[TWN team] Recent changes to the wiki pages
Lunar
lunar at torproject.org
Wed Feb 11 01:40:12 UTC 2015
===========================================================================
==== https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/TorWeeklyNews/2015/6 ====
===========================================================================
version 14
Author: harmony
Date: 2015-02-11T01:06:03+00:00
massachusetts
--- version 13
+++ version 14
@@ -45,7 +45,7 @@
Tor and the Library Freedom Project
-----------------------------------
-As Tor Weekly News reported last September [XXX], Massachussetts
+As Tor Weekly News reported last September [XXX], Massachusetts
librarian and activist Alison Macrina has been leading a campaign to
educate colleagues and library patrons on the state of digital
surveillance and the use of privacy-preserving software such as Tor and
version 13
Author: harmony
Date: 2015-02-11T00:46:43+00:00
wrong sponsor
--- version 12
+++ version 13
@@ -107,7 +107,7 @@
Mathewson [XXX], Karsten Loesing [XXX], and Arlo Breault [XXX].
Mike Perry reported on behalf of the Tor Browser team [XXX], and George
-Kadianakis sent out the report for SponsorF [XXX].
+Kadianakis sent out the report for SponsorR [XXX].
[XXX]: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-reports/2015-February/000754.html
[XXX]: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-reports/2015-February/000755.html
version 12
Author: harmony
Date: 2015-02-11T00:40:26+00:00
add sjmurdoch
--- version 11
+++ version 12
@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
''84th issue of Tor Weekly News. Covering what's happening from February 3rd, 2015 to February 10th, 2015. To be released on February 11th, 2015.''
-'''Editor:'''
+'''Editor:''' Harmony
'''Subject:''' Tor Weekly News — February 11th, 2015
@@ -10,7 +10,10 @@
========================================================================
Welcome to the sixth issue in 2015 of Tor Weekly News, the weekly
-newsletter that covers what’s happening in the Tor community.
+newsletter that covers what’s happening in the community around Tor,
+“your online an-onionising software” [XXX].
+
+ [XXX]: https://theconversation.com/tor-the-last-bastion-of-online-anonymity-but-is-it-still-secure-after-silk-road-35395
The 2015 Tor UX Sprint
----------------------
version 11
Author: harmony
Date: 2015-02-11T00:35:03+00:00
add spain
--- version 10
+++ version 11
@@ -235,6 +235,18 @@
anti-surveillance tools, including Tor.
[XXX]: http://jilliancyork.com/2015/02/06/there-are-other-funding-options-than-the-usg/
+
+Seven of the eleven activists arrested last year in Spain for, amongst
+other things, having had email accounts with the technical collective
+Riseup — longtime Tor allies and operators of one of the directory
+authorities [XXX] — have been released from prison [XXX]. As Riseup
+wrote [XXX] following the arrests, “security is not a crime”: “Giving up
+your basic right to privacy for fear of being flagged as a terrorist is
+unacceptable.”
+
+ [XXX]: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-news/2014-November/000073.html
+ [XXX]: https://www.accessnow.org/blog/2015/01/20/spain-targets-vulnerable-users-on-eve-of-review-at-un-human-rights-council
+ [XXX]: https://help.riseup.net/en/about-us/press/security-not-a-crime
Easy development tasks to get involved with
-------------------------------------------
version 10
Author: harmony
Date: 2015-02-11T00:15:19+00:00
add link
--- version 9
+++ version 10
@@ -37,6 +37,7 @@
[XXX]: https://blog.torproject.org/blog/ux-sprint-2015-wrapup
[XXX]: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/meetings/2015UXsprint
+ [XXX]: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/query?keywords=~uxsprint2015
Tor and the Library Freedom Project
-----------------------------------
version 9
Author: harmony
Date: 2015-02-11T00:04:55+00:00
this week
--- version 8
+++ version 9
@@ -10,101 +10,274 @@
========================================================================
Welcome to the sixth issue in 2015 of Tor Weekly News, the weekly
-newsletter that covers what’s happening in the XXX Tor community.
-
-Feature XXX
------------
-
-Feature 1 with cited source [XXX]
-
- [XXX]:
-
-Monthly status reports for XXX month 2015
------------------------------------------
+newsletter that covers what’s happening in the Tor community.
+
+The 2015 Tor UX Sprint
+----------------------
+
+Many open-source privacy tools struggle with questions of usability — so
+much effort goes into ensuring they are secure that few resources are
+left over to work on the user experience. But as Linda Lee and David
+Fifield write [XXX], “usability is critical to security”: user interface
+issues “can degrade user experience, cause confusion, or even cause
+people to accidentally deanonymize themselves”.
+
+To explore, and hopefully solve, some of these problems, a group of Tor
+developers, designers, users, and researchers met [XXX] at UC Berkeley
+at the start of the month. As part of the weekend, users were asked to
+walk through the process of installing and running Tor Browser, noting
+aloud their assumptions and reactions as they went.
+
+Issues and “stopping points” (where users find the process too
+difficult to continue) discovered during these sessions were noted, and
+have been assigned tickets on Tor’s bug tracker. For more details of the
+event and its outcome, please see Linda and David’s post; “if you are
+interested in helping to improve the usability of Tor Browser, get in
+touch by email or IRC”.
+
+ [XXX]: https://blog.torproject.org/blog/ux-sprint-2015-wrapup
+ [XXX]: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/meetings/2015UXsprint
+
+Tor and the Library Freedom Project
+-----------------------------------
+
+As Tor Weekly News reported last September [XXX], Massachussetts
+librarian and activist Alison Macrina has been leading a campaign to
+educate colleagues and library patrons on the state of digital
+surveillance and the use of privacy-preserving software such as Tor and
+Tails. As Alison and April Glaser wrote at the time, “Libraries provide
+access to information and protect patrons’ right to explore new ideas,
+no matter how controversial or subversive” [XXX].
+
+These initial workshops formed the basis for the Library Freedom
+Project [XXX], which has just received [XXX] a grant from the Knight
+Foundation to expand its activities beyond the New England region. In a
+guest post on the Tor blog [XXX], Alison introduced the project, the
+motivations behind it, and its plans for the next few years, as well as
+suggesting some possible areas for collaboration with the Tor community
+in the future: “One specific way that librarians can help the Tor
+Project is with usability issues – we have lots of experience helping
+ordinary users with common usability problems […] Librarians can also
+run dev sprints, help update documentation, and generally advocate for
+tools that help safeguard privacy and anonymity.”
+
+For more information on the Library Freedom Project or to propose your
+own ideas, please see the project’s website. Thanks to Alison and
+colleagues for this important work!
+
+ [XXX]: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-news/2014-September/000063.html
+ [XXX]: http://boingboing.net/2014/09/13/radical-librarianship-how-nin.html
+ [XXX]: https://libraryfreedomproject.org/
+ [XXX]: http://www.knightfoundation.org/grants/201450256/
+ [XXX]: https://blog.torproject.org/blog/guest-post-library-freedom-project-bringing-privacy-and-anonymity-libraries
+
+Vidalia laid to rest
+--------------------
+
+Now that Vidalia, the graphical user interface for Tor, has been
+completely unmaintained ”for too long to be a recommended solution”,
+Sebastian Hahn removed [XXX] the last links to Vidalia-related content
+from the Tor Project website. If you are still using a version of Tor
+Browser (outside of Tails) that contains Vidalia, it is almost certainly
+old enough to be unsafe, so please upgrade as soon as possible.
+
+Vidalia is still shipped in the latest version of Tails, however, and
+the Tails team has been working [XXX] on a simple interface [XXX] to
+replace one of the most-missed features of the defunct program, the
+circuit visualization window. The Tor Browser team have already
+implemented a similar per-site circuit diagram [XXX] in the current
+4.5-alpha series, so there should soon be no reason at all for users to
+continue controlling their Tor through Vidalia.
+
+ [XXX]: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-talk/2015-February/036833.html
+ [XXX]: https://mailman.boum.org/pipermail/tails-dev/2015-February/008066.html
+ [XXX]: http://git.tails.boum.org/alan/tor-monitor/
+ [XXX]: https://bugs.torproject.org/8641
+
+More monthly status reports for January 2015
+--------------------------------------------
The wave of regular monthly reports from Tor project members for the
-month of XXX has begun. XXX released his report first [XXX], followed
-by reports from name 2 [XXX], name 3 [XXX], and name 4 [XXX].
-
- [XXX]:
- [XXX]:
- [XXX]:
- [XXX]:
+month of January continued, with reports from George Kadianakis [XXX],
+Pearl Crescent [XXX], Michael Schloh von Bennewitz [XXX], Nick
+Mathewson [XXX], Karsten Loesing [XXX], and Arlo Breault [XXX].
+
+Mike Perry reported on behalf of the Tor Browser team [XXX], and George
+Kadianakis sent out the report for SponsorF [XXX].
+
+ [XXX]: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-reports/2015-February/000754.html
+ [XXX]: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-reports/2015-February/000755.html
+ [XXX]: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-reports/2015-February/000756.html
+ [XXX]: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-reports/2015-February/000757.html
+ [XXX]: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-reports/2015-February/000758.html
+ [XXX]: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-reports/2015-February/000761.html
+ [XXX]: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-reports/2015-February/000759.html
+ [XXX]: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-reports/2015-February/000760.html
Miscellaneous news
------------------
-A new meek howto in Chinese: http://www.atgfw.org/2015/02/torgfwpk1-meektor.html
-(this is actually the third such meek howto in Chinese: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/doc/meek#Quickstart)
-
-Tom "TvdW" van der Woerdt wrote last week (and I think we missed it?) about his experiences writing a Tor relay
-implementation in Go:
-http://www.tvdw.eu/blog/2015/01/24/implementing-a-tor-relay-from-scratch/
-Ultimately he decided that Go isn't the right language for such a thing (or rather, that its library support doesn't
-make it easy enough to do), but it's really neat that he went through this effort!
-
-Shadow, the tool by Rob Jansen that allows full Tor network simulation, now has a new website:
-https://shadow.github.io
-Rob [http://mailman.cs.umn.edu/archives/shadow-dev/2015-February/000081.html says]:
-"The new website still uses the Jekyll engine, and is a stripped down customized
-version of the open source SOLID theme. Please send me feedback if you have it."
-
-On the "first they came for the riseup users" theory, there's an update from last week on the Spanish users who
-were arrested because they had Riseup accounts:
-https://www.accessnow.org/blog/2015/01/20/spain-targets-vulnerable-users-on-eve-of-review-at-un-human-rights-council
-You can read Riseup's earlier explanation here:
-https://help.riseup.net/en/about-us/press/security-not-a-crime
-
-Item 1 with cited source [XXX]. "There are other funding options than the USG"--EFF activist Jillian York discusses the problems of over-reliance on US government funding--and the dearth of other funding streams--for anti-surveillance tools.http://jilliancyork.com/2015/02/06/there-are-other-funding-options-than-the-usg/
-
-Item 2 with cited source [XXX].
-
-Item 3 with cited source [XXX].
-
- [XXX]:
- [XXX]:
- [XXX]:
-
-Tor help desk roundup
----------------------
-
-Summary of some questions sent to the Tor help desk.
-
-News from Tor StackExchange
----------------------------
-
-Text with cited source [XXX].
-
- [XXX]:
+George Kadianakis linked [XXX] to the technical report produced by the
+team working on statistics related to the amount of hidden service usage
+on the Tor network; Karsten Loesing added [XXX] some more information
+regarding the fraction of network activity this represents. These are
+advanced calculations, so if you’re not experienced in data science but
+want to know more about this topic, the team will be back shortly with a
+more “casual-reader-friendly” analysis of the results.
+
+ [XXX]: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2015-February/008228.html
+ [XXX]: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2015-February/008249.html
+
+“Fresh off a round of real-world intensive testing and debugging using
+spotty 2.5G coverage in the foothills of the Himalayas”, Nathan Freitas
+of the ever-intrepid Guardian Project announced [XXX] the first release
+candidate for version 14.1 of ChatSecure, the “most private” messaging
+client for Android and iOS, featuring numerous improvements to usability,
+stability, and network handling. Please see Nathan’s announcement for
+the full changelog.
+
+ [XXX]: https://lists.mayfirst.org/pipermail/guardian-dev/2015-February/004192.html
+
+Nathan also shared [XXX] a “very early” incarnation of PLUTO, “a
+simplified means for developers to include traffic obfuscation
+capabilities into their applications” with initial support for obfs4 and
+meek. “We think many apps could utilize this approach to defeat DPI
+filtering, and that this would be useful to offer decoupled from the way
+Tor integrates it”.
+
+ [XXX]: https://lists.mayfirst.org/pipermail/guardian-dev/2015-February/004183.html
+
+David Fifield posted a tutorial [XXX] for configuring the meek pluggable
+transport to work with hard-to-block HTTPS websites interested in helping
+censored Tor users, rather than the large content delivery networks it
+currently uses, along with the regular summary [XXX] of the costs
+incurred by meek’s infrastructure last month: “meek has so far been a
+smashing success. It’s the #2 pluggable transport behind obfs3 and it
+moved over 5 TB of traffic last month. But the costs are starting to get
+serious.” If you have ideas for supporting this important
+anti-censorship tool, please see David’s message for more details.
+
+ [XXX]: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2015-February/008239.html
+ [XXX]: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2015-February/008235.html
+
+Also in meek news, Across The Great FireWall published [XXX] a
+Chinese-language introduction to the concepts underpinning this
+pluggable transport. Other resources (in Chinese and other languages)
+are listed on the wiki [XXX].
+
+ [XXX]: http://www.atgfw.org/2015/02/torgfwpk1-meektor.html
+ [XXX]: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/doc/meek#Quickstart
+
+Nick Mathewson took to the Tor blog [XXX] to explain exactly what Tor
+design proposals are for and how they are written, and offered status
+updates (and review recommendations) [XXX] for some new and still-open
+proposals.
+
+ [XXX]: https://blog.torproject.org/blog/tor-design-proposals-how-we-make-changes-our-protocol
+ [XXX]: https://gitweb.torproject.org/torspec.git/tree/proposals/proposal-status.txt
+
+Nick also asked [XXX] relay operators to contribute their advice to a
+relay hardening guide [XXX] that could be shipped with Tor.
+
+ [XXX]: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-relays/2015-February/006358.html
+ [XXX]: https://bugs.torproject.org/13703
+
+Arturo Filastò asked for help [XXX] in coming up with a roadmap for the
+future of the Open Observatory of Network Interference, asking for
+opinions on a range of possible development, deployment, and research
+projects. Feel free to let the ooni-dev list know which of the ideas
+catches your attention.
+
+ [XXX]: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/ooni-dev/2015-February/000246.html
+
+After soliciting feedback [XXX] on including newer pluggable transports
+in Tails, the Tails team decided [XXX] to focus on obfs4 and then
+(“tentatively”) meek for upcoming versions of the anonymous live
+operating system.
+
+ [XXX]: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-talk/2015-January/036549.html
+ [XXX]: https://mailman.boum.org/pipermail/tails-dev/2015-February/008069.html
+
+Tom “TvdW” van der Woerdt wrote a detailed report [XXX] on his
+experience implementing a Tor client from scratch in the Go programming
+language following Tor’s specification document. One instance of “GoTor”
+briefly broke the Tor relay speed record with 250 megabytes/second, but
+Tom ultimately decided that Go isn’t the right language for such a
+thing, as its library support doesn’t make it easy enough to do. Thanks
+to Tom for running the experiment, and catching some specification
+errors in the process!
+
+ [XXX]: http://www.tvdw.eu/blog/2015/01/24/implementing-a-tor-relay-from-scratch/
+
+Even though Tor Browser is not vulnerable to the recent WebRTC IP attack
+proof-of-concept [XXX], Mike Perry nevertheless invited [XXX]
+“interested parties to try harder to bypass Tor in a stock Firefox using
+WebRTC and associated protocols (RTSP, SCTP) with
+media.peerconnection.enabled set to false”, before a plan to enable
+WebRTC-based QRCode bridge address resolution and sharing in Tor
+Launcher [XXX] is implemented.
+
+ [XXX]: https://github.com/diafygi/webrtc-ips
+ [XXX]: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-talk/2015-February/036845.html
+ [XXX]: https://bugs.torproject.org/14837
+
+Shadow, the tool by Rob Jansen that allows full Tor network simulation,
+now has a new website [XXX]. As Rob wrote [XXX]: “The new website still
+uses the Jekyll engine, and is a stripped down customized version of the
+open source SOLID theme. Please send me feedback if you have it.”
+
+ [XXX]: https://shadow.github.io
+ [XXX]: http://mailman.cs.umn.edu/archives/shadow-dev/2015-February/000081.html
+
+Jillian York of the EFF discussed [XXX] the problems of over-reliance on
+US government funding — and the dearth of other funding streams — for
+anti-surveillance tools, including Tor.
+
+ [XXX]: http://jilliancyork.com/2015/02/06/there-are-other-funding-options-than-the-usg/
Easy development tasks to get involved with
-------------------------------------------
-Text with cited source [XXX].
-
- [XXX]:
-
-This week in Tor history
-------------------------
-
-Text with cited source [XXX].
-
- [XXX]:
+Two problems confronting Mac users who want to download Tor Browser are
+the “disk image” format and Apple’s Gatekeeper security system. If these
+users try to run Tor Browser directly from the disk image window that
+opens after downloading, they will receive an error telling them
+“Firefox is already running”, and if they correctly move the program to
+the Applications folder, Gatekeeper will prevent them from running it
+directly anyway.
+
+If you have access to a machine running the latest version of Mac OS X,
+and want to spend ten minutes making life easier for Tor users, the Tor
+Browser download page [XXX] would benefit from screenshots showing users
+how to drag the program to the Applications folder, and how to disable
+Gatekeeper by control-clicking on the Tor Browser icon when running for
+the first time. Please see the relevant bug ticket [XXX] for a nice set
+of example screenshots; your contribution will be gratefully received!
+
+ [XXX]: https://www.torproject.org/download/download-easy
+ [XXX]: https://bugs.torproject.org/14838
Upcoming events
---------------
-Jul XX-XX | Event XXX brief description
- | Event City, Event Country
- | Event website URL
- |
-Jul XX-XX | Event XXX brief description
- | Event City, Event Country
- | Event website URL
-
-
-This issue of Tor Weekly News has been assembled by XXX, XXX, and
-XXX.
+ Feb 11 13:30 UTC | little-t tor development meeting
+ | #tor-dev, irc.oftc.net
+ |
+ Feb 11 16:00 UTC | Pluggable transports meeting
+ | #tor-dev, irc.oftc.net
+ |
+ Feb 16 18:00 UTC | Tor Browser online meeting
+ | #tor-dev, irc.oftc.net
+ |
+ Feb 16 18:00 UTC | OONI development meeting
+ | #ooni, irc.oftc.net
+ |
+ Feb 17 18:00 UTC | little-t tor patch workshop
+ | #tor-dev, irc.oftc.net
+
+
+This issue of Tor Weekly News has been assembled by Harmony, Roger
+Dingledine, Kate Krauss, and David Fifield.
Want to continue reading TWN? Please help us create this newsletter.
We still need more volunteers to watch the Tor community and report
@@ -115,5 +288,3 @@
[XXX]: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/TorWeeklyNews
[XXX]: https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/news-team
}}}
-
-Do we do Bugs to Plug? Then I recommend this easy usability bug: #14838. Solving the ticket means making Mac OS X screenshots of 1) the installation process (dragging the icon to /Applications), and 2) running the program the first time (Ctrl-click to disable Gatekeeper). For a complete patch, also edit https://gitweb.torproject.org/project/web/webwml.git/tree/download/en/download-easy.wml to include the new screenshots in the appropriate place.
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