The font fingerprinting defense regression has been fixed

Feb 5, 2016 23:55 GMT  ·  By

The Tor Project has announced today, February 5, 2016, the immediate availability for download of the first point release for the Tor Browser 5.5 anonymous web browser for Linux, Mac OS X, and Microsoft Windows platforms.

Tor Browser 5.5.1 is a small maintenance release, but essential for existing users as it promises to fix a regression with the font fingerprinting defense by whitelisting the Chinese (Simplified) UI font on the Windows platform, thus bringing a functional private anonymous web browser to Chinese-speaking users.

For GNU/Linux and Mac OS X users, the TOR Browser 5.5.1 release adds support for emoji, and for all platforms, the new version no longer clears the iframe's window.name, thus improving support for websites that rely on iframes, and implements two new obfs4 default bridges.

"Most notably, this release features fixes for regressions caused by our font fingerprinting defense: Chinese users should have a functional Tor Browser again, and emoji support is restored on OS X and Linux systems (we are still working on a fix for Windows)," developers explain.

Tor Browser 5.5.1 is now available for download for GNU/Linux, Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows operating systems right now via Softpedia, but you can also update your installation using the built-in updater. More details about the changes implemented in Tor Browser 5.5.1 can be found in the official release announcement.