[tor-talk] meek-google suspended for terms of service violations (how to set up your own)

[David Fifield]

On Wed, Jun 01, 2016 at 06:32:27PM -0700, David Fifield wrote:
> meek-google has not been working since May 13, 2016. It is not because
> censors figured out how to block it, but because Google Cloud Platform
> suspended the reflector web application (https://meek-reflect.appspot.com/).
> 
> The reason given is:
> 	Your project is being suspended for committing a general terms of service violation.
> However, I have not been able to find out any greater level of detail,
> not get a response of any kind from Google Cloud Platform. There is a
> form to submit an appeal, which I have tried many times to no avail. (It
> says, "You will receive a response within 2 business days.") I wrote to
> the google-cloud-compliance at google.com email address and similarly got
> no reply.
> 
> I will continue to try to find out what's going on. As it is, though, I
> don't know anything even about the nature of the presumed violation.

I managed to get a little clarity on the situation. There was a botnet
using Tor and meek-google for command communication. The Google Cloud
Platform operators shut it down because of that.

Your alternative options are to switch to meek-azure or meek-amazon, or
(even better) to set up your own App Engine app and configure your Tor
Browser to use it, which will be faster for you and save us money. Here
is how to set up your own app.

Go to the Cloud Platform Console and log in (you can use a gmail.com
account).
	https://console.cloud.google.com/project
Create a new project. The project ID determines the URL where the app
will live. For example, if you choose "myproject", then the app will be
at https://myproject.appspot.com/.

Download the meek source code. The code you need is in the "appengine"
directory.
	git clone https://gitweb.torproject.org/pluggable-transports/meek.git
	cd appengine
If you don't have Git, you can manually download the two files you need:
	https://gitweb.torproject.org/pluggable-transports/meek.git/plain/appengine/app.yaml
	https://gitweb.torproject.org/pluggable-transports/meek.git/plain/appengine/reflect.go

Download the App Engine SDK. It has the "goapp" program you need to
upload the project.
	https://cloud.google.com/appengine/downloads#Google_App_Engine_SDK_for_Go
To upload the project, run
	go_appengine/goapp deploy -application myproject
(Replace "myproject" with your own project ID.) It will probably ask you
to re-enter your Google password. If it works, you can go to
https://myproject.appspot.com/ and see the message "I’m just a happy
little web server."

Finally, in Tor Browser, click the onion icon and then "Tor Network
Settings...". Check the box for "My Internet Service Provider (ISP)
blocks connections to the Tor network, then click "Enter custom
bridges". In the box, enter this line (replace "myproject" with your
project ID):
	bridge meek 0.0.2.0:1 url=https://myproject.appspot.com/ front=www.google.com
Then restart Tor Browser.