Hey everyone!
Here are our meeting logs:
#tor-meeting: tor anti-censorship meeting <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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THIS IS A 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 Sudden reduction in snowflake-01 bridge bandwidth, 2022-10-04 17:15 (#40207) · Issues · The Tor Project / Anti-censorship / Pluggable Transports / Snowflake · GitLab Tor censorship in Iran (#96) · Issues · The Tor Project / Anti-censorship / Team · GitLab
* shelikhoo will do a temporary reversion of the broker deployment of 2022-10-03 that rejected old proxies (Snowflake Broker Deployment 22-10-03 (#40193) · Issues · The Tor Project / Anti-censorship / Pluggable Transports / Snowflake · GitLab) 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
- Seperate extension strings from website strings to be translated (#63) · Issues · The Tor Project / Anti-censorship / Pluggable Transports / Snowflake WebExtension · GitLab
- progress on integrating conjure into tor browser
- Commits · conjure · Cecylia Bocovich / tor-browser-build · GitLab
- 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 Upgrade memory capacity of broker VPS (#40202) · Issues · The Tor Project / Anti-censorship / Pluggable Transports / Snowflake · GitLab
- posted a request for snowflake-client logs and communicated the results Unexplained drop in Snowflake client polls and bandwidth, testers wanted · Issue #131 · net4people/bbs · GitHub Tor censorship in Iran (#96) · Issues · The Tor Project / Anti-censorship / Team · GitLab
- archived snowflake-webext-0.6.3 Snowflake WebExtension 0.6.3 : The Tor Project : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
- suggested a way to include pion log messages in the snowflake-client and proxy logs sctp errors don't go into the log (#40204) · Issues · The Tor Project / Anti-censorship / Pluggable Transports / Snowflake · GitLab
- checked the TLS fingerprint of Orbot on Android, found it to be the same as Tor Browser on Linux Tor censorship in Iran (#96) · Issues · The Tor Project / Anti-censorship / Team · GitLab
- reviewed a `go fmt` merge request Reform Code to Fix CI's Debian Target Breakage (!104) · Merge requests · The Tor Project / Anti-censorship / Pluggable Transports / Snowflake · GitLab
- posted a research idea to calibrate user counts in metrics graphs Show an aggressive user count estimate alongside our conservative user count estimate (#40009) · Issues · The Tor Project / Network Health / Metrics / Website · GitLab
- opened an issue for confusing code structure in the proxy Remove the pollInterval loop from SignalingServer.pollOffer in the standalone proxy (#40210) · Issues · The Tor Project / Anti-censorship / Pluggable Transports / Snowflake · GitLab
Next week:
- disable non-WireGuard SSH access to snowflake-02
- migrate goptlib to gitlab migrate away from git.torproject.org (#86) · Issues · The Tor Project / Anti-censorship / Team · GitLab
- try Conjure PT development version [tor-dev] Introducing a Conjure PT for Tor
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 Add HTTPT as a pluggable transport to Tor Browser (#1) · Issues · The Tor Project / Anti-censorship / Pluggable Transports / HTTPT · GitLab
- [Research] Generate Charts for presention: Prepare for s28 PI and ECP presentations: Oct 31 and Nov 1-2 2022 (#92) · Issues · The Tor Project / Anti-censorship / Team · GitLab
- [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: Prepare for s28 PI and ECP presentations: Oct 31 and Nov 1-2 2022 (#92) · Issues · The Tor Project / Anti-censorship / Team · GitLab (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)