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Tor Browser 7.0.3 is Released (Major Security Bugfix Release for Linux Users Only)

posted by takyon on Tuesday August 01 2017, @08:52AM   Printer-friendly
from the click-our-summary's-specially-crafted-URLs dept.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

"This release features an important security update to Tor Browser for Linux users. On Linux systems with GVfs/GIO support Firefox allows to bypass proxy settings as it ships a whitelist of supported protocols. Once an affected user navigates to a specially crafted URL the operating system may directly connect to the remote host, bypassing Tor Browser. Tails and Whonix users, and users of our sandboxed Tor Browser are unaffected, though."

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  • (Score: 2) by frojack on Tuesday August 01 2017, @08:18PM (1 child)

    by frojack (1554) on Tuesday August 01 2017, @08:18PM (#547743) Journal

    Are we sure it has anything to do with firefox, and not the linux TCP stack?

    I saw a longish discussion on the the opensuse list about this very issue not long ago.

    The application does not have total control of the routing. Any leakage of ultimate destination IP back to the client TCP stack will often trigger route metrics ("cost") to kick in if there are ANY other routes defined and enabled with lower metric.

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  • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday August 02 2017, @08:25AM

    by FatPhil (863) <{pc-soylent} {at} {asdf.fi}> on Wednesday August 02 2017, @08:25AM (#547873) Homepage
    It's because of the design of GVfs (the Gnome Virtual File System, not to be confused with GnomeVFS, the Gnome Virtual File System). The linux TCP stack can happily exist without GVfs/GIO being on the system, so no, it's not the Linux TCP stack that's to blame. That's like blaming bank robberies on highways because getaway drivers use them.
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