Author: mikeperry Date: 2014-03-07 20:54:50 +0000 (Fri, 07 Mar 2014) New Revision: 26643

Modified: website/trunk/getinvolved/en/volunteer.wml Log: Improve Panopticlick project description.

Modified: website/trunk/getinvolved/en/volunteer.wml =================================================================== --- website/trunk/getinvolved/en/volunteer.wml 2014-03-07 16:15:03 UTC (rev 26642) +++ website/trunk/getinvolved/en/volunteer.wml 2014-03-07 20:54:50 UTC (rev 26643) @@ -1716,22 +1716,54 @@ <br> Skill Level: <i>Medium</i> <br> - Likely Mentors: <i>Georg (GeKo)</i> + Likely Mentors: <i>Georg (GeKo)</i>, <i>Mike Perry</i>, <i>Nicolas Vigier</i> <p> -Tor Browser users are often complaining about their browser fingerprint -being not as good as it should according to the <a -href="https://panopticlick.eff.org%22%3EPanopticlick of the EFF</a>. To fix -that the student should develop an own <a -href="https://panopticlick.eff.org/browser-uniqueness.pdf%22%3EPanopticlick</a> -instance which performs, in a first step, basic tests estimating the -uniformity among Tor Browser Bundle users. The user should get -feedback on how she performed and the test results should be available -in a machine readable format (e.g. JSON). In a second step one could -think about adding more sophisticated tests or <a -href="https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/6119#comment:1%22%3Esupporti... -other browser vendors</a> that might want to test the uniformity amongst -their userbase as well. + +The <a href="https://panopticlick.eff.org">Panopticlick project by the EFF</a> +revolutionized how people think about <a +href="https://panopticlick.eff.org/browser-uniqueness.pdf%22%3Ebrowser +fingerprinting</a>, both by developing tests and metrics to measure browser +fingerprintability, and by crowdsourcing the evaluation and contribution of +individual browser features to overall fingerprintability. + </p> + <p> + +Unfortunately, the way Panopticlick is designed <a +href="https://blog.torproject.org/blog/effs-panopticlick-and-torbutton%22%3Emakes +it difficult</a> to evaluate defenses to browser fingerprinting, especially +for browsers with a relatively small userbase such as Tor Browser. This is +because any approach we take to reduce fingerprinting automatically makes our +users more distinct from the previous users who submitted their fingerprint +data to the EFF. Indeed, it is also impossible to ever expect that users of +one browser will ever be able to blend in with users of another browser +(Chrome users will always be distinguishable from Firefox users for example, +based on feature set alone). + + </p> + <p> + +To address this, we would like to have <a +href=">https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/6119%22%3Eour own +fingerprint test suite</a> to evaluate the fingerprintability of each browser +feature for users running a specific Tor Browser version. There are also <a +href="https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/query?keywords=~tbb-fingerprinting%... +fingerprinting tests</a> we can add beyond those deployed by Panopticlick. + </p> + <p> + +For this project, the student would develop a website that users can +voluntarily visit to test and record their Tor Browser fingerprint. The user +should get feedback on how she performed and the test results should be +available in a machine readable format (e.g. JSON), broken down by Tor Browser +version. In a second step one could think about adding more sophisticated +tests or supporting other browser vendors that might want to test the +uniformity amongst their userbase as well. Of course, results from each +browser would also need to be broken down by both browser implementation and +version, so that results would only reflect the population of that specific +implementation. + + </p> </li>

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