Project Fusion: Tor Developers Collaborate with Mozilla to Integrate Tor into Firefox
The Tor ProjectThe Tor Project is a nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting online privacy and ensuring uncensored access to the internet. Emerging from U.S. Naval Research Lab experiments with onion routing in the 1990s, Tor evolved into a decentralized, volunteer-powered network that hides user identities by routing traffic through multiple encrypted relays. Since the launch of the Tor Browser in 2008, it has become a crucial tool for activists, journalists, and everyday users worldwide—supporting free expression during events like the Arab Spring and proving resilient in the face of mass surveillance disclosures. Today, Tor is sustained by a global community committed to human rights, transparency, and digital freedom. More developers have announced that they are working with Mozilla to integrate Tor directly into Firefox. This integration aims to eliminate the need for a separate Tor Browser, as its privacy features will be implemented in a new “super-private” mode within Firefox. The initiative is called Project Fusion.
Background and Goals of Project Fusion
The Tor team notes that merging Tor patches into new Firefox versions is a time-consuming process, even though Tor itself is based on the Firefox Extended Support Release (ESR). To address this, Mozilla has taken the lead in integrating Tor patches into Firefox through the “Tor Uplift Project.”
Firefox has already adopted several security features from the Tor Browser, including:
- First Party Isolation: Prevents cookies from tracking users across multiple domains.
- Fingerprint Resistance: Blocks user tracking through canvas elements.
Key Objectives of Project Fusion
The Tor developers have outlined several main goals for Project Fusion:
- Make the “fingerprint resistance” feature more user-friendly and fix the issue of broken web pages (a known bug with this feature).
- Implement a framework for bypassing proxies.
- Find the best way to integrate the Tor proxy into Firefox.
- Develop a true private browsing mode in Firefox.
The ultimate aim of Project Fusion is to free users from the need to install the separate Tor Browser by bringing its privacy protections directly into Firefox.