tor-project October 2020

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Anti-censorship team monthly report: September 2020
by Philipp Winter 12 Oct '20

12 Oct '20

Hi all, Here's what the anti-censorship team accomplished in September 2020: Snowflake --------- * Merged a contribution from Peter Gerber to consider more IP address ranges local, for the purpose of stripping from SDP offers sent to the broker. Rdsys ----- * Built an HTTP streaming API between rdsys's backend and its distributors that allows distributors to receive resource updates (e.g. a bridge changing its IP address) in real-time. * Implemented a registration API that allows standalone-proxies (i.e. without a corresponding Tor bridge) to register themselves: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/rdsys/-/issues/4 * Added lots of unit tests. Rdsys's domain logic is 72.1% tested. * Experimented with reCAPTCHA support in rdsys. We could port BridgeDB's HTTPS distributor to rdsys and replace our Gimp-generated CAPTCHAs with Google's reCAPTCHA. To prevent exposing our users to Google, we would have to set up a reverse proxy, so Google only gets to see our machine's IP address. This is possible but messy to build. * Started brainstorming Salmon's user interface; in particular how we can best integrate it in Tor Browser: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/rdsys/-/issues/7 * Started writing up rdsys's design and architecture. The goal is to eventually publish a technical blog post that discusses how we built rdsys. Bridgestrap ----------- * Wrapped up a "minimum viable product" of bridgestrap: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/trac/-/issues/31874 * Filed issues to improve how bridgestrap spawns a Tor instance to test bridges: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/bridgestrap/-/issues/1 https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/bridgestrap/-/issues/2 https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/bridgestrap/-/issues/3 Miscellaneous ------------- * Our infrastructure monitoring daemon's emails started getting rejected by Gandi's spam filter. We reported the issue and Gandi fixed it shortly after. * Read the HTTPT paper as part of our reading group and filed several issues that summarise what's necessary to deploy HTTPT as our next pluggable transport: https://github.com/net4people/bbs/issues/50 https://censorbib.nymity.ch/#Frolov2020b https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/http… * Filed an issue to improve our terminology around bridges: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/rdsys/-/issues/8 * Brainstormed how Tor Browser could detect censorship: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser-spec/-/issues/40… Outreach -------- * Philipp will present rdsys in a lightning talk at the Pluggable Transport Implementer's Meeting on Oct 13: https://www.pluggabletransports.info/ptim2020/ * Published a blog post about Hashik's experience as one of Tor's GSoC'20 students: https://blog.torproject.org/gsoc-2020-snowflake-proxy-mobile * Recorded a brief video that summarises Tor's anti-censorship work for a class at the University of Michigan.

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Tails report for September 2020
by intrigeri 10 Oct '20

10 Oct '20

Hi, here's the Tails report for September: https://tails.boum.org/news/report_2020_09/ I'm attaching a HTML version for your offline reading convenience :)

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Anti-censorship meeting notes, 8 October 2020
by Cecylia Bocovich 08 Oct '20

08 Oct '20

Here are our meeting notes: http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2020/tor-meeting.2020-10-08-15.58.html and our meeting pad: Anti-censorship work meeting pad -------------------------------- Next meeting: Thursday October 8th 16:00 UTC Weekly meetings, every Thursday at 16:00 UTC, in #tor-meeting at OFTC (channel is logged while meetings are in progress) == Goal of this meeting == Weekly checkin about the status of anti-censorship work at Tor. Coordinate collaboration between people/teams on anti-censorship at Tor. == Links to Useful documents == Our anti-censorship roadmap: Roadmap: https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/anti-censorship/-/boards The anti-censorship team's wiki page: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/team/-/wikis/home Past meeting notes can be found at: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-project/ Tickets that need reviews: from sponsors we are working on: All needs review tickets: https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/anti-censorship/-/merge_requests?s… Sponsor 30 https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/milestones/4 https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/milestones/7 https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/milestones/5 https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/milestones/6 Sponsor 28 must-do tickets: https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/milestones/10 possible tickets: https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/issues?scope=all&utf8=%E2%9C%93&… Anti-censorship related tickets that we want other teams to fix: https://pad.riseup.net/p/tor-anti-censorship-tickets-keep <-- it will be moved into gitlab with TPO labels Public bug-reporting pad: https://pad.riseup.net/p/tor-anti-censorship-bugs-keep == Announcements == Kyle MacMillan, Jordan Holland, and Prateek Mittal published a report on Snowflake distinguishability. https://arxiv.org/abs/2008.03254 == Discussion == We're still having a lot of issues making snowflake work for clients behind symmetric NATs (snowflake#33666). I'd like feedback on some solutions like snowflake#40013 == Actions == Please add your September 2020 highlights to our monthly report: https://pad.riseup.net/p/1lE-JDUjauoQL6lAGd5t == Interesting links == Pluggable Transports Implementer's Meeting schedule: https://www.pluggabletransports.info/ptim2020/ == Reading group == We will discuss "" on Questions to ask and goals to have: What aspects of the paper are questionable? Are there immediate actions we can take based on this work? Are there long-term actions we can take based on this work? Is there future work that we want to call out, in hopes that others will pick it up? == Updates == Name: This week: - What you worked on this week. Next week: - What you are planning to work on next week. Help with: - Something you need help with. phw: This week (2020-10-08): Lots of refactoring and unit tests of rdsys's domain logic. Reviewed snowflake-webext!4. Set up Salmon demo to give Antonela and Matt an impression of what it looks like. Lots of refactoring in the process. Started working on September 2020 monthly report. Summarised plan for bridge testing in tpo/core/tor#30477. Meeting with my old college in Austria; proposed projects for BSc student. Refactored bridgestrap to make it faster by using SETCONF instead of spawning a Tor process each time. https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/bridgestrap/-/issues/3 Next week: Hopefully wrap up bridgestrap. Help with: cecylia (cohosh): last updated 2020-10-08 Last week: - set up account for Georgetown ppl to run raven tests on our VPS - revised and deployed snowflake#33157 - updated snowflake webextension, badge, and standalone proxies - updated tor browser binaries for gettor - worked on writing up snowflake stats - started a review of new rdsys code - took a brief look at telegram bot for gettor - snowflake-webext#17 This week: - revisit NAT-punching problems for symmetric NATs by doing a probe test to determine whether proxies will work with symmetric NATs (snowflake#40013) - more review of rdsys - finish a write up of collected snowflake data from last month - follow up with the guardian project on their issues with snowflake - follow up on progress towards a telegram bot for gettor - plan improvements motivated by kyle et al.'s snowflake report Needs help with: - review of snowflake-webext!5 - fixing our snowflake-webext mirror (gitlab admin team) juggy : This week: - Got very basic "suggested readings" list up and running here : https://jugheadjones10.github.io/anti-censorship-reading/ Next week: - Keep studying BridgeDB to write architectural overview Help with: - Open issues here (https://github.com/jugheadjones10/anti-censorship-reading ) for papers/resources/readings that you think might be useful for newcomers arlolra: 2020-06-11 Last week: - Next week: - follow ups to #33365 - start on #31201 Help with: - dcf: 2020-10-08 Last week: - reviewed patch for Snowflake client IP inference https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… - archived snowflake-webextension-0.4.2 - ported the Snowflake fingerprinting page from the old wiki https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… - reviewed patch to shorten Snowflake web proxy polling interval https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… Next week: - update English translations strings https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… Help with: - how does one make changes to translation/messages.json? https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… Antonela: 2020-08-27 This week: - Wrapping Babatunde's research on the use of circumvention tools during internet censorship in Africa. Wrapping Personas for s30 with it. For september: - We are planning interviews with users in China to run our bridges discovery issues script in real time. We discussed to include TBA + snowflake as a task for users to run over a week or two and report back. https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/ux/research/-/issues/4 - I still have bridges.tpo to lektor issue open - More work on UX/UI for TB 10.0/10.5 - Review Salmon related tickets (im late with it!) agix:2020-10-08 Last week: -Finished patch for #34218 -Started with #5 (rdsys) but didn't quite finish it yet Next week: -Definetly finnish rdysy #5 -Dig deeper into Pluggable Transports/HTTPT/Issues/#4 Help with: -Review of #34218 hanneloresx: 2020-09-17 Last week: - Start on #33727 - Continue investigating and respond to comments on #32117 Next week: - Continue last week's work. Help with: - thymbahutymba: 2020-04-02 Last week: - CI/CD pipeline for multiarch docker images, which has a problem with the apt tor version even though the apt repository have been changed into the Dockerfile. Next week: Help with: HashikD: 2020-10-06 This week: - Next week: - Will be back shortly Help with: -

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Outreachy contribution period starting today
by gus 08 Oct '20

08 Oct '20

Dear Tor Project, The contribution period for Outreachy[1] is starting today! Probably you will see new people hanging out on our IRC channels during this month. We're running two projects this round (December 2020 / March 2021): * Anonymous Ticket Handling - mentor Alex (Ahf) * Help Tor Project support our users - mentor Gus (ggus) If you have time, please answer applicants questions about Tor Project and make them feel welcome in our community. Both projects have instructions on Outreachy application page, Ahf, Gaba, and Gus are online to help. You can help Outreachies by: 1. Sharing this email with them! 2. Asking them to subscribe to the relevant mailing lists. They can find all the mailing lists here: https://lists.torproject.org 3. Tell them to register an IRC account, so they can chat with Tor folks and see what's happening. IRC is a little bit tricky to start, and we suggest you use an IRC client (for example, Hexchat) and follow the instructions at https://support.torproject.org/get-in-touch/irc-help/ 4. Create an account in https://gitlab.torproject.org. Ping Gaba or Ahf to create an account for you. They will be available on #tor-project channel as Gaba and ahf, respectively. cheers, Gus [1] https://www.outreachy.org/ -- The Tor Project Community Team Lead http://expyuzz4wqqyqhjn.onion/

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User experience team monthly meeting on October 13th
by Antonela D 02 Oct '20

02 Oct '20

Hi! We will be having the User Experience team meeting on October 13th in #tor-meeting*. During this meeting we will discuss the improvements we are planning in Tor Browser, Tor Launcher and its use for censorship circumvention. Also, we will have some space for an open floor so feel free to list yourself in the pad. https://pad.riseup.net/p/1D8sK8Zy74b_0qclC97I-ux-team-monthly-2020-keep Remember, the User Experience team meetings are willing to cultivate an open space for discussions around ethical user research, user interface design, and user experience, meanwhile building privacy-enhancing products. I hope to see you around! Peace and love, A [*] https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/ux/team/-/wikis/home -- Antonela Debiasi UX Team Lead torproject.org @antonela E2330A6D1EB5A0C8

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tor-project October 2020