[tor-project] Anti-censorship team monthly report: March 2020

[Philipp Winter]

Hi friends,

Here's what the anti-censorship team has accomplished in March 2020:

Snowflake
=========

* Released version 0.2.2 of the Snowflake WebExtension:
  <https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/torproject-snowflake/>
  <https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/snowflake/mafpmfcccpbjnhfhjnllmmalhifmlcie>

* Posted a third draft of Snowflake–Turbo Tunnel packages, allowing one
  Snowflake proxy to be shared among many upstream connections
  <https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/anti-censorship-team/2020-March/000075.html>

* Made some progress on debugging and detecting Snowflake proxy issues:
  <https://bugs.torproject.org/33666>
  <https://bugs.torproject.org/32938>

* Added module support to make builds and versioning easier:
  <https://bugs.torproject.org/33330>

* Updated versions of Snowflake and pion-webrtc in Tor Browser:
  <https://bugs.torproject.org/33578>
  <https://bugs.torproject.org/33576>

* Removed unused server-webrtc code:
  <https://bugs.torproject.org/33636>

* Updated Snowflake license:
  <https://bugs.torproject.org/33637>

* Investigated the work for making a Debian package of Snowflake:
  <https://bugs.torproject.org/19409>

BridgeDB
========

* We added instructions to BridgeDB explaining how to add bridges on
  mobile platforms:
  <https://bugs.torproject.org/30317>

* Worked with the Metrics Team to add a "bridge distribution mechanism"
  field to Relay Search, allowing bridge operators to see how their
  bridge is distributed:
  <https://bugs.torproject.org/33008>

* Re-determined the success rate of both users and (what we believe to
  be) bots in how well they solve our newly-created BridgeDB CAPTCHAs:
  <https://bugs.torproject.org/24607#comment:17>

* Made progress on having BridgeDB report internal metrics:
  <https://bugs.torproject.org/31422>

* Debugged an issue in BridgeDB's deployment scripts:
  <https://bugs.torproject.org/33709>

* Merged a patch (thanks to agix!) that makes BridgeDB use a CSPRNG
  when selecting cached CAPTCHAs:
  <https://bugs.torproject.org/31967>

* Noticed that BridgeDB wouldn't allow bridges to change their
  distribution mechanism; i.e., if a bridge is first assigned to the
  HTTP mechanism, it wasn't able to change this by setting its
  BridgeDistribution config option.  Implemented a fix for this issue:
  <https://bugs.torproject.org/33631>

GetTor
======

* Patched updated procedure for Gitlab provider:
  <https://bugs.torproject.org/33034>

* Make sure GetTor always responds to (malformed) emails too:
  <https://bugs.torproject.org/33543>

* Overhaul of GetTor help and links message bodies:
  <https://bugs.torproject.org/23226>

* Deployed fix for ignoring quoted messages in GetTor:
  <https://bugs.torproject.org/23225>

Obfs4
=====

* Obfs4's extra25519 dependency changed, which breaks
  versioning-agnostic builds but as long as one is using Go modules
  (like Tor Browser does), it still works:
  <https://bugs.torproject.org/33464>

* Merged a patch (thanks to thymbahutymba!) that makes our obfs4 docker
  image support docker-compose.  This simplifies the deployment process.

Miscellaneous
=============

* Filed a ticket to get our noisebridge01 default bridge removed from
  Tor Browser because it no longer has a maintainer:
  <https://bugs.torproject.org/13727>

* Worked with prospective GSoC students on their proposals.

* Finished writing our NSF TTP grant.

* We let bridge operators of soon-to-be-obsolete versions know that it's
  time to upgrade:
  <https://bugs.torproject.org/32672>