[tor-project] Anti-censorship team meeting notes, 2023-08-10

Hey everyone!

Here are our meeting logs:
http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2023/tor-meeting.2023-08-10-15.57.html

And our meeting pad:

Anti-censorship

···

--------------------------------

Next meeting: Thursday, Aug 17 16:00 UTC
Facilitator: meskio

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: Development · Boards · Anti-censorship · GitLab
  * The anti-censorship team's wiki page:
    * Home · Wiki · The Tor Project / Anti-censorship / Team · GitLab
  * Past meeting notes can be found at:
    * The tor-project Archives
  * Tickets that need reviews: from sponsors, we are working on:
    * All needs review tickets:
      * Merge requests · Anti-censorship · GitLab
    * Sponsor 96 <-- meskio, shell, onyinyang, cohosh
      * Sponsor 96: Rapid Expansion of Access to the Uncensored Internet through Tor in China, Hong Kong, & Tibet · The Tor Project · GitLab
    * Sponsor 139 <-- hackerncoder, irl, joydeep, meskio, emmapeel working on it
      * Riseup Pad

== Announcements ==

  * Webtunnel documentation in the community portal:
    * Tor Project | WebTunnel Bridge

== Discussion ==

  * HTTP CONNECT and MASQUE for the future of PTs
    * HTTP based PT protocol (#130) · Issues · The Tor Project / Anti-censorship / Team · GitLab
    * coordination with other PT teams?
      * GitHub - Pluggable-Transports/Pluggable-Transports-spec: This is a repository to track issues and suggestions to the Pluggable Transports spec
      * GitHub - twisteroidambassador/ptadapter: Pluggable Transports Python interface & standalone tunnels
      * Mattermost

== Actions ==

  * Next week (August 10th): follow up on Snowflake/Pion incompatibility with Android 11+ and SDK >29) when Guardian project responds and shelikhoo returns:
    * Snowflake failed to connect on Android 11 and above (#40278) · Issues · The Tor Project / Anti-censorship / Pluggable Transports / Snowflake · GitLab
    * might only affect android apps that target android>11, but google will start requiring it soon (end of August 2023)
      * Target API level requirements for Google Play apps - Play Console Help
    * Issue on pion side, closed as wontfix: Calling net.Interfaces() on Android 30+ results in selinux errors · Issue #228 · pion/transport · GitHub
    * we ought to be up to date with dependencies, as renovatebot is connected to the snowflake repo
    * meskio will cc Guardian Project on #40278 to see if they have any insight
    * shelikhoo will try to reproduce and will try the available patches
      * no news 2023-08-03

== 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): away until 2023-08-17
  Last week:
  This week:
  Needs help with:

dcf: 2023-08-10
  Last week:
    - contributed some review to STATUS TYPE=version for server pluggable transports in core tor Add support for PT STATUS TYPE=version messages. (!731) · Merge requests · The Tor Project / Core / Tor · GitLab
    - reviewed STATUS TYPE=version in goptlib Add STATUS version support (!1) · Merge requests · The Tor Project / Anti-censorship / Pluggable Transports / goptlib · GitLab
    - did more investigation of past snowflake blocking in Turkmenistan, particularly the rise an fall in users from May to August 2022 Blocking of Snowflake in Turkmenistan, 2021-10-24 (#40024) · Issues · The Tor Project / Anti-censorship / censorship-analysis · GitLab
  Next week:
    - merge goptlib STATUS TYPE=version Add STATUS version support (!1) · Merge requests · The Tor Project / Anti-censorship / Pluggable Transports / goptlib · GitLab
    - revise encapsulation.ReadData redesign to return an error in the case of a short buffer Have encapsulation.ReadData read into a provided buffer (!154) · Merge requests · The Tor Project / Anti-censorship / Pluggable Transports / Snowflake · GitLab
    - open issue to have snowflake-client log whenever KCPInErrors is nonzero Deploy snowflake-server for QueuePacketConn buffer reuse fix (#40260) (#40262) · Issues · The Tor Project / Anti-censorship / Pluggable Transports / Snowflake · GitLab
      - parent: Improve bug discovery process (#40267) · Issues · The Tor Project / Anti-censorship / Pluggable Transports / Snowflake · GitLab
    - open issue to disable /debug endpoint on snowflake broker
  Help with:

meskio: 2023-08-10
   Last week:
    - review webtunnel documentation for the community portal (web/community!310)
    - fix snowflake release CI (snowflake!157)
    - create an issue to discuss HTTP CONNECT and MASQUE for the future of PTs (team#130)
    - lox reviews (lox-rs!22 lox-rs!20)
   Next week:
    - be AFK at CCCamp
    
Shelikhoo: 2023-07-27
   Last Week:
    - [Merge Request Awaiting] Add SOCKS5 forward proxy support to snowflake (snowflake!64) (stalled)
    - [Research] HTTPT Planning Add HTTPT as a pluggable transport to Tor Browser (#1) · Issues · The Tor Project / Anti-censorship / Pluggable Transports / HTTPT · GitLab
    - logcollector alert system - ongoing
    - Reviewing & comment on merge requests
    - FOCI Keynote and attendence
   Next Week/TODO:
    - logcollector alert system <- immediate todo

onyinyang: 2023-08-03
  Last week(s):
    - Implemented db
      - decided against polodb and went for sled instead
      Adding db to persist lox-context json files (!22) · Merge requests · The Tor Project / Anti-censorship / lox-rs · GitLab
      - not sure if reading/writing the lox-context to json should still be supported at all or just removed
     - Implemented and tested a basic k-invites for open entry distribution
       Distribute Open invitations to K users (!20) · Merge requests · The Tor Project / Anti-censorship / lox-rs · GitLab
    - Thought more deeply about how best to sync Lox with rdsys given Change labelling of resources failing tests from `gone` (#168) · Issues · The Tor Project / Anti-censorship / rdsys · GitLab
      - the rdsys API is really not designed for a distributor like Lox that needs persistence. Even a lastPassed flag will only be helpful for `gone` resources if Lox stores all of the resource info from rdsys and checks it regularly. This diverges from the original intention of rdsys, in which rdsys should be the 'arbiter of truth' for the status of resources
      - The next step is to check the rdsys API and see if the get functionality can improve this situation. I think ideally we want a list of all resources assigned to Lox and their current statuses that can then be checked against something like the `lastPassed` flag each time Lox polls rdsys.
  This week:
    - Continue with implementing db and synchronization between Lox/rdsys (possibly reliant on some aspects of the former point)
    - Work on adding metrics
    - AFK from August 5 - 21!
  (long term things were discussed at the meeting!):
       Riseup Pad
      - 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?

Itchy Onion: 2023-06-08
    Last week:
    - fixed snowflake pipeline due to outdated Debian image
    - continue working on rdsys#56 implementation. Still need to do the following:
      - finish up computing bridge distribution in Kraken
       - does it have to be deterministic?
       - does the disproportion have to be strictly followed
     - finish writing tests
     - refactor code because some functions are getting extremely long
     - what to do with stencil package?
    This week:
    - review MRs
    - continue working on rdsys#56 implementation. Still need to do the following:
    - fixed a problem with vanilla bridges not being added properly to the database
    - still working on tests
    - adding a migaration patch (Consider persistent storage of bridge information (#56) · Issues · The Tor Project / Anti-censorship / rdsys · GitLab)

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

1 Like