Yes, they didn't reveal the Firefox bug or the details of NIT. And yes, Tor browser could still be vulnerable.
You must isolate Tor process and userland in separate VMs, or even separate physical devices. Even if the browser gets pwned, and the NIT gets dropped, you'll be OK, because the Internet is reachable only through Tor. Whonix is an easy to use implementation.
I've been ragging on Tor Project about this for years. But they don't want to frighten people by making Tor too complicated to use. You could be cynical, and say that they want the cannon fodder for their government masters. Or you could say that they think it's more important to protect the most people, rather than to most strongly protect technically competent people. I have no clue what the truth is. Maybe there's a range of opinion.
If Tor is too difficult to use, people won't use it. Edward Snowden and Laura Poitras had to dedicate a significant amount of time to get Glenn Greenwald to just use TAILS, a plug and play Tor operating system. Someone like that is not going to use Whonix, even if maybe they should be.
Yeah, I get that. And I realize that I've gone off the deep end. It's hard to imagine anymore how easily people's eyes glaze over. I've written guides that lay everything out, step by step. And many people still can't seem to get it.
But Whonix really is trivial. You install VirtualBox. You download the Whonix gateway and workstation appliances. You import them in VirtualBox. You start them. You work in the workstation VM. There's nothing to configure. That literally should be enough information to use Whonix. Plus there's a wiki and a support forum.
You must isolate Tor process and userland in separate VMs, or even separate physical devices. Even if the browser gets pwned, and the NIT gets dropped, you'll be OK, because the Internet is reachable only through Tor. Whonix is an easy to use implementation.
I've been ragging on Tor Project about this for years. But they don't want to frighten people by making Tor too complicated to use. You could be cynical, and say that they want the cannon fodder for their government masters. Or you could say that they think it's more important to protect the most people, rather than to most strongly protect technically competent people. I have no clue what the truth is. Maybe there's a range of opinion.