[tor-project] Anti-censorship meeting notes

Fri Oct 29 00:17:42 UTC 2021

Hey everyone!

Here are our meeting logs:

http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2021/tor-meeting.2021-10-28-16.00.html

and the meeting pad:

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

Next meeting: Thursday October 28th 16:00 UTC

Weekly meetings, every Thursday at 16:00 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.

== Announcements ==

== Discussion ==

    snowflake v2 library

https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowflake/-/issues/40063

    last chance to make changes to the API before increasing the major
version number

    look at particularly the proxy, client, and server libraries and
comment on the ticket if there are changes you'd like to see

    scheduling reboot/migration of snowflake VPS

https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/anti-censorship-team/2021-October/000196.html

    dcf plans to do it early 2021-10-31 UTC
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowflake/-/issues/40073

    change in proxy NAT types?

https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/anti-censorship-team/2021-October/000197.html

    may be a problem with probetest

https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowflake/-/issues/40039
was a past instance of probetest using a lot of CPU

    probetest is using 100% CPU at the moment too

    ticket to diagnose the problem with probetest:
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowflake/-/issues/40071

    ticket to install an alert for NAT assignment:
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowflake/-/issues/40072

== Actions ==

== Interesting links ==

https://github.com/Pluggable-Transports/Pluggable-Transports-spec/blob/70bc1c5115639411cf05eec300c52645c174312b/proposals/0011%20-%20Improve%20Logging%20in%20APIs.pdf

    proposal for a logging interface in the PT API, somewhat relevant to
the discussion about STATUS from
https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-project/2021-October/003194.html

https://github.com/Pluggable-Transports/Pluggable-Transports-spec/blob/70bc1c5115639411cf05eec300c52645c174312b/proposals/0004-ClientEventMessage.pdf

    proposed EVENT message, this is actually an earlier version of what
became STATUS in Tor's pt-spec

    https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2018-October/013512.html

    https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/core/tor/-/issues/28181#note_2487268

https://gitweb.torproject.org/torspec.git/tree/pt-spec.txt?id=1ecf3f66586816fc718e38f8cd7cbb23fa9b81f5#n663

== Reading group ==

    We will discuss "Measuring QQMail's automated email censorship in
China" on 2021-11-21

    https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3473604.3474560

    Questions to ask and goals to have:

    What aspects of the paper are questionable?

    Are there immediate actions we can take based on this work?

    Are there long-term actions we can take based on this work?

    Is there future work that we want to call out, in hopes that others
will pick it up?

== Updates ==

Name:
    This week:
        - What you worked on this week.
    Next week:
        - What you are planning to work on next week.
    Help with:

         - Something you need help with.

cecylia (cohosh): last updated 2021-10-28
Last week:
    - debugged bridgestrap issues
    - closed bridgestrap#7 because it could no longer be reproduced
    - code reviews
    - grant planning
    - finished changes to snowflake proxy library (snowflake!60)
    - read performance paper for reading group
    - more work on snowflake performance measurments
This week:
    - automate blocking detection for rotating IP bridges
(censorship-analysis#40020)
    - finish up snowflake library changes for v2 (snowflake#40063)
    - more snowflake performance work (snowflake#40026)
Needs help with:
    - any thoughts on snowflake v2 library

arlolra: 2021-08-12

    Last week:

    - Migrate to v3 of the webextension manifest

    Next week:

    - Maybe get back to snowflake-webext #10

    - Write up the pitch for our use case for supporting creating
PeerConnections in background service workers
https://github.com/w3c/webrtc-extensions/issues/77

    Help with:

    -

dcf: 2021-10-28

    Last week:

    Next week:

    - reboot snowflake VPSes
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowflake/-/issues/40073

    Help with:

agix:2021-07-15

    Last week:

    -Off due to final exams

    Next week:

    -Work on bridgebox for rdsys

    -More research on httpt #4

    Help with:

    -

hanneloresx: 2021-3-4

    Last week:

    - Submitted MR for bridgestrap issue #14

    Next week:

    - Finish bridgestrap #14

    - Find new issue to work on

    Help with:

    -

maxb: 2021-09-23

    Last week:

    - Worked on
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowflake/-/issues/40054
re: utls for broker negotiation

    - Had conversation with someone about upstream utls http round
tripper https://github.com/refraction-networking/utls/pull/74

    - Too busy with work :/

    Next week:

    - _Really_ want to get a PR for utls round tripper

meskio: 2021-10-28

    Last week:

    - merge rdsys honour operators distribution choice (rdsys!39)

    - fixes on snowflake proxy docker image (docker-snowflake-proxy!2)

    - digg into bridgedb bridge storage to replace it by rdsys
(bridgedb#40031)

    - review snowflakes lib fixes (snowflake!60)

    Next week:

    - make bridgedb a rdsys distributor (bridgedb#40031)

    - improve bridgestrap manage of the cache (bridgestrap#27)