| This is not about integrating Tor into Firefox, rather it is about incorporating switches into Firefox for the security/privacy improvements that have been made in Tor Browser. You can think of Tor Browser as a better Firefox that just happens to include built-in support for the Tor network. Tor Browser is security-hardened and makes numerous changes to improve privacy, such as reducing fingerprinting opportunities and attempting to isolate browser state by URL bar domain. The Design and Implementation of the Tor Browser doc [1] is an excellent read on the approach taken. Since it is trivial to configure Tor Browser to run on the "normal internet" (not on the Tor network), there may not be much reason to run Firefox instead of Tor Browser. There is one possible reason: not all security fixes may be backported to Firefox Extended Support Releases (ESR). According to the ESR FAQ [2], only "high-risk/high-impact security vulnerabilities" will be backported to ESRs. So clearly some security vulnerabilties that are not considered by Mozilla to be high-risk/high-impact may be left unfixed in ESRs. Additionally, it seems likely that not all bugs that are security vulnerabilities will be correctly identified as such. Many exploitable bugs that can lead to code execution are often published as only stability or denial of service bugs by project maintainers - so-called "Denial of Reality" vulnerabilities [3]. I think this is what Daniel Veditz is alluding to when he says "Mozilla leadership has already decided to help Tor move toward being able to build off a Release Firefox rather than an ESR--it's safer for our users." So in that sense, it is great news that Mozilla is working to make it easier for Tor Browser to be based on top of Release Firefox instead of an ESR. Even if all Tor Browser patches make it in to Firefox, I imagine it will be a good deal of work to get out-of-the-box Firefox to behave like Tor Browser. And given that every six weeks, Firefox may have new features that present new attack surface, or enables new fingerprinting opportunities, it still seems like a safer bet to have Tor Browser devs vet each release, rather than constantly try to stay on top of what switches need to be flipped. Personally I will continue to trust Tor Project to ship a browser that is configured for strong security and privacy out-of-the-box. [1] https://www.torproject.org/projects/torbrowser/design/ [2] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/faq/ [3] https://lwn.net/Articles/191080/ |