seirdy.one/content/notes/state-of-the-tor-uplift.md

---
title: "State of the Tor Uplift"
date: 2022-09-19T20:15:05-07:00
syndicatedCopies:
    - title: 'The Fediverse'
      url: 'https://pleroma.envs.net/notice/ANk750WNh4ufFOK3FI'
---
Currently, the Tor Browser is based on Firefox Extended Support Release (<abbr title="Extended Support Release">ESR</abbr>); it lags behind stable releases by up to <time datetime="P390D">13 months</time> and only receives the subset of security backports deemed to be a high-enough priority.

The [Tor Uplift project](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Tor_Uplift) is an initiative to upstream all the Tor Browser's patches into Firefox. Its goal is to make re-basing the Tor browser patches easy enough for the Tor Browser to track Firefox's stable release channel. The Tor Uplift has been in progress for <time datetime="P2357D">seven years</time>, with several of the Tor Browser's biggest modifications successfully upstreamed (first-party isolation, fingerprinting resistance, and more robust proxy support).

On <time datetime="2022-06-28">2022-06-28</time>, Firefox 102 ESR was released. Today, on <time datetime="2022-09-20">2022-09-20</time>, Firefox 91 ESR will lose support. That gave a window of about three months (the duration of three Firefox stable releases) to re-base Tor Browser patches.

The first stable release of the Tor Browser based on 102 ESR  hasn't yet shipped (it's close; [an alpha version is available](https://blog.torproject.org/new-alpha-release-tor-browser-120a2/)). Seven years into the Tor uplift, the Tor Project isn't able to keep up with the Firefox ESR release calendar. I don't think the Tor Uplift will succeed at getting the Tor Browser to track Firefox's stable channel; at best, it's keeping the Tor Browser from falling too far behind ESR.

<ins>Update <time>2022-11-24</time>: <time datetime="P150D">five months</time> since Firefox 102 became the latest ESR, over <time datetime="P65D">two months</time> since Firefox 91 ESR reached end-of-life, the latest stable Tor Browser desktop release (11.5.8) is still based on Firefox 91 ESR. [Five CVEs fixes from v102 were backported](https://blog.torproject.org/new-release-tor-browser-1154/) a while ago, and [another 13 were backported this week](https://blog.torproject.org/new-release-tor-browser-1158/); the situation is worse on Android. It's reasonable to assume that v91 has issues of its own that won't be addressed. Until the v102-based 12.x hits stable: if you don't use "safest", you might want to re-consider that with this information in mind.</ins>