on an onion service). We will use Tor to transport the published messages so the network-location of the machine hosting the onion service remains hidden. We will use a messaging system called “Web Application Messaging Protocol” or WAMP.
Today, we're welcoming two new members to our Board of Directors: Julius Mittenzwei and Ramy Raoof. “Julius and Ramy bring a wealth of diverse experience in internet activism and organizational leadership to Tor’s Board,” said Shari Steele, Executive Director of the Tor Project.
The latest Tor alpha release included a new feature to address traffic congestion in the Tor network. The new algorithm —Kernel Informed Socket Transport (KIST)— prevents connections between Tor relays from becoming overwhelmed by changing how traffic is distributed throughout the Tor network.
Alex Færøy, Nick Mathewson, and I have just released a source tarball for a new Tor alpha (sig). This is the first time for Alex and me making a Tor release! We're hoping that rotating some of our more tedious responsibilities among all the developers on the Network Team will relieve unfair pressure on people like Nick who pour enormous amounts of time and effort into these tasks. You can help us out by testing the alpha, and please report any issues you encounter!
We’re looking for technical people to come help us test next-gen onion services. They’ve been fully merged into tor-0.3.2.1-alpha, and the latest version of Tor Browser supports them. We're still in the testing phase, though -- keep an eye on this blog for the official launch.
This week, The Tor Project -- with support from the Open Technology Fund and HackerOne -- paid out $3,000 (the highest bounty) to a developer who reported a potential proxy bypass bug.
