Software Update: Tor Browser 8.5.5

Version 8.5.5 of Tor Browser has been released. Tor stands for The Onion Router and is a network that can be used to surf the Internet fairly anonymously. All users’ tcp traffic is routed through various Tor routers, after which it is virtually impossible for the recipient to trace who the original sender was. This information is still present within the Tor network, so that answers, of course also via the system of routers, eventually arrive at the right place. The changelog for this release looks like this:

Tor Browser 8.5.5

This release features important security updates to firefox. This release is updating Firefox to 60.9.0esr, Tor to 0.4.1.5, and NoScript to 11.0.3. This release also includes various bug fixes. On the Windows side, we should now have support for accessibility tools. On the Android side, we added support for arm64-v8a devices.

This is expected to be the last release in the 8.5 series: on October 22 we will switch to the 9.0 series, based on Firefox 68ESR.

Note 1: Due to a temporary issue with our update infrastructure, we did not enable automatic updates for Windows, Linux and macOS users yet. We hope to be able to fix this issue soon. Update: this issue is now fixed, updates are enabled.

Note 2: Due to some issue with Google Play’s new requirement for 64bit versions, we have not yet been able to publish the Android x86 and x86_64 versions on Google Play. We hope to be able to fix this in the next days. In the meantime the x86 version can be downloaded from our website.

Note 3: there is an issue with the aarch64 version on Android 9 causing a crash on every launch. We are working on a fix for this issue.

The full changelog since Tor Browser 8.5.4 is:

All platforms

• Update Firefox to 60.9.0esr
• Update Torbutton to 2.1.13
  • Bug 31520: Remove monthly giving banner from Tor Browser
  • Bug 31140: Do not enable IonMonkey on aarch64
  • translations update
• Update NoScript to 11.0.3
  • Bug 26847: NoScript pops up a full-site window for XSS warning
  • Bug 31287: NoScript leaks browser locale
• Bug 31357: Retire Tom’s default obfs4 bridge

Windows + OS X + Linux

• Update Tor to 0.4.1.5

Windows

• Bug 31547: Back out patch for Mozilla’s bug 1574980
• Bug 27503: Provide full support for accessibility tools
• Bug 30575: Don’t allow enterprise policies in Tor Browser
• Bug 31141: Fix typo in font.system.whitelist

android

• Bug 28119: Tor Browser for aarch64

Build System

• All platforms
  • Bug 31465: Bump Go to 1.12.9