[tor-project] Anti-censorship meeting notes, 12 Mar 2020

Thu Mar 12 19:04:40 UTC 2020

Here is our meeting log:

http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2020/tor-meeting.2020-03-12-17.59.html

And here is our meeting pad:

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

Next meeting: Thursday March 19th 18:00 UTC

Weekly meetings, every Thursday at 18:00 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://gitlab.torproject.org/torproject/anti-censorship/roadmap/boards
        * Our roadmap consists of a subset of trac tickets. For 2020 Q1, the trac keyword is anti-censorship-roadmap-2020Q1
        * Next planning session: last week of April
    * The anti-censorship team's wiki page: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/teams/AntiCensorshipTeam
    * Past meetings' notes can be found at: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-project/
    * GetTor's roadmap: https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/torproject/anti-censorship/gettor-project/-/boards
    * Tickets that need reviews:  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

-------------------------
---  March 12th 2020   --
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== Announcements ==

    * Tor participating in Google Summer of Code, ideas page: https://community.torproject.org/gsoc/

== Discussion ==

    * obfs4proxy currently cannot build because of deleted dependency. how should we fix this short-term and long-term? #33464

== Actions ==

    * Please help phw compile our monthly report by adding your highlights to this pad:
        * https://pad.riseup.net/p/vGR0zvyXCuV3HG09VX-j

== Interesting links ==

    * https://gfw.report/blog/gfw_looking_glass/en/
        * Heartbleed-like memory disclosure (out-of-bounds read) in GFW's DNS parser. Worked circa 2010, doesn't work now.
    * https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167404820300626
        * "Protocol Proxy: An FTE-based covert channel"
        * We present a proof-of-concept format transforming encryption (FTE)-based covert channel for tunneling TCP traffic through protected static protocols. Protected static protocols are UDP-based protocols with variable fields that cannot be blocked without collateral damage, such as power grid failures. We (1) convert TCP traffic to UDP traffic, (2) introduce observation-based FTE, and (3) model interpacket timing with a deterministic Hidden Markov Model (HMM).
        * Open access copy: https://sci-hub.se/http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167404820300626

== Updates ==

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: (last updated before 2020-01-09)
    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. <-- is this #27330 ?
    Next Week:
      - Work on gettor specs <-- Is this #3781?
      - More with review of strings and website content and translation

phw:
  This week (2020-03-12):
        * Back from vacation and still catching up. Please let me know if you need me to prioritise something.
        * Finished peer feedback.
        * Created new info page on BridgeDB explaining our distribution mechanisms (#33008).
        * Another round of analysis for the success rate of our new captchas (#24607).
            * There's much more to study here but not enough time :/
  Next week:
        * Write a summary of our current BridgeDB distribution mechanisms and brainstorm new ones
        * Pay attention to volunteer work (help agix with BridgeDB reviews; thymbahutymba with docker; Sergey with https proxy)
        * Make BridgeDB report internal metrics (#31422)
        * Catch up on RACE; in particular wrt obfs4 improvements
  Help with:
        *

Gaba: ()
   Last week (2020-03-12):
        * sponsor 30 coordination
        * talking with catalyst to start work on the network team roadmap related to s28 and s30. They are the person to go to with anything needed from core Tor.
    This week (planned):
        * not much related to anti-censorship

cecylia (cohosh): last updated 2020-03-12
Last week:
    - worked with GSoC students on proposals
    - debugged and pushed a fix for GetTor to always send a response email (#33543)
    - drafted a revision for GetTor message body (#23226)
    - made a tbb patch for #33330 (#33578)
    - made a patch to upgrade the version of pion-webrtc in tor browser (#33576)
    - merged gitlab provider fix for gettor (#33034)
    - added an update on obfs4 reachability tests (#31701)
    - merged and deployed fix for ignoring quoted messages in gettor (#23225)
    - started looking at update notification for proxy-go instances (#32677), i think #19409 is the way to go though

This week:
    - maybe continue work on throughput check (#32938)
    - make a Snowflake package for debian (#19409)
    - Aggregate and write up a report of snowflake throughput changes (#32545)
    - Revise GetTor help message (#23226)
    - look at options for getting STUN information to snowflake clients (#25591)
    - see if there's anything else we need to do for nsf ttp grant

Needs help with:
    - review of tor browser patches #33578 and #33576 (tb-team)
    - should we continue obfs4 reachability tests (this might be taken over by sponsor 30 work)
    - any thoughts on snowflake versioning (#33593)? (required for debian packaging)

arlolra: 2020-03-12
    Last week:
        -
    Next week:
        - maybe the proxy parts of #19026
        - pick another task? (#31201, #33112, #33365, ?)
    Help with:
        -

dcf: 2020-03-12
    Last week:
        - reviewed go.mod for snowflake (#33330)
        - started reviewing snowflake throughput tests (#32928)
    Next week:
        - finish reviewing snowflake throughput tests (#32938)
        - work on a fix for multiple SOCKS connections (#33519)
            - maybe make new packages with 9.5a7
    Help with:

cjb: 2019-03-12
   Last week:
    - split out #31011 into just the client-side change
   Next week:
    - hoping to find time to poke at golang snowflake proxy Android app
   Help with:

agix:2020-03-12
    Last week:
        - Still on #31426
        - Submitted patch for #31528
        - Got familiar with HYPHAE and Salmon
    Next week:
        - Continue on #31426
        - Work on the GSoC proposal for Salmon
    Help with:
        -

catalyst: 2020-03-12 (offline for this meeting)
    next week:
        - look at s28/s30 tickets i can help with (coordinating with ahf)

thymbahutymba: 2020-03-12
    Last week:
        - docker-compose for obfs4-bridge (#31834)
        - multiarch docker obfs4 images #33461 (even though is more then a week ago)
        - reported issue concerning #31834 (comment 25)
    Next week:
    Help with: