[tor-dev] CAPTCHA Monitoring Project Updates #3

[Barkin Simsek]

Hi everyone,

I have a few more updates since my last email (you might want to check
the project's wiki page [0] first if you didn't see my previous
emails):

-- I have the onion service [1] of the dashboard [2] up and running.
-- I was using an SQLite database and migrated it to PostgreSQL. This
migration was needed to scale up the whole system. At the moment,
there are 50000+ measurements in the database, and access time was
very long with SQLite.
-- Now there is a properly documented API [3] available for everyone's
use. You can perform queries through the API if you prefer to access
the raw data, instead of the visualizations on the dashboard.
-- The Dockerfile [4] is updated and working again.
-- I decided to give priority to the API and Dockerfile for the
"reproducibility" of the results and graphs in the dashboard. Before
the API, the graphs were using hardcoded SQL queries, which required
people to dig in the source code to find out possible mistakes. It was
also impossible for people to execute these SQL queries and see the
results themselves. API allows me to put a link to the exact API calls
to anything I place on the dashboard so that people can double-check
with the raw data if they want.
-- I'm working on adding Brave Browser's "Private Window with Tor" to
the CAPTCHA Monitor. I'm very close to finishing it and should be
ready at the end of this weekend. I expect to see a high amount of
CAPTCHA since it is using Tor without Tor Browser's user-agent (and
thus fingerprint).
-- I discussed a possible integration with the metrics website on the
metrics team meeting. I initially thought about placing CAPTCHA rate
graphs under each relay in the "Relay Search" section. If you have any
suggestions, you are welcomed to mention them in ticket
tpo/metrics/website/40002 [5].
-- Finally, you can take a look at my blog posts on DIAL's blog [6] to
see more detailed explanations, but I already summarized the blog
posts in this email.

Best,
Barkin (woswos)

[0] https://gitlab.torproject.org/woswos/CAPTCHA-Monitor/-/wikis/home
[1] http://captchaufjq5m2i73up537pldaxnbp6rzcbdrzc7y5rlwtx3mwigznad.onion/
[2] https://dashboard.captcha.wtf/
[3] https://api.captcha.wtf/
[4] https://gitlab.torproject.org/woswos/CAPTCHA-Monitor/-/tree/master/docker
[5] https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/metrics/website/-/issues/40002
[6] https://hub.osc.dial.community/t/tor-project-cloudflare-captcha-monitoring/1558