Hi all,

Here's what the anti-censorship team has been up to in January 2020:

Snowflake =========

* Debugged and wrote a Tor Browser patch to fix throughput issues with Snowflake on Windows. https://bugs.torproject.org/32870 https://bugs.torproject.org/31971

* Started implementing a feature for proxies to conduct throughput tests before polling. https://bugs.torproject.org/32711

* Continued Snowflake network health measurements and analysis. https://bugs.torproject.org/32545

* David built a prototype that integrates Turbo Tunnel in Snowflake. Take a look at his detailed technical summary: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/anti-censorship-team/2020-February/000059.html

GetTor ======

* Fixed a bug in GetTor's email responder. https://bugs.torproject.org/32906

* Got GetTor's Gitlab distributor back up and running. https://bugs.torproject.org/32711

* Moved GetTor's Github repository and got it up and running. https://bugs.torproject.org/32977

* Modified GetTor to hand out localized binaries. https://bugs.torproject.org/33002

* Fixed up GetTor's tests to run locally. https://bugs.torproject.org/33004

* Filed a ticket on GetTor's problematic use of rate limiting. https://bugs.torproject.org/33123

BridgeDB ========

* Damian generously spent a lot of time and effort getting BridgeDB very close to supporting Python 3. A handful of issues remain, but the bulk of the code base now support Python 3. https://bugs.torproject.org/30946

* Started working on a patch that allows BridgeDB to test its bridges using bridgestrap. The idea is that broken bridges are logged (allowing us to inform the operator) and aren't handed out to users. https://bugs.torproject.org/31874

* Filed a ticket to display BridgeDB's distribution bucket for a bridge on Relay Search. https://bugs.torproject.org/33008

* Improved BridgeDB's CAPTCHAs. We modified gimp-captcha (the script that BridgeDB uses to generate CAPTCHAs) to make the CAPTCHAs easier to solve. Our BridgeDB usage metrics reveal that the success rate of our users increased from ~58% to ~87% after we deployed the new CAPTCHAs. Take a look at the following comment for a more in-depth analysis: https://bugs.torproject.org/24607#comment:13

It's still not perfect but it's a step forward. https://bugs.torproject.org/24607

Bridges =======

* Coordinated the set up of a new default bridge in Denmark. The bridge speaks both IPv4 and IPv6. Thanks to Toke Høiland-Jørgensen for running this new default bridge! https://bugs.torproject.org/32891

* We did a retrospective analysis of our bridge campaign from September 2019. In particular, we tested how many bridges were still online (61%) and we sent an email to all operators. We thanked the ones who are still running a bridge and we asked the ones whose bridge vanished what went wrong. https://bugs.torproject.org/33007

Outreach ========

* Philipp gave a talk at FH Hagenberg on the Tor network and censorship resistance: https://www.fh-ooe.at/campus-hagenberg/die-fakultaet/aktuelles/news/news/internet-zensur-und-anonymitaet-im-tor-netzwerk-experten-vortrag-am-91-am-fh-ooe-campus-hagenberg/ Approximately 80-100 people attended -- mostly students but also a handful of faculty members and visitors. Almost all have heard of Tor before and most have used it in the past. There were plenty of questions at the end, and the event stopped before Philipp was able to answer them all. All Tor stickers were gone almost instantly!

Miscellaneous =============

* Added go.mod and go.sum to bridgestrap. https://dip.torproject.org/phw/bridgestrap/commit/0e33599d6e6d1c0a809d5c59c51bdc823b7ebd2a

* Coordinated with OONI on their new Tor test and its user interface. https://github.com/ooni/backend/issues/305 https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/967

* Made two minor fixes to obfs4portscan (the service behind https://bridges.torproject.org/scan/):

1. Made it clear that the service supports IPv6 and expects IPv6 addresses in square bracket notation.

2. Made the service use GET instead of POST requests, to make it easier to hand people clickable links for their bridge.

* We roadmapped the following three months, ranging from February to April 2020. Check out our team's wiki page for the goals of this roadmapping period: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/teams/AntiCensorshipTeam#Roadmappinggoals

* Lots of work on an NSF "Transition to Practice" grant we have been working on.