[tor-dev] Building better pluggable transports - GSoC 2013 project

[George Kadianakis]

Chang Lan <changlan9 at gmail.com> writes:

> Hello everyone! 
>

Hi there,

> I am a Tor GSoC student who will be working on the pluggable transports this summer. My mentor is Steven and my co-mentor is George Kadianakis. It is great to be part of the Tor community!
>
> Steven already kicked off the discussion about how to build better transports. The original project proposal[1] discussed the possibility of sending data over UDP with extra efforts to guarantee reliable in-order delivery. However, as George mentioned recently[3], ScrambleSuite[2] may already solve the issue of scanning resistance.
>
> Given that ScrambleSuite is being deployed, improving protocol obfuscation will be my main focus. HTTP impersonation is really useful, since there are numerous HTTP proxy outside the censored region, while the number of bridges is quite limited. What I'm gonna be doing during the summer is implementing a good enough HTTP impersonation based on pluggable transports specification. There are still many open questions indeed. Discussions are more than welcome!
>

Which approach are you thinking of taking for writing your HTTP
transport? Which HTTP covert channel are you planning on using?

Have you seen https//trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/8676 for
a different approach of writing an HTTP transport?

In the google-melange page I see that your timetable doesn't include
any specification. Can we hope to have a specification document
before you start implementing the pluggable transport?

Thanks!