[tor-project] Anti-censorship team meeting notes, 2024-02-08

Here are our meeting logs:
http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2024/tor-meeting.2024-02-08-15.59.html

And our meeting pad: Riseup Pad

Anti-censorship

···

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

Next meeting: Thursday, February1516:00 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: onyinyang

== 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
    <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 150 <-- meskio working on it

  * Issues · Anti-censorship · GitLab

== Announcements ==

  * PSA: Elections in Pakistan Today!.

== Discussion ==

  * Internet outage in PK:

  * https://twitter.com/CloudflareRadar/status/1755435530873888990

  * > Disruptions to #mobile #Internet connectivity in #Pakistan have
    been observed on @telenorpakistan, @Zongers, and @jazzpk starting at
    0200 UTC, despite assurances from @PTAofficialpk that mobile
    services would remain active on Election Day, February 8.
    https://radar.cloudflare.com/pk?dateRange=1d

  * OONI Explorer - Pakistan blocked PTI political party sites and investigative news platform ahead of 2024 elections

  * Elections in Azerbaijan yesterday, connectivity status unknown

  * Reachability of Censorship Circumvention Tools
    <Reachability of Censorship Circumvention Tools;

  * Elections in Senegal earlier this week with Internet shutdown

  * Elections postponed to December 2024, Internet connection restored

  *

== Actions ==

== Interesting links ==

  * TorKameleon appeared at TrustCom/ITCCN 2023

  * [2303.17544] TorKameleon: Improving Tor's Censorship Resistance with K-anonymization and Media-based Covert Channels

  * https://hpcn.exeter.ac.uk/trustcom2023/accepted-paper-list.phpITCCN-456

  * Uses WebRTC data channels with Encoded Transforms, as discussed at
    [anti-censorship-team] WebRTC Encoded Transform (or Insertable Streams) for media channels in Snowflake?

  * GitHub - AfonsoVilalonga/TorKameleon: A Tor Pluggable Transport that shields Tor users from passive and active correlation attacks by employing WebRTC-based covert channels and K-anonymization.

  * Previously discussed at 2023-10-19 meeting
    [tor-project] Anti-censorship team meeting notes, 2023-10-19

  * FOCI registration is open (attendance is free):
    https://foci.community/register

  * February 19th

== 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): 2024-02-08

  * Last week:

  * - merged and deployed update to circumvention settings for Egypt

  * -
    Add Snowflake and change bridge priority in EG (!24) · Merge requests · The Tor Project / Anti-censorship / rdsys-admin · GitLab

  * - opened issue for snowflake update in Tor Browser build

  * -
    Bump version of Snowflake to v2.9.0 (#41079) · Issues · The Tor Project / Applications / tor-browser-build · GitLab

  * This week:

  * - create tor-browser-build MR for snowflake version bump

  * - update snowflake web[site, extension] translations

  * - update wasm-bindgen fork to fix some bugs and hopefully
    upstream changes

  * - tor-browser-build updates for lox wasm + bindings generation

  * - rebase and try out manifest v3 patch

  * - Conjure bridge maintenance

  * Needs help with:

dcf: 2024-02-08

  * Last week:

  * - reconfirmed eclips.is account(where the snowflake broker is hosted)

  * - "You have EUR 184.1 per month value of resources in use. If
    eclips.is were to transition to a (partly) paid service, would you
    be able to cover these costs from your own resources?"

  * Next week:

  * - review draft MR for unreliable data channels
    Draft: Unreliable+unordered WebRTC data channel transport for Snowflake (!219) · 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

  * - move snowflake-02 to new VM

Help with:

meskio: 2023-12-21
Last week:
- grant writing
Next week:

Shelikhoo: 2024-02-08
Last Week:

  * - HTTPS distributors in rdsys:
    Implement HTTPS distributor with comparable feature set to bridgedb implementation (#191) · Issues · The Tor Project / Anti-censorship / rdsys · GitLab

  * - Merge request reviews

 Next Week/TODO:

  * - HTTPS distributors in rdsys:
    Implement HTTPS distributor with comparable feature set to bridgedb implementation (#191) · Issues · The Tor Project / Anti-censorship / rdsys · GitLab

  * - Create Issue for "Merging webtunnel + lyrebird"

  * - Update WebTunnel Container Image

  * - Inspect Snowflake Situation In China

onyinyang: 2023-02-08

  * Last week(s):

  * - Continuing with bug fixing the syncing function, nearly finished

  *

  * This week:

  * - Finish up fixingproblemswith syncing functions

  * -Make Lox invitation endpoint only accessible via telegram

  * - attempt hyper upgrade again

  *

  * (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?

  *

theodorsm: 2023-01-11

  * Last weeks:

  * - Currently in the start phase of writing my master thesis (to be
    finished late june 2024) in communication technology on reducing
    distinguishability of DTLS. The goal is to implement a validated
    DTLS anti-fingerprinting library similar to uTLS (useful for Snowflake).

  * Next weeks:

  * - Talk with Sean DuBois about contributing to adding
    anti-fingerprinting capabilities to the pion library

  * Help with:

  * - Find recent data set of captured DTLS traffic

--
---
onyinyang

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