[tor-project] Anti-censorship team meeting notes, 2022-02-24

meskio meskio at torproject.org
Thu Feb 24 17:00:55 UTC 2022 

Hey everyone!

Here are our meeting logs:

http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2022/tor-meeting.2022-02-24-15.59.html 

And our meeting pad:

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

Next meeting: Thursday February 24th 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.

== Links to Useful documents ==

    Our anti-censorship roadmap:

    Roadmap: https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/anti-censorship/-/boards

    The anti-censorship team's wiki page:

    https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/team/-/wikis/home

    Past meeting notes can be found at:

    https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-project/

    Tickets that need reviews:  from sponsors we are working on:

    All needs review tickets: https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/anti-censorship/-/merge_requests?scope=all&utf8=%E2%9C%93&state=opened&assignee_id=None

    Sponsor 30

    https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/milestones/4

    https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/milestones/7

    https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/milestones/5

    https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/milestones/6

    Sponsor 28

    must-do tickets: https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/milestones/10

    possible tickets: https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/issues?scope=all&utf8=%E2%9C%93&state=opened&label_name%5b%5d=Sponsor%2028&milestone_title=None


== Announcements ==

    meskio plans to deploy rdsys+bridgedb next Monday, 2022-02-28.

    many bridges will change distribution mechanism


== Discussion ==

    obfs4 fail to connect issue

    https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser/-/issues/40804

    upstream maintainer recommends getting servers to upgrade

    our own testing shows that new client -> new server solves the problem

    no reply yet to the query sent to Aaron Johnson following last week's conversation

    obfs4proxy is on its way to Debian testing, as soon as it hits testing we should ask acute to upload it to backports, to make it easier for server operators to upgrade

    the package is expected to reach testing in <10 days

    an upgrade of all obfs4 bridges will likely take time

    start with the limited goal of upgrading all Tor Browser default bridges? https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/team/-/wikis/Default-Bridges

    bridges currently don't report the version of the PTs they run, it would help track the progress of upgrading if they did report

    https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/core/tor/-/issues/11101#note_2770219

    Past discussion on using the PT STATUS message for version reporting:

    https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-project/2021-October/003194.html

    http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2021/tor-meeting.2021-09-30-16.00.log.html#l-10

    uTLS in Snowflake Client Broker Communication

    we have some concerns on the uTLS fingerprints being old and "easier" to censor

    psiphon devs see uTLS working right for them

    is a client side change, we can update it quickly

    we don't enable uTLS by default, but make it an option from the SOCKS interface, so we can enable it by changing the bridge line from the circumvention settings


== Actions ==


== Interesting links ==

    https://archive.org/details/ptim2021 Pluggable Transports Implementers Meeting 2021 videos


== Reading group ==

    We will discuss "Throttling Twitter: an emerging censorship technique in Russia" on 10 March

    https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3487552.3487858

    https://censorbib.nymity.ch/#Xue2021a

    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.


anadahz: 2022-01-27

    Last week:

    - Increase timeout check cycles for default-bridge-felix-1 and default-bridge-felix-2 as they have been generating too many alerts: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/monit-configuration/-/merge_requests/1


cecylia (cohosh): last updated 2022-02-17
Last week:
    - tried out snowflake experiments in shadow's preload mode
        - https://github.com/shadow/shadow/issues/1549
    - deployed snowflake server fixes
    - reached out to default bridge operators
    - finished s28 prep and documentation
    - wrote some follow up code for Snowflake event channel
        - https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowflake/-/merge_requests/77
This week:
    - mostly afk
Needs help with:

dcf: 2022-02-24

    Last week:

    - further helped debug obfs4proxy-0.0.12 connection failures https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser/-/issues/40804

    - investigated a snowflake bridge outage and restarted the server

    Next week:

    - post summary of 2022-02-18 snowflake bridge outage

    Help with:


agix: 2021-02-10

    Last week:

    - Continued work on gettor-twitter

    Next week:

    - Hopefully finish the task

    Help with:

    -


arlolra: 2022-01-20

    Last week:

    - [added 2022-01-20 by dcf] ALPN support for pion DTLS https://github.com/pion/dtls/pull/415

    Next week:

    - Figure out where in pion/webrtc ALPN should be configured and used

    - Maybe add Chacha20Poly1305 to pion/dtls

    https://github.com/pion/dtls#planned-features

    https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowflake/-/issues/40014#note_2764731

    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: 2022-02-24

    Last week:

    - validate opendkim headers in bridgedb (bridgedb!36)

    - review concurrency problems in rdsys (rdsys#90)

    - fix rdsys bridge status site, it was not reporting if they are working for non-vanilla bridges (rdsys#88)

    - handle bridgedb reconnections (bridgedb!34)

    - make easier to develop bridgedb with a fake rdsys (bridgedb#40034)

    - coordinate the deployment of rdsys + bridgedb

    Next week:

    - deploy rdsys + bridgedb in production (rdsys#12)

    - use rdsys bridges in circumvention settings (bridgedb#40045)


Shelikhoo: 2022-02-24
   Last Week:
       - [Merge Request Awaiting] Add SOCKS5 forward proxy support to snowflake (snowflake!64)
       - [Merge Request Done] Add verbosity switch to suppress diagnostic output (snowflake#40079, snowflake!74)
       - [Merge Request] uTLS for broker negotiation

      - [Discussion] Implement metrics to measure snowflake churn (snowflake#34075)

      - [Discussion] Proposal: Support for Dynamic IP obfs4 bridges with unattended proxy information update (aka "Subscription")

      - [Discussion] Proposal: Push Notification Based Signaling Channel

      - [Discussion] Proposal: Centralized Probe Result Collector (anti-censorship/team#54)

      - [Discussion] HTTPT & Websocket (https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/httpt/-/issues/7#note_2773546)

      - [Investigate] Is there a better moat/snowflake SNI than cdn.sstatic.net? (snowflake#40068)

      - [Investigate] Multi-instance Load Balanced Tor - Snowflake Deployment

      - [Investigate] China "Anti-Fraud" Webpage Redirection Censorship (censorship-analysis#40026)

      - [Investigate] S96 Bridge Performance

   Next Week:
       - [Discussion] Implement metrics to measure snowflake churn (snowflake#34075)
       - [Discussion] Proposal: Push Notification Based Signaling Channel
       - [Coding] Proposal: Centralized Probe Result Collector (anti-censorship/team#54)

HackerNCoder: 2021-12-16
This week:
    Last/done:
        Setup web mirror on tor.encryptionin.space
    Next:
        Get (new VPs with) new IP and setup new web mirror on new domain

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:

    - 

-- 
meskio | https://meskio.net/
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 My contact info: https://meskio.net/crypto.txt
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Nos vamos a Croatan.
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