Hello all,
tl;dr can go on about Tor and anonymity and privacy related things for hours, give me a chance
I am studying Computer Science at the University of Brighton (in the UK). I am interested in participating in Google Summer of Code 2017 with the Tor project. I am a web security and anonymity enthusiast, tried to work with the Tor Project for GSoC 2016 but it did not work out.
I have not contributed to the Tor's code base but have been an active, semi advanced user for past 3 years. Have been experimented with setting up exit-nodes (ended up with my box being considered the #1 most evil machine in the world :)), creating Tor-clearnet gateways, hosting own HS, trying to exploit other HSes, playing with encryption etc. I think that gave a me a lot of insight of how Tor works (still amazed and finding new things when reading docs).
I am planning to base my proposal on the idea on a easier way of hosting HS so it would become more accessible to non tech savvy Tor users plus enforcing good security practices when hosting a HS (got some experience and cool ideas [citation needed]).
My main skills are in Linux and back-end web development but I am also interested in scripting and automation as well as encryption. Can talk about Bitcoin for hours (security, anonymity, etc.), thinking about using that as my other project proposal as this should be the currency of Tor and more integrated into Tor (Tor Browser extension?). When it comes to programming I feel confident with PHP, Python and HTML, CSS, JS stuff, and know a bit of other languages but I am a fast learner!
When it comes to tor related projects, two years ago I did this small crawler with web interface for searching (#2 most evil machine) in Python: https://github.com/marncz/torcrawler
Cool feature on which I stopped working was HTTP headers fingerprinting which could led to grouping Hidden Services by hosts providers.
Feel free to contact me: email: marnczarnecki[at]gmail.com IRC at OFTC: marncz
Many thanks, Marcin