[tor-project] Anti-censorship team meeting notes, 2024-10-17

Shelikhoo shelikhoo at torproject.org
Thu Oct 17 17:09:29 UTC 2024


Hey everyone!

Here are our meeting logs:
https://gitlab.torproject.org/-/snippets/206

And our meeting pad:

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

Next meeting: Thursday, October 24 16:00 UTC
Facilitator: meskio
^^^(See Facilitator Queue at tail)

Weekly meetings, every Thursday at 16:00 UTC, in #tor-meeting at OFTC
(channel is logged while meetings are in progress)

This week's Facilitator: shelikhoo

== 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 projects, 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
         * Project 158 <-- meskio working on it
             * 
https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/anti-censorship/-/issues/?label_name%5B%5D=Project%20158


== Announcements ==

     *

== Discussion ==

(Oct 10 New):
     * Prepare DeploymentTool for Publishing
         * 
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/connectivity-measurement/logcollector-admin/-/issues/9
(Oct 17 New)
     * Start Snowflake Broker Transition?
         * Installation guide updated at 
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/team/-/wikis/Survival-Guides/Snowflake-Broker-Installation-Guide/diff?version_id=adf5a1429c6b409163fdda51796ca80fb9da5046
         * shelikhoo will run the port scan test from 
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowflake/-/issues/40349#note_3085924, 
then tell dcf to reallocate resources from the current broker VM to the 
new one.
     * Is there a good case study for bridge blocking that would be 
represented well for a particular region in tor metrics
         * context: running a simulation for troll-patrol
         * possible ideal scenario: known instance of a country 
uniformly blocking obfs4
         * https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/network-health/metrics/timeline
         * 
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/censorship-analysis/-/blob/main/reports/2020/belarus/2020-belarus-report.md
         * https://censorbib.nymity.ch/#Ramesh2023a Section 6.2
         * https://www.bamsoftware.com/papers/snowflake/#block-ru
         * "Analyzing China's Blocking of Unpublished Tor Bridges" 
https://censorbib.nymity.ch/#Dunna2018a 
https://groups.google.com/g/traffic-obf/c/-z0gzKONGtI

== Actions ==

== Interesting links ==


== 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): 2024-10-17
     Last week:
         - mostly afk
         - started iptproxy rewrite
     This week:
         - catch up on reviews and todos
         - finish iptproxy rewrite
         - finish snowflake dependency upgrades that were causing problems
         - take a look at snowflake web and webext translations and best 
practices
         - make changes to Lox encrypted bridge table
             - 
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/lox/-/merge_requests/147
     Needs help with:

dcf: 2024-10-17
     Last week:
         - snowflake azure CDN bookkeeping 
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/team/-/wikis/Snowflake-costs/diff?version_id=5d33569ceb4007547a830dfce129fb32287ecd9c
     Next week:
         - open issue to have snowflake-client log whenever KCPInErrors 
is nonzero 
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowflake/-/issues/40262#note_2886018
             - parent: 
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowflake/-/issues/40267
         - open issue to disable /debug endpoint on snowflake broker
Help with:
         - tell me when to restart the brokers for 
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowflake/-/issues/40349

meskio: 2024-10-17
     Last week:
         - plan the work on snowflake proxy packaging
         - distribute vanilla bridges in HTTPS (rdsys!420)
         - use lyrebird in obfs4-bridge docker image 
(docker-obfs4-bridge!16)
         - rotate internet archive gettor passwords after the breach 
(rdsys#241)
         - create a golang base container in our gitlab (tpa/base-images!32)
     Next week:
         - investigate if bridges are still jumping distributors (rdsys#232)



Shelikhoo: 2024-10-17
     Last Week:
          - [Next Action Pending] snowflake broker update/reinstall(cont.):
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowflake/-/issues/40349#note_3026336
          - [Awaiting Review] Unreliable+unordered WebRTC data channel 
transport for Snowflake rev2 (cont.)( 
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowflake/-/merge_requests/315 
) improvements
          - [Awaiting Input] Review CI: fix `latest` container image 
tag. 
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowflake/-/merge_requests/408#note_3089605
          - Setup vantage point cn-next-2 
(https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/connectivity-measurement/probeobserver/-/merge_requests/6)
          - Update probetest 
image(https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/connectivity-measurement/probeobserver/-/merge_requests/6)
             - Merge request reviews
     Next Week/TODO:
         - Merge request reviews
          - Unreliable+unordered WebRTC data channel transport for 
Snowflake rev2 (cont.) ( 
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowflake/-/merge_requests/315 
) improvements
          - Work on finishing snowflake container release(and fix the 
comments)
          - Work on Parpare DeploymentTool for Publishing 
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/connectivity-measurement/logcollector-admin/-/issues/9
         - Update vantage point image on cnnext, russia
onyinyang: 2024-10-17
     Last week(s):
         - continue troll-patrol integration for Lox bridge blockage 
detection
     Next week:
         - finish up exploratory and cursory troll-patrol integration 
for Lox bridge blockage detection
         - update lox protocols to return duplicate responses for an 
already seen request
         - implement and deploy test distributor
         - Work on outstanding milestone issues:
             in particular: 
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/lox/-/issues/69
             - key rotation automation

         Later:
         pending decision on abandoning lox wasm in favour of some kind 
of FFI? 
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser/-/issues/43096):
             - add pref to handle timing for pubkey checks in Tor browser
             - add trusted invitation logic to tor browser integration:
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser/-/issues/42974
         - improve metrics collection/think about how to show Lox is 
working/valuable
         - sketch out Lox blog post/usage notes for forum

     (long term things were discussed at the meeting!):
         - brainstorming grouping strategies for Lox buckets (of 
bridges) and gathering context on how types of bridges are 
distributed/use in practice
             Question: What makes a bridge usable for a given user, and 
how can we encode that to best ensure we're getting the most appropriate 
resources to people?
                 1. Are there some obvious grouping strategies that we 
can already consider?
                     e.g., by PT, by bandwidth (lower bandwidth bridges 
sacrificed to open-invitation buckets?), by locale (to be matched with a 
requesting user's geoip or something?)
                 2. Does it make sense to group 3 bridges/bucket, so 
trusted users have access to 3 bridges (and untrusted users have access 
to 1)? More? Less?

theodorsm: 2024-09-12
         Last weeks:
             -
         Next weeks:
             - Update Snowflake to use latest pion upstream releases, 
waiting for WebRTC v4 beta.
             - Test Snowflake fork with covert-dtls
             - Condensing thesis into paper
         Help with:
             - Feedback on thesis



Facilitator Queue:
         meskio onyinyang shelikhoo
1. First available staff in the Facilitator Queue will be the 
facilitator for the meeting
2. After facilitating the meeting, the facilitator will be moved to the 
tail of the queue

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