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306 discussions

Considerations for upcoming OONI Probe desktop apps
by Maria Xynou 31 Oct '17

31 Oct '17

Hello, Over the next year, the OONI team will be building native OONI Probe apps for Windows and macOS. Hopefully this will make it easier to install and run OONI Probe, and to engage others with censorship measurement research. To implement these apps, OONI started off by carrying out research to decide what technology stack to use, and the high-level architecture. The OONI team experimented with various solutions and documented their advantages and disadvantages. OONI's Arturo published a blog post outlining the architecture and design considerations that we made for the implementation of OONI Probe desktop apps, as a result of research and experimentation with a variety of libraries and approaches. This document, outlining the rationale behind our choices for the apps, is available here: https://ooni.torproject.org/post/writing-a-modern-cross-platform-desktop-ap… Always open to your feedback and suggestions. ~ The OONI team. -- Maria Xynou Research and Partnerships Coordinator Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) https://ooni.torproject.org/ PGP Key Fingerprint: 2DC8 AFB6 CA11 B552 1081 FBDE 2131 B3BE 70CA 417E

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OONI API 1.0.0 is out!
by Arturo Filastò 29 Sep '17

29 Sep '17

Hi Oonitarians! We are glad to announce the release of the stable version of OONI's new measurement API, which is available here: https://api.ooni.io/. The OONI API is based on the stable release of our data processing pipeline, which has been re-engineered over the last year to detect censorship events around the world faster and more accurately. We added the following to the OONI API: * API endpoints for listing and filtering anomalous measurements * API endpoints for downloading full reports We changed the following: * Reverse sorting in `by_date` view and hide measurements from time travellers * Better API documentation thanks to redoc based on OpenAPI 2.0 * Improve request validation thanks to connexion base on OpenAPI * Oonify the UI * Better testing Some of the fun things you can do with this new API include, easily searching through OONI measurements to find those containing anomalies. As an example, with the following one liner (assuming you have curl and jq) you can get a sample of censored websites in India: $ curl 'https://api.ooni.io/api/v1/measurements?probe_cc=IN&confirmed=true' | jq -r '.results[].input' | sort | uniq | head -n 5 http://0bin.net http://archive.org http://hastebin.com http://mp3.com/ http://pastebin.com Have fun! ~ Arturo

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Timeout in process+TCP exchange nettest
by Ivan Vilata-i-Balaguer 31 Aug '17

31 Aug '17

Hi list, I'm working on an experimental nettest to collect addresses of other peer probes participating in a given P2P-like experiment. We have a [helper][] which listens for probe connections on a TCP port and a [nettest][] which connects to it. The nettest starts an HTTP server process on a given port and if the process doesn't exit in a few seconds, it assumes that running the process was successful. In both cases, then it connects to the helper and reports the HTTP server port (or none), then the helper saves it into a file and replies with another entry from the file, which the nettest saves into a local file. [helper]: https://github.com/equalitie/ooni-backend/blob/eq-testbed/oonib/testhelpers… [nettest]: https://github.com/equalitie/ooni-probe/blob/eq-testbed/ooni/nettests/exper… The nettest derives from ``TCPTest``, and its main test method returns a subprocess deferred. A timeout function is set up to cancel the deferred (assuming that the subprocess kept on running), in which case the subprocess errback catches the cancellation error and proceeds to normal callback. The normal callback (which also handles subprocess exit codes) either retries running the subprocess from the beginning, or if the subprocess was successful, proceeds to start the TCP exchange with the helper by sending it some payload and setting handlers for error and reply. The nettest has an odd behaviour: although the TCP exchange completes in less than a second (including closing both ends of the connection), the nettest's TCP response handler only runs after the test times out (``TCPTest.timeout``). In some occasions (esp. when running the subprocess is retried), regardless of TCP exchange success, the ``Measurement`` task itself times out, the TCP response handler doesn't run at all, and the test is cancelled and run again. I'd like to ask for some advice in how to handle this situation, ideally so that the test can finish as soon as the TCP exchange completes so that timeouts don't trigger. If the explanations are unclear I can try to provide simplified versions of the code. Please note that my experience with Twisted/OONI development is very limited so I try my best.`;)` Thank you very much for your help! -- Ivan Vilata i Balaguer

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Wrong measurements from beta Measurements API?
by David Fifield 25 Jul '17

25 Jul '17

I was experimenting with adapting ooni-sync to the /api/v1/measurements endpoint. A minimal proof of concept patch is attached. While trying it, I found that the API was returning duplicate measurements and measurements that don't seem to match the query. I'm using this command: ./ooni-sync -xz -directory measurements.archive input=archive.org since=2017-01-01 Here is a query that at the moment happens to return two results with the same measurement_id and measurement_url, but different input and measurement_start_time. There are a few more example of this phenomenon (I found it 6 times in the first 1000 measurements I downloaded). https://measurements-beta.ooni.io/api/v1/measurements?input=archive.org&lim… { "input": "http://archive.org", "measurement_id": "51daa51b-07d2-491e-ba2b-9189e1a08146", "measurement_start_time": "2017-01-04T01:55:06Z", "measurement_url": "https://measurements.ooni.torproject.org/api/v1/measurement/51daa51b-07d2-4…", "probe_asn": "AS3243", "probe_cc": "PT", "report_id": "20170104T105911Z_AS3243_OadZCx9yRNvqKYsLQaQDa3c1swLofXEQNtcplXQ14QrXemKcCT", "test_name": "web_connectivity" }, { "input": "http://wayback.archive.org", "measurement_id": "51daa51b-07d2-491e-ba2b-9189e1a08146", "measurement_start_time": "2017-01-04T09:19:42Z", "measurement_url": "https://measurements.ooni.torproject.org/api/v1/measurement/51daa51b-07d2-4…", "probe_asn": "AS3243", "probe_cc": "PT", "report_id": "20170104T105911Z_AS3243_OadZCx9yRNvqKYsLQaQDa3c1swLofXEQNtcplXQ14QrXemKcCT", "test_name": "web_connectivity" }, I also found that the results included some entries whose "input" field didn't seem to match the query. Here is a small sample of them. So far I've found 57/5783 (10%) of downloads whose input doesn't contain "archive.org". https://measurements-beta.ooni.io/api/v1/measurement/00868be9-2441-42fb-969… "http://www.imdb.com" https://measurements-beta.ooni.io/api/v1/measurement/0214f18c-058c-44ef-b29… "http://666games.net" https://measurements-beta.ooni.io/api/v1/measurement/03b771b2-9f2c-4eee-883… "http://www.cesr.org" https://measurements-beta.ooni.io/api/v1/measurement/0cc491bb-30a0-4dea-927… "http://adultfriendfinder.com" https://measurements-beta.ooni.io/api/v1/measurement/0fdfa57f-836f-4a75-854… "http://last.fm" https://measurements-beta.ooni.io/api/v1/measurement/10f1f5ad-91c4-46f5-9d6… "http://www.earthwatch.org" https://measurements-beta.ooni.io/api/v1/measurement/14520322-b00d-437c-be2… "http://abpr2.railfan.net" https://measurements-beta.ooni.io/api/v1/measurement/1bb1aa36-f4fe-440c-be0… "http://666games.net" https://measurements-beta.ooni.io/api/v1/measurement/210703f1-e52c-4740-99b… "http://amphetamines.com"

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Checking for blocking of archive.org using OONI
by David Fifield 09 Jul '17

09 Jul '17

This is an email I sent to someone at the Internet Archive who wanted to know about blocking of archive.org. The URLs "http://archive.org" and "https://archive.org/web/" are in test-lists, so they are being tested by OONI. See the README for notes on how I do analysis using ooni-sync, jq, and R. https://people.torproject.org/~dcf/graphs/archive.org-anomalies-20170709/RE… https://people.torproject.org/~dcf/graphs/archive.org-anomalies-20170709/bl… https://people.torproject.org/~dcf/graphs/archive.org-anomalies-20170709.zip Here is a description of some basic analysis using OONI to check for blocking of archive.org. It's based on 2,080 reports covering 59 countries, dated between 2017-07-01 and 2017-07-06. I'm attaching the source code and a graph that it produces. There are anomalous measurements found in China, Russia, Venezuela, Mexico, Brazil, and France. Of these, the ones in China and Russia are clearly the result of censorship, while the others are ambiguous, and might be random measurement error or very localized blocking. For a clearer view, you would want to use reports from a longer time period. Here is a summary of the countries with anomalous measurements, showing how many anomalous measurements there were out of how many total. country anomalous total percent_anomalous 1: CN 1 1 100.0% 2: RU 19 54 35.2% 3: VE 1 4 25.0% 4: MX 1 10 10.0% 5: BR 3 42 7.1% 6: FR 1 100 1.0% The process of making the graph is basically (1) download OONI reports, (2) filter them for archive.org measurements, and (3) process the data using another script. The longest part of the process is downloading the report files, because they include tests of many domains other than archive.org (typically about a thousand). Currently it's necessary to download the full report files and filter them locally. However, OONI plans to soon deploy a system that will make it possible to download measurements for just one domain at a time. == China == The one test from China shows blocking by DNS injection (this type of blocking is characteristic and well documented for the Great Firewall). In this case, the false DNS response for archive.org that they injected was the IP address 31.13.69.228, which actually belongs to Facebook. https://explorer.ooni.torproject.org/measurement/20170701T065636Z_AS4808_oh… == Russia == About 35% of tests in Russia were blocked, which is not surprising given that a block of archive.org was ordered in 2015. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/06/wayback-machines-485-billion-we… It's not unusual for a site to be available in some places, even when ordered blocked, when enforcement of the block is left to individual ISPs, as seems to be the case here. The blocked tests came from AS41661 and AS21378. The unblocked tests came from AS3239, AS8369, AS8427, AS12389, AS16345, AS21127, AS41661, and AS42668. The blocks from AS41661 were by DNS injection, affecting both HTTP and HTTPS. The false IP address returned was 92.255.241.100, whose reverse DNS is law.filter.ertelecom.ru. The web server at http://law.filter.ertelecom.ru/ serves a block page in Russian. https://explorer.ooni.torproject.org/measurement/20170701T190029Z_AS41661_E… The block from AS21378 was by TCP blocking: the DNS request gave the correct response 207.241.224.2 and the client was able to establish a TCP connection to the server, but the firewall did not permit the HTTP response to arrive. https://explorer.ooni.torproject.org/measurement/20170701T135420Z_AS21378_c… == Venezuela == One test from AS8048 did not get a response to its DNS request. However it may just be a random failure (not blocking), because there were two other successful tests from AS8048, and one successful test from AS6306. https://explorer.ooni.torproject.org/measurement/20170705T141354Z_AS8048_Ku… == Mexico == As in the Venezuela case, there was one test from AS8151 that didn't get a DNS response; however there were 9 other successful tests, including others from AS8151. https://explorer.ooni.torproject.org/measurement/20170703T060009Z_AS8151_GO… == Brazil == Of the five Brazilian ASes present in the sample of reports, only one shows anomalies: AS1916, Rede Nacional de Ensino e Pesquisa (National Education and Research Network). In this network, requests for http://archive.org (which redirects to https://archive.org) succeed, while those directly requesting https://archive.org/web/ consistently time out. I don't have a good explanation for this. Certain kinds of stateful firewall could plausibly cause such behavior. == France == A single measurement (out of 100) in France timed out requesting http://archive.org. It was in AS197422 and there were no other reports in the sample from that AS, so it's hard to say whether it's due to a block or a random failure. https://explorer.ooni.torproject.org/measurement/20170705T232621Z_AS197422_…

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Minor measurements API feature request: order_by=index
by David Fifield 05 Jul '17

05 Jul '17

Currently you can do queries with order_by=test_start_time, order_by=probe_cc, etc., but you cannot do order_by=index. https://measurements.ooni.torproject.org/api/v1/files?limit=1&order_by=index { "error_code": 400, "error_message": "Invalid order_by" } As I understand it, the difference between index and test_start_time is that index is always increasing over time (newly uploaded reports always get a higher index than existing reports), while newly uploaded reports can have a test_start_time that is in the past (if the probe was not able to upload for a time, for example). The ability to order_by=index would allow a slight robustness enhancement in ooni-sync, in the case when a new report is uploaded while ooni-sync is running. Currently ooni-sync always does order=asc&order_by=test_start_time&limit=1000 That is, starting with the oldest reports, get a page of 1000 reports at a time. The issue is what happens when a report from the past is uploaded while ooni-sync is downloading. In this case ooni-sync will not notice the new report right away. Here is an example with made-up indexes and dates: ooni-sync starts downloading page 0 from index=5000 (2016-01-01) to index=5999 (2016-03-31) new report with index=9999 (2016-02-01) appears, gets inserted into page 0 ooni-sync finishes downloading page 0 ooni-sync starts downloading page 1 from index=5999 (2016-03-31) to index=6998 (2016-04-05) ooni-sync finishes downloading page 1 In this example, ooni-sync never downloads the report with index=9999. Also, it sees index=5999 twice, because index=9999 pushed index=5999 from page 0 to page 1. An order_by=index option would prevent newly uploaded reports from unaligning the pages like that (at least when order_by=asc is used). The reasons why this is minor minor minor and hardly worth mentioning: * index=9999 will get downloaded the next time you run ooni-sync * it can't cause ooni-sync to skip any already uploaded reports (it would, with order=desc, but that's why ooni-sync uses order=asc) * ooni-sync will see but won't actually download index=5999 twice * newly uploaded reports are likely to be on the last page anyway

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Reminder for weekly OONI IRC meeting: Monday 2017-07-03, 16:00 UTC in #ooni
by Vasilis 03 Jul '17

03 Jul '17

Hello everyone, This is a reminder for today's weekly OONI IRC meeting. It will happen as usual on the #ooni IRC channel (irc.oftc.net) at 16:00 UTC. Meeting times around the world: https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?iso=20170703T16 In case that you have no IRC client you can join from the web at: https://kiwiirc.com/client/irc.oftc.net/ooni or in slack at: https://slack.openobservatory.org/ Everybody is welcome to join us and bring their questions and feedback. Please use the meeting agenda pad if you want to propose any topics: https://pad.riseup.net/p/ooni-irc-pad You can always find previous meeting logs at: http://meetbot.debian.net/ooni/ Cheers, ~Vasilis -- Fingerprint: 8FD5 CF5F 39FC 03EB B382 7470 5FBF 70B1 D126 0162 Pubkey: https://pgp.mit.edu/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x5FBF70B1D1260162

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Turbo OONI report downloader
by David Fifield 15 Jun '17

15 Jun '17

I wrote a program that uses the OONI API to download reports and keep a local directory of reports up to date. It's much faster than the Wget loop I used to use and it finishes quickly when there is nothing new to download. git clone https://www.bamsoftware.com/git/ooni-sync.git For example, lately I've had to download a lot of tcp_connect reports. I run it like this: ooni-sync -xz -directory reports.tcp_connect/ test_name=tcp_connect This command downloads the index of tcp_connect reports and only downloads the ones that are not already downloaded. It compresses the downloaded files with xz. The next time I need to update, I run the same command again, and it only downloads reports that are new since the last time. You can use other query parameters supported by the API, like probe_cc, probe_asn, since, and until. For example: ooni-sync -xz -directory reports.is/ probe_cc=IS since=2017-01-01 ooni-sync -xz -directory reports.as25/ probe_asn=AS25 ooni-sync -xz -directory reports.tor-turkey/ test_name=vanilla_tor probe_cc=TR ooni-sync -xz -directory reports.web_connectivity/ test_name=web_connectivity since=2017-01-01 until=2017-01-02 I prefer to keep all the reports compressed on disk, so I always use the -xz option, but by default reports are saved unmodified.

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Reminder for weekly OONI IRC meeting: Monday 2017-06-05, 16:00 UTC in #ooni
by Vasilis 05 Jun '17

05 Jun '17

Hello everyone, This is a reminder for today's weekly OONI IRC meeting. It will happen as usual on the #ooni IRC channel (irc.oftc.net) at 16:00 UTC. Meeting times around the world: https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?iso=20170605T16 In case that you have no IRC client you can join via the: - Web irc client: https://kiwiirc.com/client/irc.oftc.net/ooni - Slack: https://slack.openobservatory.org/ Everybody is welcome to join us and bring their questions and feedback. Please use the meeting agenda (pad) if you want to propose any topics: https://pad.riseup.net/p/ooni-irc-pad You can always find previous meeting logs at: http://meetbot.debian.net/ooni/ Cheers, ~Vasilis -- Fingerprint: 8FD5 CF5F 39FC 03EB B382 7470 5FBF 70B1 D126 0162 Pubkey: https://pgp.mit.edu/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x5FBF70B1D1260162 -- Fingerprint: 8FD5 CF5F 39FC 03EB B382 7470 5FBF 70B1 D126 0162 Pubkey: https://pgp.mit.edu/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x5FBF70B1D1260162

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Reminder for weekly OONI IRC meeting: Monday 2017-05-29, 16:00 UTC in #ooni
by Vasilis 29 May '17

29 May '17

Hello everyone, This is a reminder for today's weekly OONI IRC meeting. It will happen as usual on the #ooni IRC channel (irc.oftc.net) at 16:00 UTC. Meeting times around the world: https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?iso=20170529T16 In case that you have no IRC client you can join via the: - Web from: https://kiwiirc.com/client/irc.oftc.net/ooni - Slack: https://slack.openobservatory.org/ Everybody is welcome to join us and bring their questions and feedback. Please use the meeting agenda pad if you want to propose any topics: https://pad.riseup.net/p/ooni-irc-pad You can always find previous meeting logs at: http://meetbot.debian.net/ooni/ Cheers, ~Vasilis -- Fingerprint: 8FD5 CF5F 39FC 03EB B382 7470 5FBF 70B1 D126 0162 Pubkey: https://pgp.mit.edu/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x5FBF70B1D1260162

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