Release of new stable Tor 0.4.5 branch

Introduced Toolkit Release Tor 0.4.5.6 , used to organize the work of the Tor anonymous network. Tor 0.4.5.6 is considered the first stable release of the 0.4.5 branch, which has evolved over the past five months. The 0.4.5 branch will be maintained as part of the regular maintenance cycle – the updates will be discontinued 9 months or 3 months after the 0.4.6.x branch is released. Long Support Cycle (LTS) is provided for branch 0.3.5, updates for which will be released until February 1, 2022. Support for branches 0.4.0.x, 0.2.9.x, 0.4.2.x and 0.4.3 is discontinued. Support for the 0.4.1.x branch will be discontinued on May 20, and the 0.4.4 branch will be discontinued in June 2021.

Highlights innovations :

  • Implemented the ability to build Tor as a statically linked library for embedding into applications.
  • Significantly improved definition of IPv6-enabled relays. In torrc, IPv6 addresses are allowed in the Address option. Relays are provided with automatic binding to IPv6 for ports specified through ORPort, except for those explicitly marked with the IPv4Only flag. ORPort with IPv6 reachability is now tracked by a relay separately from ORPort with IPv4. IPv6-enabled relays, when connected to another relay, include both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses in the cell list and randomly select the one to use for the connection.
  • For relay operators a “MetricsPort” mechanism has been proposed to monitor node performance. Access to statistics on the operation of the site is provided through the HTTP interface. Prometheus output is currently supported.
  • Added support for the LTTng tracing system and USDT (User-space Statically Defined Tracing) tracing, which means building programs with special static checkpoints included.
  • Resolved performance issues with relays running on Windows platform.
/Media reports.