[tor-project] Anti-censorship meeting notes, 17 Oct 2019

Philipp Winter phw at torproject.org
Thu Oct 17 18:11:41 UTC 2019


Here is our meeting log:

http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2019/tor-meeting.2019-10-17-16.59.html

And here is our meeting pad:

Anti-censorship work meeting pad
--------------------------------

Next meeting: Thursday October 17th 17:00 UTC

Weekly meetings, every Thursday at 17:00 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: https://dip.torproject.org/torproject/anti-censorship/roadmap/boards
        * Our roadmap consists of a subset of trac tickets.
    * The anti-censorship team's wiki page: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/teams/AntiCensorshipTeam
    * GetTor's roadmap: https://dip.torproject.org/torproject/anti-censorship/gettor/boards
    * Tickets that need reviews: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/query?status=needs_review&component=%5eCircumvention&col=id&col=summary&col=component&col=owner&col=type&col=priority&col=milestone&col=reviewer&order=priority
    * Projects from sponsors we are working on:
        * https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/sponsors/Sponsor30
        * https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/sponsors/Sponsor28

---------------------------
---   17th October 2019 ---
---------------------------

== Announcements ==

    *

== Discussion ==

    * https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/teams/AntiCensorshipTeam/NGOBridgeSupport
        * New wiki page on how to walk NGO through the process of distributing private bridges
        * How can we make this process easier? See: https://bugs.torproject.org/28015
            * "Moat secret password" is a neat idea
        * How should we manage our private bridges?
            * So far, it's just a CSV. We want to keep track of who got what bridge and when.
    * When should we switch over to the new IPv6-having Snowflake broker? See https://bugs.torproject.org/29258#comment:11
    * Design considerations for a new service that tests bridges:
        * https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/31874#comment:2
    * Discuss workflow for gettor
    * Sponsor 28: status? anything to report?
        * we have a prototype of new obfs4 flow obfuscator: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/30716#comment:16
        * snowflake is moving forward
    * Sponsor 30: how are we doing?
        * https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/31274
            * A1- Create an evaluation framework for bridge distribution and selection methods.
        * https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/31281
            * A1 - Improve documentation on how to set up a bridge server and different pluggable transport bridge servers.
            * A2 - Create scripts and configuration code for setting up a bridge on cloud providers to make it easier for operators to launch a new bridge.
        * https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/31282
            * A2 - Define which censorship scenarios we are going to address.
    * Should we increase the default Snowflake poll interval? A lot? Last I checked, the broker was getting like 40 requests/second, which is way way more than we need.
        * Note: https://metrics.torproject.org/collector/archive/snowflakes/ since the release for windows, client usage has gone up by 5-10x but we still have orders of magnitude more idle snowflakes
            * dcf wonders why there's no apparent change in the bridge statistics https://metrics.torproject.org/rs.html#details/5481936581E23D2D178105D44DB6915AB06BFB7F
    * We could use a dedicated build server for the anti-censorship team to test tor-browser-build.git builds.
        * It's too big to build comfortably on a development PC/laptop, so devs are getting their own VPSes.
        * Requirements: 8 CPUs, 200 GB+ disk.
        * Could be shared with other teams.
    * Snowflake: Support portal and tb-manual documentation updates

== Actions ==

    *

== Interesting links ==

    * https://jhalderm.com/pub/papers/conjure-ccs19.pdf
        * Conjure CCS'19 paper now out
    * Filed https://bugs.torproject.org/32064 after last week's discussion on web search results on "download tor"

== Updates ==
FORMAT!

Name:
    This week:
        - What you worked on this week.
    Next week:
        - What you are planning to work on next week (related to anti-censorship work).
    Help with:
         - Something you may need help with.


Hiro:
    Started restoring Twitter Responder.
        When retrieving tweets I need to check for new tweets only otherwise Gettor will end up responding to old back log and already answered messages.
    Next Week:
      - Work on gettor specs
      - More with review of strings and website content and translation



phw:
  This week (2019-10-17):
        * Sent five private obfs4 bridges to frontdesk for distribution to users in need.
        * Finished prototype of obfs4 flow obfuscator:
            * https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/30716#comment:16
        * Filed ticket suggesting that we should only use >=80%-complete languages in BridgeDB:
            * https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/32035
        * Filed ticket on more useful search results for "download tor":
            * https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/32064
        * Created wiki page that documents our process for supporting NGOs with private bridges:
            * https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/teams/AntiCensorshipTeam/NGOBridgeSupport
        * Did some prototyping for a bridge test tool:
            * https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/31874
        * Reviewed #31384 and #31253.
        * Preparation for OTF summit.
        * Started removing PGP support from BridgeDB:
            * https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/17548
        * Helped dgoulet debug an exitmap bootstrapping issue (culprit was outdated Stem).
        * Answered question of RACE collaborator on the necessity of obfs4's node ID.
        * Finally deployed BridgeDB's language switcher (and released v0.9.0):
            * https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/26543
        * May have (accidentally) fixed another translation-related issue while implementing #26543:
            * https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/19839
        * Debugged and fixed BridgeDB's broken email responder:
            * https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/32105
            * If only we had our email monitoring system in place already :(
        * Changed expiration date of my PGP (sub)key.
  Next week:
        *
  Help with:
        * Need feedback on https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/31874#comment:2 (bridge test service)

Gaba: (updated October 10th)
   Last week ():
            * sponsor 30 meeting
    This week (planned):
        *


ahf
    Last week:
        - Worked on #28930
    This week:
        - Finished refactoring parts of #28930. Trying to figure out if we should begin the discussion on how PT's can report back on bootstrap info.
        - Continued to work on a tool to convert Trac tickets into Gitlab tickets.


cecylia (cohosh): last updated 2019-10-17
Last week:
Last week:
    - update webextension version and deploy new versions of snowflake broker and proxies (#31889)
    - fixed open UDP sockets bug (#31285)
    - revised and merged snowflake website localization (#31384) and webext packaging script(#31253)
    - grant writing
    - progress on snowflake tests (#29259)
    - review of bridgedb localization ticket
    - created #32117 for collecting information on bridgedb scraping
    - did some more snowflake health checks: about 2/3 of all connections open a data channel in < 20s
This week:
    - continue on tests (#29259)
    - snowflake dogfood and think about how to address bad snowflake health
    - refactor proxy-pair state machine (#31310)
    - work on #29207 and #29206
    - look at recent improvements to obfs4 (#30716)


catalyst:
    week of 09/19 (planned):
        - reviews
        - sponsor31 planning
        - coding style discussion
        - comment on draft network team review guidelines
        - #30984
    week of 09/19 (actual):
        - reviews
        - sponsor31 planning
        - talking with people about proposed network team review processes
    week of 09/26 (planned):
        - reviews
        - sponsor31 doc coordination
        - checking in on Season of Docs work
        - #30984


arlolra: 2019-10-17
    Last week:
        - merged #31685, #31537
        - responded to #31765
        - started on #31028
    Next week:
        - continue on #31028
        - add a build step / documentation for code reuse in cupcake
    Help with:
        - look at #31028 if you're curious, but not much to show yet


dcf: 2019-10-17
    Last week:
        - archived test pion builds from #28942
        - redeployed meek-server instances (#31890)
        - prototyping KCP and QUIC in obfs4proxy
        - reviewed #29206 (sequencing protocol for Snowflake)
        - reviewed Snowflake broker and bridge upgrade (#31889)
        - helped deploy Snowflake webext-0.0.11
        - reviewed Snowflake favicon (#31537)
        - posted a cleanup patch to remove unnecessary code (#32046)
        - posted a patch to remove Python LICENSE from Tor Browser (#32068)
        - reviewed Snowflake LICENSE packaging patch (#31932)
        - reviewed Snowflake socket leak fix (#31285)
        - dealt with a goptlib upgrade (#32056, #32076)
        - investigated a reported problem with the old meek-http-helper code (#32037)
        - set up a new instance of the Snowflake broker with IPv6 (#29258)
    Next week:
        - prototyping KCP and QUIC in obfs4proxy
        - review #29207 (broker protocol for Snowflake)
    Help with:
        - need meek-azure to redeploy meek-server for #31890


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