[tor-project] Anti-censorship team meeting notes, 2022-10-13

Shelikhoo shelikhoo at torproject.org
Thu Oct 13 17:00:15 UTC 2022


Hey everyone!

Here are our meeting logs:
http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2022/tor-meeting.2022-10-13-15.58.html 
<http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2022/tor-meeting.2022-03-31-15.59.html>

And our meeting pad:

Anti-censorship work meeting pad
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PUBLIC PAD
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Anti-censorship work meeting pad
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Next meeting: Thursday Oct 20 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 check-in about the status of anti-censorship work at Tor.
Coordinate collaboration between people/teams on anti-censorship at the 
Tor Project and Tor community.

== 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 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
         * Sponsor 96
             * https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/milestones/24

== Announcements ==

     * snowflake-01 transferred 1.17 PB of Tor user data in the six 
months between 2022-04-08 and 2022-10-08
         * users with annotated events 
https://share.riseup.net/#JWQAl-2UMIyak9FeP6OJ8A
         * bandwidth https://share.riseup.net/#qpzsTgHxfG0Ar-JrDRfQEg
     * New release v1.1.3 of uTLS
         * https://github.com/refraction-networking/utls/releases/tag/v1.1.3
         * supports more and more recent TLS parrots
         * from 
https://github.com/net4people/bbs/issues/129#issuecomment-1276774330

== Discussion ==

     * Snowflake Enable Distributed Snowflake Support at broker src shell
         * 
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/team/-/issues/95
         * old proxies were rejected starting monday of this week
         * everything seems smooth, we saw a drop in polls as expected, 
but we still seem to be mostly in capacity and it looks worth it to move 
forward.
         * plan to make a community announcement about the rejection of 
old proxies
     * Iran:
         * Anything (resources, work, support) that may be needed to 
help circumvent censorship in Iran right now?
         * There are multiple reports of snowflake not working in Iran 
in some ISPs, but so far we didn't receive a more detailed report.
         * Should we try out new PTs? dnstt, etc?
         * Get snowflake in Tor Browser updated to support utls
         * meskio will explore if orbot has support for uTLS in 
snowflake or if that could be added to be able to see if uTLS solves the 
problem of snowflaked

     * telegram download bot
         * apart from a minor issue that needed a one-line fix, launch 
went well
         * external contributors have also participated
         * heavy focus on building new features (especially android 
builds without downloads.json), which in turn either requires a lot of 
refactoring
         * lots of issues concerning third-party libraries again, most 
bug reports/feature requests have been made to upstream developers
             * logging has been replaced with aiologger to protect the 
bot from "hugs of death"
             * aiologger does not show dates in files. hacky solution: 
obtain the date when methods of the logger are called, maintainers are 
not very active
             * we depend on undocumented behavior. After doing research, 
it seems OK here
             * are new versions with regressions OK?
         * translations
             * a recent change in how exceptions are communicated to the 
user has pushed the readiness of translations back
             * will be expanded once development (mostly) stagnates
             * existing translations will not be touched until that happens
             * comments are still a TODO
     * new experimental gettor backend
         * authored in go, could potentially be merged together with rdsys
         * makes sharing large files through platforms with download 
limits under 100 MB (unless if you pay, or not) possible (by splitting 
them and providing the users with an app to put it back together)
         * relies on commands like the other gettor implementations
         * uses mongodb as a backend
         * android versions work too
         * currently private
     * built-in bridgdes vs 'settings' pool: do we need more built-in 
obfs4 bridges?
-------NEW TOPIC BELOW-----------
     *  Release a new version of snowflake webext proxy src shell
     * loss of bandwidth at snowflake-01 bridge
         * dynamics are the same as at the time of 2022-10-06 meeting
         * the cause of the loss of bridge bandwidth is still unknown 
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowflake/-/issues/40207 
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/team/-/issues/96#note_2840481
         * shelikhoo will do a temporary reversion of the broker 
deployment of 2022-10-03 that rejected old proxies 
(https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowflake/-/issues/40193) 
on 2022-10-17, just as a test
             * even though the deployment of 2022-10-03 does not quite 
match up in time with the bandwidth drop


== Actions ==


== Interesting links ==

     * 
https://www.digitalrights.community/blog/tools-resources-actions-to-support-irans-feminist-uprising

== Reading group ==

     * We will discuss "" on
         *
         * 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 2022-10-13
     Last week:
         - more work on translations of webextension and snowflake.tpo
             - 
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowflake-webext/-/issues/63
         - progress on integrating conjure into tor browser
             - 
https://gitlab.torproject.org/cohosh/tor-browser-build/-/commits/conjure
         - bumped snowflake version in stable versions of tor browser
     This week:
         - continue Conjure work
         - wrap up manifest v3 candidate
     Needs help with:

dcf: 2022-10-13
     Last week:
         - upgraded memory capacity of broker VPS 
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowflake/-/issues/40202
         - posted a request for snowflake-client logs and communicated 
the results https://github.com/net4people/bbs/issues/131 
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/team/-/issues/96#note_2841577
         - archived snowflake-webext-0.6.3 
https://archive.org/details/snowflake-webextension-0.6.3
         - suggested a way to include pion log messages in the 
snowflake-client and proxy logs 
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowflake/-/issues/40204#note_2841526
         - checked the TLS fingerprint of Orbot on Android, found it to 
be the same as Tor Browser on Linux 
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/team/-/issues/96#note_2841673
         - reviewed a `go fmt` merge request 
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowflake/-/merge_requests/104
         - posted a research idea to calibrate user counts in metrics 
graphs 
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/network-health/metrics/website/-/issues/40009#note_2841814
         - opened an issue for confusing code structure in the proxy 
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowflake/-/issues/40210
     Next week:
         - disable non-WireGuard SSH access to snowflake-02
         - migrate goptlib to gitlab 
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/team/-/issues/86#note_2823122
         - try Conjure PT development version 
https://forum.torproject.net/t/tor-dev-introducing-a-conjure-pt-for-tor/4429
     Help with:

meskio: 2022-10-06
    Last week:
        - deploy rdsys-gettor
        - investigate gettor mysterious freeze (rdsys#129)
        - refresh captchas for BridgeDB (still in progress) (bridgedb#40061)
        - update imap libraries in rdsys (rdsys!54)
        - update obfs4proxy package in debian (obfs4#40008)
        - create 'First contribution' tickets in rdsys for Outreachy
        - rdsys updates now signal if they are full update (rdsys!53)
        - a proposal to refresh builtin bridges in TB 
(tor-browser-build#40630)
    Next week:
        - get uTLS back on obfs4proxy meek (obfs4#40008)

Shelikhoo: 2022-10-13
    Last Week:
         - [Merge Request Awaiting] Add SOCKS5 forward proxy support to 
snowflake (snowflake!64)
         - [Discussion & Deployment] Rollout of Distributed Snowflake 
Support
         - [Coding & Deployment] Proposal: Centralized Probe Result 
Collector (anti-censorship/team#54)
         - [Research] HTTPT Planning 
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/httpt/-/issues/1
         - [Research] Generate Charts for presention: 
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/team/-/issues/92#note_2836476
         - [Deployment] Give shelikhoo Access to polyanthum instance 
(and bridge user) for the purpose of Debugging WebTunnel integration of 
rdsys
    Next Week:
         - [Research] WebTunnel Planning (Continue)
         - Generate Charts for presention: 
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/team/-/issues/92#note_2836476 
(Continue)
         - [Research] Fix vantage point summary upload in China
         - Release New version of Snowflake WebExt
         - Rollout distributed snowflake(include definition of secondary 
bridge on broker)

Itchy Onion: 2022-10-13
     Last week:
             - testing two more RACE snowflake plugin fixes (using 
io.Copy() to send message and connection pool)
     This week:
         - bump snowflake plugin to version 2.3.2
         - trying to trace where the message dropping happens in the 
snowflake library used by RACE. (I've been back and forth on this one, 
but now I believe message dropping and unclosed TCP sockets are not the 
same issue. The CI tests that are failing doesn't send that many 
messages for a system resource issue to kick in. I've traced the message 
in the plugin code, and see they are all sent to the snowflake library 
code without dropping. So maybe an issue with the version of snowflake 
lib that's used in RACE)




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