Tor 7.0 debuts with sandbox feature

Tor, the open source browser that is popular for maintaining user anonymity, has received an update to version 7.0, which includes a sandbox feature. The new version is designed for privacy-minded folks, offering them a more secure platform to surf the Web.

The new sandbox integration hides your real IP and MAC address and even your files. The feature makes sure that the information that the Tor browser learns about your computer is limited. Moreover, it makes it harder for hackers leveraging Firefox exploits to learn about user identities. “We know there are people who try to deanonymise Tor users by exploiting Firefox. Having the Tor browser run in a sandbox makes their life a lot harder,” Tor developer Yawning Angel wrote in a Q&A session.

Angel has been experimenting with the sandbox feature since October 2016. The feature was in the unstable and testing phase back then. However, the new release for Linux and Mac is a stable version to protect user identities.

In addition to the sandbox feature, the latest Tor version comes with Firefox 52 ESR. This new development includes tracking and fingerprinting resistance improvements such as the isolation of cookies, view-source requests and the permissions API to the first-party URL bar domain. It also includes WebGL2, the WebAudio, Social, SpeechSynthesis and Touch APIs.

With the Firefox 52 ESR addition, the latest Tor build will not work on non-SSE2-capable Windows hardware. Users also need to be using Mac OS X 10.9 or higher on Apple hardware, and use e10s on Linux and MacOS systems to begin with the sandboxing feature.