[tor-project] Anti-censorship meeting notes, 12 Sep 2019

Philipp Winter phw at torproject.org
Thu Sep 12 17:44:35 UTC 2019


Here are our meeting logs:

http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2019/tor-meeting.2019-09-12-17.01.html

And here is our meeting pad:

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

Next meeting: Thursday September 12th 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

---------------------------
--- 12th September 2019 ---
---------------------------

== Announcements ==

    *

== Discussion ==

    * Any services left that aren't monitored or restarted on crash/reboot?
        * Set up systemd user script for GetTor (based on <https://help.torproject.org/tsa/doc/services/>)

== Actions ==

    *

== Interesting links ==

    * https://google.github.io/eng-practices/review/reviewer/
        * Google's guide on how to do code reviews. Worth a skim. My personal take-aways:
            * Make sure that patches improve the health of the existing code. They won't be perfect.
            * "One business day is the maximum time it should take to respond to a code review request (i.e. first thing the next morning)"
                * However, never interrupt your focused work to do a code review.

== 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: (2019-09-09)(gettor days are Thursday - snippets https://dip.torproject.org/snippets)

- gettor was down due to a VM reboot. Phw added a systemd script to reboot the service.
- add archive.org
- add gdrive
- edit ansible scripts
- edit scripts to upload files to various distribution endpoints

    Next week
        - reach out to irl about sending gettor stats to metrics
        - include reviews from code and website changes
        - review specs: are specs up-to-date? should we change something in the specs?
        - review docs: write documentation for web site and ansible playbooks.

    Help with:
        - probably more reviews.

hiro: (2019-09-02)(gettor days are Thursday - snippets https://dip.torproject.org/snippets)

    - Coded ansible recipes for gettor so that the service can be easily maintained by more people: https://dip.torproject.org/torproject/anti-censorship/gettor-project/gettor-ansible
    - Fixing some issues about git history taking too much space quota on gitlab and github

    Next week
        - use archive.org as new distribution endpoint: upload files to archive.org
        - reach out to irl about sending gettor stats to metrics
        - review specs: are specs up-to-date? should we change something in the specs?
        - review docs: write documentation for web site and ansible playbooks.

    Help with:
        - waiting to be told that's fine to upload files to archive.org? Can we start?
        - review new website. New website should be reviewed. https://dip.torproject.org/torproject/anti-censorship/gettor-project/gettor-web
phw:
  This week (2019-09-12):
        * Compiled set of private bridges (and distribution instructions) for NGO
            * Set up private monit instance to monitor these bridges from my laptop
                * https://mmonit.com/monit/ (the tool is really neat!)
        * Updated our obfs4 docker image to use Debian buster
        * Worked with new obfs4 bridge operators, many of which had troubles setting it up
            * Most had obsolete Tor versions; one from Ubuntu 12.04 (!)
        * RACECAR meeting about obfs4 improvements
            * Experimenting with libFTE to look like "a protocol with structure"
                * Many research questions remain
            * Experimenting with an "entropy reducer" that can survive high-entropy filters
            * More work remains to be done for flow obfuscator
        * Reviewed GetTor website changes
        * Wrote systemd user script to automatically resurrect GetTor when it crashes
        * Merged #28533 and released BridgeDB 0.8.1 (contains two usability fixes)
        * Reviewed revisions for #31407
        * Decided to rsync BridgeDB metrics to CollecTor instead of exposing them over web server (#19332)
  Next week:
        * BridgeDB fixes
            * E.g., ridiculously outdated requirements.txt
        * Make progress with obfs4 improvements
            * Figure out how to reduce per-packet entropy
  Help with:
        * https://bugs.torproject.org/19332#comment:20
        * https://bugs.torproject.org/31692

Gaba: (updated September 12th)
   Last week ():
            * grant writing 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 2019-09-12
Last week (holiday on Monday):
    - reviews (gettor and bridgedb)
    - looked into #31425 a bit more
    - grant writing meeting
    - worked a bit on #29207
    - upstream patch for pion/webrtc
This week:
    - make a patch for the proxy---broker communication (#29207)
    - wrap up pion/webrtc changes and windows build ( #28942 and #25483)
    - snowflake dogfood
    - continue work on sequencing layer (#29206)?
    - revisit snowflake reachability scripts, check status of tests, and enhance (#30368)
    - review of gettor metrics work (https://dip.torproject.org/torproject/anti-censorship/gettor-project/gettor/issues/10)
    - review #19332 and #31692
Help with:
    - review of progress on sequencing layer (#29206)


catalyst:
    week of 09/05 (actual):
        - reviews
        - sponsor31 reporting and planning
    week of 09/12 (planned):
        - reviews
        - sponsor31 reporting and planning
        - sponsor31 architecture documentation etc
        - gitlab migration planning
        - coding style discussion


arlolra: 2019-08-29
    Last week:
        - merged #30310
        - helped with some review
    Next week:
        - add a build step / documentation for code reuse in cupcake
        - make an attempt at #31391
    Help with:
        -


dcf: 2019-09-12
    Last week:
        - started review of sequencing layer (#29206)
        - raised the file descriptor limit in the broker (#31425)
    Next week:
        - review Snowflake sequencing layer (#29206)
        - archive test pion builds from #28942
        - Turbo Tunnel prototyping
    Help with:
        - redeploy meek-azure bridge for Go net/http DoS vulnerability (#31455)
          - needs attention from inf0 at Team Cymru (dcf and phw have sent email)


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