[tor-project] Anti-censorship team monthly report: January 2021

[Cecylia Bocovich]

Anti-censorship team Jan 2021 report
====================================

Snowflake
---------

    *There was an unexplained 4-day decrease in the number of Snowflake
users, almost to zero.

https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/anti-censorship-team/2021-January/000133.html

    * Changed some domains used by the Snowflake proxy browser
extension, to avoid antivirus warnings.

https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowflake/-/issues/40028

    * Updated version of webrtc dependency to new major version release

https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowflake/-/issues/40027

    * Version bump for snowflake in Tor Browser

    * Reclassified proxies with unknown NAT types to be in the
restricted NAT bucket

https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowflake/-/issues/40030

    * Prevent proxies from reverting from a known NAT type to an unknown
NAT type

https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowflake-webext/-/issues/20


BridgeDB/rdsys
--------------

    * Wrapped up documentation that discusses how rdsys tests resources.
    https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/rdsys/-/issues/31

    * Implemented a pluggable "persistence layer" in rdsys that helps
distributors seamlessly store persistent data.
    https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/rdsys/-/issues/5

    * Summarised long-term plans regarding the future of BridgeDB and rdsys.
    https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/rdsys/-/issues/12

    * Filed "meta issue" for Salmon and a bunch of new child issues.
    https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/rdsys/-/issues/35

    * Allowed more granular specification of distribution proportions
    https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/rdsys/-/issues/37


GetTor
------

    * Added redaction of email addresses from SMTP error messages before
errors are logged. This is to protect personal information from being
saved in logs.

https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/gettor-project/trac/-/issues/34058

    * Updated version of GetTor binaries to include fix for meek-azure bug

https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/gettor-project/gettor/-/issues/74

    * Fixed GetTor's locale parser

https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/gettor-project/gettor/-/issues/75


Bridgestrap
--------------

    * Finally merged the issue we had with Tor going dormant on
bridgestrap. In the process we discovered another issue in the way
bridgestrap interacted with its Tor controller library.

https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/bridgestrap/-/issues/12


Other
-----

    * Default bridges did not work in Tor Browser 10.5a7, but are
working again in 10.5a8. The underlying cause was a problem in tor's
configuration parsing.
    https://blog.torproject.org/new-release-tor-browser-105a7
    https://blog.torproject.org/new-release-tor-browser-105a8

    * Brainstormed ways to build a Web-based version of our censorship
analysis tool emma.
    https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/emma/-/issues/4

    * Started teaching emma to try more than once if a TCP connection
times out.
    https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/emma/-/issues/6

    * Published a job opening in the anti-censorship team:
    https://www.torproject.org/about/jobs/software-developer-anticensorship/

    * Philipp reviewed research papers for the DNS Privacy Workshop:
    https://www.ndss-symposium.org/ndss2021/cfp-dns-privacy-workshop/

    * We have a wiki page for our anti-censorship reading group:

https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/team/-/wikis/Anti-censorship-reading-group