[tor-relays] Next Tor Relay Operator Meetup - 2024-01-27 @ 19:00 UTC

Mon Feb 12 16:20:33 UTC 2024

Hi,

bridges added,
democracy and elections indonesia
where do we send the fingerprints to for readiness?.

On 06.02.2024 20:15, gus wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> Thanks everyone for joining the Tor Relay Operator Meetup on January.
> 
> Our next meetup will happen on **March 2nd** at 1900 UTC.
> I'll send an invitation to the mailing list and collect topics for the
> agenda.
> 
> cheers,
> Gus
> 
> # Notes - Relay Operator Meetup - January, 27th, 2024
> 
> ## Announcements
> 
> * EOL 0.4.7.x removal
> 
> Tor 0.4.7.x is approaching the end-of-life (EOL). In February, The
> Network Health and Community teams will start the usual work to
> contact operators to upgrade.
> If you're running a relay or a bridge, please upgrade.
> 
> - Announcement:
> https://forum.torproject.org/t/tor-relays-psa-tor-0-4-7-reaches-end-of-life-eol-on-2024-01-31/11157
> - Metrics: Relays running 0.4.7.x:
> https://metrics.torproject.org/rs.html#aggregate/version
> - We will track 0.4.7.x removal here:
> https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/network-health/team/-/issues/344
> - Relay EOL Policy:Hi
> https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/network-health/team/-/wikis/Relay-EOL-policy
> 
> * Tor University Challenge update - https://toruniversity.eff.org/
> 
> EFF video: https://mastodon.social/@eff/111881185422639945
> 
> Two further links for those who want to keep informed:
> -
> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/11/tor-university-challenge-first-semester-report-card
> - https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/community/outreach/-/issues/40054
> 
> Next step, we just got accepted to do a presentation at TNC, which is
> the annual NREN conference in Europe.
> We will present in June alongside Switch, the Swiss NREN.
> 
> Q: Who's a good person to contact at a university?
> A: Good people to reach at universities are (a) professors, (b)
> librarians and (c) student security clubs. See also
> https://toruniversity.eff.org/students/
> 
> ## Tor Relay Operator Community Policies
> 
> We launched a new website with the Tor Project Community Policies and
> we have a section for Tor Relay Operators Policies.
> Check out: https://community.torproject.org/policies/
> 
> ### 001 - Process for new policies for relay operators
> 
> Last year we wrote a meta proposal:
> https://community.torproject.org/policies/relays/001-community-relay-operator-process/
> It explains how to submit a proposal of policy to the relay operators 
> community.
> 
> Basically, it's a three steps process:
>  - Step 1: Submit your draft following the meta proposal format.
>  - Step 2: Discussion and consensus
>  - Step 3: Policy and Implementation
> 
> Example: Restrict contact information field to email address (and make
> it mandatory):
> https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/community/policies/-/issues/17
> Discussion:
> https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-relays/2023-October/021358.html
> 
> ## Upcoming elections in 2024 and online censorship
> 
> - 2024: the year of Democracy! :)
> 
> More than 65 elections happening this year (General, Presidential,
> Prime Minister, National Assembly, local elections…).
> We wrote a blog post "Defend Internet Freedom with Tor in 2024
> elections season":
> https://blog.torproject.org/2024-defend-internet-freedom-during-elections/
> 
> It would be great if you could run bridges and Tor Snowflake during
> the whole year, however, if you don't have enough resources, running a
> bridge the week before the elections of these countries can help many
> users to circumvent censorship.
> 
>  - Azerbaijan (7th February):
> https://ooni.org/post/2023-azerbaijan-internet-censorship/
>  - Pakistan (8th February):
> https://ooni.org/post/2023-pakistan-blocks-wikipedia-and-dw/
>  - Indonesia (14th February): 
> https://github.com/net4people/bbs/issues/316
>  - Belarus (25th February): https://github.com/net4people/bbs/issues/72
>  - Cambodia and Senegal (25th February)
>  - Iran (1st March)
>  - Russia (17th March)
>  - India (April, TBA)
>  - Elections (partial list):
> https://gitlab.torproject.org/-/snippets/196 or
> https://www.accessnow.org/campaign/2024-elections-and-internet-shutdowns-watch/
> 
> - Tor Bridge guides: obfs4:
> https://community.torproject.org/relay/setup/bridge/
> - WebTunnel bridge: 
> https://community.torproject.org/relay/setup/webtunnel/
> - Snowflake standalone guides (Debian, Docker, FreeBSD, compile from
> source): https://community.torproject.org/relay/setup/snowflake/
> - Script made by Emerald Onion to manage obfs4 bridges:
> https://github.com/emeraldonion/bridge-management
> 
> Related, the video for Roger's CCC talk is now published:
> https://media.ccc.de/v/37c3-12040-tor_censorship_attempts_in_russia_iran_turkmenistan
> Or YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5ZiBYR-1MM
> 
> ## Status of ddos (Network Health / Network Team)
> 
> See: https://forum.torproject.org/t/new-kind-of-attack/11122
> 
> Q: Is there a profile available yet on DOS targeted relays (guard/exit
> status) and whether they are losing particular flags? Also any timing
> information?
> A: No (to both) --GeKo
> 
> ## Tor Metrics issues (wrong first seen date)
> 
> Surprise bug in the metrics portal where it is assigning the wrong
> 'first seen' date to relays.
> https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/network-health/metrics/relay-search/-/issues/40024
> We hope to get it fixed next week. It's not doing damage except for
> all of the alarm and irritation and confusion it is generating.
> 
> ## Upcoming torservers.net meetup for non-profits running relays.
> 
> Contact Stefan Leibi [stefan at torservers.net] if you are running a
> non-profit and have not been contacted by me today.
> 
> ## Tor Q&A
> 
> * Q: Who decides who is a [Directory
> Authority](https://metrics.torproject.org/rs.html#search/flag:authority)?
> 
> The current directory authorities decide by consensus. One challenge
> with adding more directory authorities is that the coordination work
> to add or remove one scales poorly with more of them, so while in
> theory we want a bunch because of improved trust, in practice 10 or so
> is the limit. (Performance bottlenecks are mostly resolved by the
> 'fallbackdir' design, so now it's only a trust question, not a
> bandwidth question mostly.)
> 
> * Q: Who is currently running an authority and why do we trust them?
> 
> You can see the current list at
> https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/core/tor/-/blob/main/src/app/config/auth_dirs.inc?ref_type=heads
> -- this is a list of IPs. The question is who is operating the relays?
> Yep! There are eight v3 directory authority operators currently:
> Roger, weasel, sebastian, alex, linus, andreas, stefani, micah. We
> don't hide the list, but also we haven't been good on docs at that
> level. Better to find us at a Tor dev meeting / hacker conference and
> meet us in person! See also
> https://support.torproject.org/about/key-management/ for a related
> question.
> 
> * Q: Who choose the current operators?
> 
> We have accumulated them over the past two decades, using the
> cypherpunks / remailer community as the initial trust root.
> As for 'why do we trust them', trust is a complicated topic, so the
> first thought is, trust them to do what? Their hourly votes are public
> and archived at https://collector.torproject.org/
> 
> 
> * Q: What's the status of bandwidth scanners?
> 
>  They are running and doing their job. All bandwidth authorities
> switched over from TorFlow to sbws; we plan to replace that with
> onbasca at some point.
> 
> * Q: What happened with FlashFlow? (prop316)
> https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/core/torspec/-/blob/main/proposals/316-flashflow.md
> 
>> ahf (who cannot make this meeting): there was an unfinished 
>> implementation of this, but we did not think it was worthwhile to 
>> finish due to its complexity and because of improvements in the 
>> general bw scanning space thanks to sbws. We may want to look into 
>> this again in the future.
> 
> * Q: Could relays be explicitly recommended to use common TCP ports
> for their ORPort (such as 21 and 8080) instead of 9001 in case 443
> isn't available? For instance, my university blocks TCP on most ports
> but 21 and 8080 are still open.
> A: Interesting! Because most places that filter ports leave 443 open.
> 
> * Q: With the massive amount of snowflake proxies available, it seems
> like IP blocks would be much harder to achieve. Is there any plan to
> possibly recommend that users use snowflake over obfs4?
> A: snowflake is already automatically recommended to users in some
> countries when they start Tor Browser ("Connection Assist" feature)
> and Orbot ("smart connect")
> https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/rdsys-admin/-/blob/main/conf/circumvention.json
> 
> * Q: please update the snowflake package in debian
> Related:
> https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowflake/-/issues/40105
> 
> If you want to run snowflake proxies at scale we wrote a guide on how
> to do it with Ansible (scroll a bit down)
> https://unredacted.org/guides/infrastructure/tor/how-to-run-your-own-tor-snowflake-proxy/#run-a-snowflake-proxy-on-a-linux-server
> 
> * Q: At DFRI (dfri.se) we are running some exit relays. Recently we
> had an idea that maybe we would try to apply for funding for a project
> that would be something like "managing a secure and sustainable tor
> exit relay setup using Debian, Tor, ansible, git, gpg, and so on". Now
> we are wondering if others have thoughts on this idea and if anyone
> here would be interesting in participating in such a project. Who
> should fund this? The idea is to apply for money from something like
> the "Open Tech Fund" (https://www.opentech.fund/) or similar.
> 
> A: Yes, this sounds great! Two thoughts: (a) coordinate with Leibi on
> the torservers.net coalitions, and (b) OTF is the place everybody goes
> for every funding idea, so they are often overloaded with proposals
> these days.
> A: One thing this relay community would love and needs more of is
> workshops. Can you run a workshop for the relay operator community on
> how to scalably run these relays?
> 
> Q: Tor Browser doesn't work to bootstrap on an IPv6-only network. I
> think Tor is trying the ipv4 for each of its fallbackdirs and those
> don't work. If anybody lives in IPv6-only land, please help us
> diagnose and fix!
> 
> Q: When will the next online meetup be? Suggestion: Always announce
> the next meeting date at the current meetup so that we have these
> meetups on a regular basis. :-)
> (and please link or include the previous notes, for people who missed
> the meeting)
> A: Many Tor people will be at FOSDEM. We could have an in-person
> meetup! Let us know if you want to help organize that.
> A: We will have the next online meetup March 2nd, @ 19 UTC
> 
> 
> On Fri, Jan 26, 2024 at 05:13:48PM -0300, gus wrote:
>> Hi,
>> 
>> Just a friendly reminder that we're meeting this Saturday, January
>> 27th at 19 UTC.
>> 
>> Meetup Agenda
>> -------------
>> 
>>  * EOL 0.4.7.x removal
>>  * Tor University Challenge update https://toruniversity.eff.org/
>>  * Community Policies site: https://community.torproject.org/policies/
>>  * 001 - Process for new policies for relay operators
>>  * Upcoming elections in 2024 and online censorship
>>  * Status of DDoS
>>  * Tor Metrics issues (wrong first seen date)
>>  * Tor Q&A
>> 
>> Room link: https://tor.meet.coop/gus-og0-x74-dzn
>> 
>> cheers,
>> Gus
>> 
>> On Wed, Jan 17, 2024 at 02:11:11PM -0300, gus wrote:
>> > Dear Tor relay operators and volunteers,
>> >
>> > Save the date: the next Tor Relay Operator Meetup will happen on
>> > Saturday, January 27 at 19 UTC!
>> >
>> > We're still working on the agenda for this meetup, however feel free to
>> > add your topics directly to the ticket or just reply to the mailing list:
>> > https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/community/relays/-/issues/84
>> >
>> > Where:
>> > Room link: https://tor.meet.coop/gus-og0-x74-dzn
>> > When: January 27, 19:00 UTC
>> >
>> > Tor Code of Conduct:
>> > https://community.torproject.org/policies/code_of_conduct/
>> >
>> > Registration
>> > No need for a registration or anything else, just use the
>> > room-linkabove. We will open the room 10 minutes before so you can test
>> > your mic setup.
>> >
>> > Please share with your friends, social media and other mailing lists!
>> >
>> > cheers,
>> > Gus
>> > --
>> > The Tor Project
>> > Community Team Lead
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> --
>> The Tor Project
>> Community Team Lead
> 
> 
> 
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