What's New in this Release

Privoxy 4.0.0 User Manual
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# 3. What's New in this Release

Privoxy 4.0.0 fixes a few minor bugs and comes with a couple of general improvements and new features. HTTPS inspection is no longer considered experimental.

Two new features have been funded by donations. If you can, please consider making a donation to support future improvements.

Changes in Privoxy 4.0.0 stable:

- Bug fixes:

  - Add missing client-body-tagger data to the action_type_info[] struct so lookups based on the action index work correctly again. Prevents assertion failures or segfaults when trying to edit an action file with the CGI editor. The type of failure depended on whether or not assertions were enabled and on whether or not Privoxy had been compiled with FEATURE_EXTERNAL_FILTERS. Regression introduced in Privoxy 3.0.34. Patch submitted by Aaron Li in #940.

  - Bump MAX_FILTER_TYPES which should have been done in d128e6aa4 when introducing the client-body-tagger{} action. Prevents an assertion in cgi_edit_actions_for_url() from triggering after e32d03e0 when using the CGI editor with assertions enabled.

  - is_untrusted_url(): Search the encrypted headers for the Referer when the client is using https and https inspection is enabled. Fixes the trust mechanism for https requests. Reported by Laurent Caumont in #1767.

  - GNUMakefile.in: Let the install target work if no group is specified.

  - GNUMakefile.in: Set GROUP_T when installing configuration files as root and there is no privoxy user available so the install target doesn't fail. Patch by Fabrice Fontaine.

  - GNUmakefile.in: Don't exit if configuration files are installed as root as this can be considered acceptable when cross-compiling Privoxy inside an autobuilder with only a root user. Patch by Fabrice Fontaine.

  - configure.in: Fix argument types in gmtime_r() and localtime_r() probes. Otherwise these probes always fail with stricter compilers even if there is C library support for these functions. Patch submitted by Florian Weimer in SF#149.

  - Fix socks4 and socks4a support under glibc's source fortification. With glibc's source fortification, gcc offers the compilation warning resulting in a runtime abort() when using a socks4 or socks4a upstream proxy. Despite the warning, the strlcpy() call in question is fine: gcc misidentifies the size of the destination buffer, estimating to hold only a single char while in fact the buffer stretches beyond the end of the struct socks_op. The issue was originally reported in the NixOS issue tracker prompted by an upgrade of glibc from 2.37-39 to 2.38-0. Patch submitted by Ingo Blechschmid, joint work with @esclear and @richi235.

- General improvements:

  - Allow to use wolfSSL for https inspection. wolfSSL supports TLS 1.3 and can be significantly faster than mbedTLS. Mainly tested on ElectroBSD amd64 where it can compete with OpenSSL and LibreSSL To enable the support, install wolfSSL and run ./configure with the --with-wolfssl option. Sponsored by Privoxy project funds collected at SPI.

  - Add an test framework that leverages the curl test suite. Sponsored by Privoxy project funds collected at SPI.

  - Add pcre2 support. Closes bug #935. Initial patch submitted by Gagan Sidhu.

  - Use SHA256 as hash algorithm for the certificate and key file names instead of MD5. The known MD5 vulnerabilities shouldn't matter for Privoxy's use case but it doesn't hurt to use a hash algorithm that isn't deprecated. Sponsored by: Robert Klemme

  - Add support for mbedTLS 3.x. This removes a sanity check (whether issuer key and issuer certificate match) that seems overly cautious and fails to compile with mbedTLS 3.x as the struct members are private. We don't have an equivalent check in the OpenSSL or wolfSSL code either.

  - Factor out newer_privoxy_version_required() and improve the logic Previously 3.0.11 was considered newer than 4.0.0.

  - init_error_log(): Include the reason for failures to open the log file.

  - create_client_ssl_connection(): Don't keep the certificate lock longer than necessary.

  - Add periods to a bunch of log messages.

  - normalize_lws(): Only log the 'Reducing whitespace ...' message once per header

  - log_error() Win32: Only call LogShowActivity() for debug level LOG_LEVEL_REQUEST. As of b94bbe62a950, which was part of Privoxy 3.0.29, LOG_LEVEL_REQUEST is used for all requests including crunched ones. Previously LogShowActivity() was called twice for crunched requests, (presumably) resulting in an aborted animation.

  - Remove ./ prefix from tarball-dist files.

  - create_client_ssl_connection(): Make it more obvious from an error message that a function failed.

  - Use stringify() instead of section_target() and remove section_target(). Like the XXX comment suggested this could be done my moving the hash into the templates which seems preferable anyway.

  - Prevent some compiler warnings.

  - parse_numeric_value(): Expect a base-ten number.

  - windows/MYconfigure: Have gcc diagnostics in color.

- Action file improvements:

  - Block requests to .amazon-adsystem.com/

  - Block requests to 0.css-load.com/

  - Block requests to html-load.com/ and 1.html-load.com/

  - Block requests to b.6sc.co/

  - Block requests to i.clean.gg/

  - Block requests to s.cpx.to/

  - Block requests to track.venatusmedia.com/

  - Block requests to secure-eu.nmrodam.com/

  - Block requests to o2.mouseflow.com/

  - Disable fast-redirects for services.akteneinsichtsportal.de/

  - Disable fast-redirects for /wp-content/plugins/pdf-viewer-for-elementor

  - Disable fast-redirects for syndication.twitter.com/

  - Disable fast-redirects for archive.softwareheritage.org/

  - Disable fast-redirects to duckduckgogg42xjoc72x3sjasowoarfbgcmvfimaftt6twagswzczad.onion/

  - Disable fast-redirects for .creator-spring.com/_next/image

  - Disable fast redirects for accounts.bahn.de/

  - Unblock .datenschmutz.de/

  - Unblock requests for 'adventur*.'

  - Unblock adl.windows.com/ as it is apparently required to update from Windows 10 to 11. Reported by Sam Varshavchik.

- Privoxy-Log-Parser:

  - Highlight 'Couldn't deliver the error message for [...]'.

  - Highlight 'Failed to accept() incoming connection: Software caused connection abort'.

  - Highlight 'Keeping chunk offset at 0 despite flushing 31 bytes.'.

  - Highlight 'Not shutting down client connection on socket 8. The socket is no longer alive.'.

  - Bump version to 0.9.6.

- Privoxy-Regression-Test.pl:

  - Let the --min-level option increase the --max-level if the latter is smaller than the former.

  - Add --curl option to use a non-default curl binary.

  - Bump version to 0.7.5.

- uagen:

  - Bump BROWSER_VERSION and BROWSER_REVISION to match Firefox ESR 128.

  - Bump version to 1.2.6.

- Documentation:

  - Add HOWTOs for https inspection and client-tags to user-manual.

  - Suggest to use the force-text-mode action when filtering binary content with external filters.

  - Declare https-inspection non-experimental.

  - FAQ: Mention that Privoxy Moral Licenses are available as well.

  - Fix LibreSSL URL.

  - Update perlre perldoc URL.

  - config: Add SOCKS 5 to the list of supported protocols.

  - In the Windows build section, note that one only needs tidy to build the docs. If you're not building the docbook stuff you don't need tidy.

  - trust: Use the words 'allowlists' and 'blocklists' instead of "whitelists" and "blacklists" which some people consider to be less inclusive.

## 3.1. Note to Upgraders

A quick list of things to be aware of before upgrading from earlier versions of Privoxy:

- The recommended way to upgrade Privoxy is to backup your old configuration files, install the new ones, verify that Privoxy is working correctly and finally merge back your changes using diff and maybe patch.

  There are a number of new features in each Privoxy release and most of them have to be explicitly enabled in the configuration files. Old configuration files obviously don't do that and due to syntax changes using old configuration files with a new Privoxy isn't always possible anyway.

- Note that some installers remove earlier versions completely, including configuration files, therefore you should really save any important configuration files!

- On the other hand, other installers don't overwrite existing configuration files, thinking you will want to do that yourself.

- In the default configuration only fatal errors are logged now. You can change that in the debug section of the configuration file. You may also want to enable more verbose logging until you verified that the new Privoxy version is working as expected.

- Three other config file settings are now off by default: enable-remote-toggle, enable-remote-http-toggle, and enable-edit-actions. If you use or want these, you will need to explicitly enable them, and be aware of the security issues involved.

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