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Status report - HTTP pluggable transport
by Chang Lan 30 Jun '13

30 Jun '13

Hi there, During the first two weeks of my GSoC project, I have implemented a HTTP CONNECT-based pluggable transport. In short, I use HTTP CONNECT semantics to establish a secure channel between the client and the bridge. Specifically, this is the scenario: 1. Connection establishment: +------------------------------+ |CONNECT bridge_ip:443 HTTP/1.0| |User-agent: blablabla | +------------------------------+ | | +----------+ | +----------+ +----------+ | client |----->| proxy |----->| bridge | +----------+ +----------+ | +----------+ | | +------------------------------+ | (Establish a connection) | +------------------------------+ 2. Data relay +------------------------------+ | (Encrypted Payload) | +------------------------------+ | | +----------+ | +----------+ +----------+ | client |<----->| proxy |<----->| bridge | +----------+ +----------+ | +----------+ | | +------------------------------+ | (Encrypted Payload) | +------------------------------+ I hope the diagrams above are self-explanatory. It is only my initial attempt to get familiar with HTTP protocol. Once I make sure it is working correctly under squid proxy I will upload it to the repository. The use of CONNECT method is restricted in many networks, so it is better to implement the HTTP transport using the usual HTTP methods as POST, GET, etc. In the next stage, I plan to implement a new HTTP transport based on BOSH[1]. There are many issues to care about (in order of priority): * bi-directional data transfer over HTTP * proxy cache * HTTP request/response encoding * encryption * scanning resistance Have a nice weekend! [1]: http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0124.html Best, Chang Sent from my mobile device. Sorry for the brevity.

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Re: [tor-dev] Gitian builds in VirtualBox with Vagrant
by Arlo Breault 29 Jun '13

29 Jun '13

> This is rather exciting. Do you think that this method can be adapted to > build the pluggable transports bundles? Yes. I originally started working on this so I could submit a patch to include the tor-fw-helper in the TBB. But since the helper is only needed in the PT bundles, reworking their build process seems the more productive route. I'll see what I can do. > This is currently done > semi-manually, with a makefile that builds the pluggable transports, > unzips the bundle, copies in some files, and re-zips the bundle. > > https://gitweb.torproject.org/pluggable-transports/bundle.git/blob/HEAD:/Ma… > > We also have instructions for setting up a build VM from scratch--which > it sounds like is what Vagrant does--but I guess we would instead use > whatever is the build machine for the vanilla bundle. > > https://gitweb.torproject.org/pluggable-transports/bundle.git/blob/HEAD:/Ma… > > It would solve a lot of problems for us to have the PT bundles built at > the same place and time as the vanilla bundles.

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Vidalia 2.0 - an complete rewrite
by [REDACTED] 28 Jun '13

28 Jun '13

Hey friends, i want to inform you that i am working on a complete new control tool for Tor. I know some people use Vidalia for it, but i never liked the program and the people i showed vidalia often got confused. So i started to rewrite it from scratch and i am close to the release of the source code. (Currently i need to clean up some classes in there) I had a few things on my feature list for the new control tool and i want to share/discuss it with you. Because maybe some of my ideas are bad or maybe you have some additional ideas for features. A: "native work flow". Thats one of the main goals of my rewrite. The current Vidalia does things a little bit different than people are used to do it. So they get confused, because it does not behave "naturally". So instead of QT i used GTK and followed as always the GNOME HIG. (http://developer.gnome.org/hig-book/3.5/) B: "Multi configuration setup". What do i mean by that? Well, in my case for example i use Tor on my laptop and i am often in different places where i need different settings for tor. For example, if i am at home i can give tor all the bandwith i have, because at home i don't care. In my company on the other hand i cant do that. I am allowed to run Tor in the company, but with a bandwith limit of 2000kbit/s. (Yes, my company allows this ... well, i am the technical directory, so it was my call :) ) But i need a different Tor configuration there. Or if i am giving a talk and only have mobile internet connections i need every bit of bandwith for checking my emails so i want no server, only Tor client support. Currently i have multiple torrc files for that and always move them arround. That works for command line junkies like me, but even i am anoyed to do this multiple times a day. So i added the "multi configuration" support into the tool. This allows you to define multiple configurations and simply change them with a click from the gnome2 notification panel. C: "GUI for config settings". Well, some users are simply not ready to modify config files on there own. So i provide a simple gui (tab based) for all config options i found in the normal torrc file. Always with an explonation (with needs spellchecking, because my spelling sucks in german and is even worse in english :) ) so the user can deside what an option would to. D: "Notifications": My control tool uses the normal desktop notifications to inform the user about changes in the running tor application. For example if there is a problem building the circuit or something you get the notifyd message and can simply react to events without having the arm log open all the time. Thats just a quick overview of what i am duing right now. The source code will be released soon and is of course 100% open source. If you have some addiional ideas, feedback, wishes, ... i would like to hear them. Thanks and greetings PS: I am Germam and very sorry for every spelling error i did above. -- [REDACTED] [REDACTED] Send with Mozilla Thunderbird on Linux (Debian)

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Status Report - Steganography browser addon a GSOC 2013 project
by Hareesan 28 Jun '13

28 Jun '13

Hi all, In the first 4 weeks of my GSOC project steganography browser add-on, I have implemented the basic UI parts in first two weeks, and later I spent more time on web content downloading part. Up to now, I have finished downloading image and get them as bytes. Now when you right click on an image and click on test button, you will be getting the byte format of image which can be used with steganography algorithms to write messages. Since I'm mainly concentrating on features rather than algorithms now, my plan for next 2 week is to extend the file downloading for video and sound files. You can find the source code under git repository [1]. [1] https://github.com/rharishan/Steganography-Browser/ -- Hareesan

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Re: [tor-dev] Torsocks development status
by David Goulet 27 Jun '13

27 Jun '13

Ian Goldberg: > On Wed, Jun 26, 2013 at 03:55:58PM -0400, David Goulet wrote: >> Hi everyone, >> >> For those who don't know, I've been working on a new version of Torsocks >> in the last three weeks or so. >> >> https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2013-June/004959.html >> >> I just wanted to give a quick status report on the state of the development. >> >> The DNS resolution is working for domain name (PTR) and IPv4 address. >> Currently, Tor does not support IPv6 resolution but the torsocks code >> support it. >> >> Hidden service onion address resolution is also working using a "dead IP >> range" acting as cookie that is sent back to the user and mapped to the >> .onion address on the hijacked connect(). >> >> I've changed quite a bit the configuration file (torsocks.conf) to fit >> the style of tor (torrc). At this point, the tor address and port can be >> configured as well as the "dead IP range" mention above. More is coming >> but pretty simple for now. >> >> Logging is working, connection registry and thread safety as well. There >> is also a compat layer for mutexes and once I start porting the project >> to other *nix system (BSD, OS X, ...) probably more subsystem will be >> added to that compat layer. >> >> So, in a nutshell, some libc calls still need to be implemented, *moar* >> tests and other OS supports. I'm confident to have a beta version to >> present to the community in a couple of weeks (if nothing goes wrong). >> >> Feel free to browse the code, comment on it, contribute!, etc... >> >> https://github.com/dgoulet/torsocks/tree/rewrite > > Are non-blocking sockets, select/poll/etc. (especially at connect() > time), and optimistic data on the to-do list? Yes! Good point I should have put the todo list. So yes, non block socket support. For optimistic data, it is kind of tricky. I can use it for DNS resolution without a problem because torsocks control the complete flow of data from opening a SOCKS5 connection to closing it after the DNS response is received however for actual real data (sendmsg, send, ...) a connect is needed before so it would means that a connect() call will return "yes OK socket connected" but where in fact it is not really true. So, when the first data are sent, there is a possibility that the Tor connections failed or even we block for an unknown amount of time during the send*/write() call. Now the question is, is this the kind of behavior that would be acceptable meaning basically lying to the caller at connect() and possibly blocking I/O calls and returning something like ECONNRESET or ENOTCONN if the Tor socks5 connection fails. This is *real* tricky especially with non blocking socket, if torsocks needs to do some possible blocking call for the SOCKS5 replies during an I/O call from the caller that is not suppose to block. Furthermore, having pending data that *might* come at any time on the connection from the SOCKS5 negotiation, the caller could put the file descriptor in poll() mode, wake up and try to receive the data but where in fact it's the socks5 reply... it's possible to handle that but it seems here a VERY intrusive behavior. Does optimistic data worth it here vis-a-vis the complexity of handling that it and high intrusiveness ? Cheers! David > > Thanks, > > - Ian

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Status Report - Evil Genius
by Johannes Fürmann 27 Jun '13

27 Jun '13

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Hi *, The first two weeks of working on my GSoC project[0], which has been dubbed "EvilGenius", are nearly over. and I just wanted to share a bit of the experience I made during that time. EvilGenius is a tool that - much like Descartes' idea of an "evil genius", it "presents a complete illusion of an external world, including other minds, to Descartes' senses, where in fact there is no such external world in existence." (Source: Wikipedia), it distorts the guests' view of the real internet, in short, it creates a virtual environment that simulates censorship in order to verify OONI's nettest modules. So, after getting started with vagrant, the virtualization abstraction layer used for my project, i started simulating a virtual netwotrk and configuring the hosts to act as if they were connected to each other and the rest of the internet through a router that is part of the simulated environment. the "precise32" box is used as base image for all nodes, and I created scripts that configure the network and packed it up in a nice vagrantfile. Then I began deploying ooniprobe and oonibackend and executed the first successful tests. Next week, I will begin working on censoring environments. Have a nice weekend everyone! Johannes -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.20 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://www.enigmail.net/ iQIcBAEBAgAGBQJRzKDWAAoJEAgie5o3Q/JpUhAQAIt2WEpDsNyLVDuSdMBM0ETf q0sOxdx20Q6o77J93FJ4ZBJRzpBX4mlsE4t22Dl/TPgnHu3b+DG+dvVhfCBrQOqw wGUuA6/X/khCikAOo+f3T9fNtaHKw54phW1Tw9Yj3Gea7SBN5ZikfXKjIIHOT+lu n0xqWVzxAxqGOETy0byDznsdgc2OfaR2NkdxzCsLlZTLtE75h/EQ3U96ZCej8lw/ xmZZUD+q+4ZCE6bBKTebufQeh0eI/rUPgo0UX1rNLgUapfCs9oLVIF+8nwBKBU0j E2myEOUbXMCxtTURbHikRQKzGKlsXMCEqqSatik37Rc3VaeVdkxNiiyXFVRwzTr0 IwRTibzJ8hD+aqh9d9VDD6s7dIdRio42p+XzD8jswFltEyYcbBGeAFFiybdNeeE2 EFb7n7iHz7Gr1csezyma1fdqvvMHZaaeCMTqeRENQtBaazOnqDwrGJn83r/FC7QF m8i+3eVDm8suM7CzYvuYi8YSIhF7yMVerIBOcBSZ2A929SVKtQFT4by1V2Jc4pz+ 0ZJV4teS8xct0wjhpDLANBCXgnV07OO6Z6EgLhcWpJBWoZDONDaxikH7clmTlzdg w/9ZktL3Ac3PjhSdMjOI/TKqc68+CHQ7ln1mG+YtSimMjf5Abpx1wPgLLILmzFNS lpZ2vev2pW0DsCnvs946 =abNV -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Gitian builds in VirtualBox with Vagrant
by Arlo Breault 27 Jun '13

27 Jun '13

If anyone has VirtualBox and Vagrant installed, https://www.virtualbox.org/ http://www.vagrantup.com/ and wants to try the new TBB deterministic builds, this worked for me, > git clone -b vagrant https://github.com/arlolra/tor-browser-bundle.git > cd tor-browser-bundle/vagrant > make Mike, there's a few patches in there you may want, https://github.com/arlolra/tor-browser-bundle/compare/vagrant Or you can take the whole thing. Enjoy, Arlo

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Damian's Status Report - June 2013
by Damian Johnson 27 Jun '13

27 Jun '13

Hi all. Without much ado here's my status report for June... * Stem: Migrated to the Mock module Our homemade mocking framework has served us well, but over time it taught me one very important lesson: writing a mocking framework is hard. On the surface it seems pretty simple: apply and revert a set of monkey patches. But how do you monkey patch class methods? What about alias imports like the os module? And god forbid you want to mock python's open() function. I'm finally taking a lesson from one of my coworkers and using a library for this. Python has several options but the most common is PyPI's mock module, which became part of the standard library in Python 3.3... http://www.voidspace.org.uk/python/mock/ https://gitweb.torproject.org/stem.git/commitdiff/101cf0b?hp=65846e8 ======================================== * Arm: Pruning the torTools utility Arm's torTools module was a wrapper around TorCtl that provided caching, thread safety, and a better API. Now that we're using stem it's obsolete, and my aim is to completely eliminate it from the codebase. This is easier said than done however. This month I pruned vast swaths of the module, reducing it from 2768 lines to 1020... before: https://gitweb.torproject.org/arm.git/blob/refs/heads/release:/src/util/tor… after: https://gitweb.torproject.org/arm.git/blob/HEAD:/src/util/torTools.py Doing this required some expansions on stem's part. Added functionality includes... * get_pid() and get_user() methods in the Controller * system functions for getting a process' start time and FreeBSD jail path * the system module's call() wasn't respecting exit codes ======================================== * Stem: Remote descriptor fetching Throughout the month Karsten and I have been bouncing ideas back and fourth concerning a stem API for remote descriptor fetching... https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/doc/stem#RemoteDescriptorFetc… https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2013-June/004957.html I have some s3krit ideas for improving this that will address both our use cases even better (spoiler: future style instances). We're coming up on a four day weekend so hopefully I'll be able to start implementing this soon! ======================================== * Stem: Expanded FAQ with answers to common Stack Overflow questions I took a pass over the tor related questions on Stack Overflow (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/tor) answering fifteen that concerned controller scripting. The vast majority of those unfortunately were some variation of 'how do I programmatically change my IP?' which I answered with a Stem FAQ entry... https://stem.torproject.org/faq.html#how-do-i-request-a-new-identity-from-t… The only question I thought was especially interesting went along the lines of 'How do I check the IPs of the exits I'm presently using?'. I answered this with a FAQ entry too... http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9777192/how-do-i-get-the-tor-exit-node-i… https://stem.torproject.org/faq.html#how-do-i-get-information-about-my-exits ======================================== ... and a handful of smaller tasks... * Investigated the descriptor version provided via tor's 'GETINFO ns/*' options. Contrary to to the spec it turns out these have been v3 all along, and stem now parses them as such. (#7953) * Our automated Jenkins test runs caught their first instance of tor regression. This concerned LOADCONF's behavior after merging a branch for ticket #6752 (#9122). * Handful of GSoC tasks (welcome/sorry emails after acceptance was announced, and org admin prep for the program's start) * Added msg_type argument to ControlMessage.from_str() (request by meejah, #8605) * Investigated cache consistency issue (thanks to Ravi, #7713) * Fixes for ONLINE target (patch by Jeremy, #8692) * Minor revisions to how consensus bandwidth-weights are validated (#6872) * Addressed an arm issue with certain TERMs (#9064) * Answered some questions from Sreenatha that came up while migrating Tor Weather to Stem (https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2013-June/005035.html) Cheers! -Damian

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Re: [tor-dev] [tor-talk] Client simulation
by Karsten Loesing 27 Jun '13

27 Jun '13

(Sorry for cross-posting, but I think this is a topic for tor-dev@, not tor-talk@. If you agree, please reply on tor-dev@ only. tor-talk@ people can follow the thread here: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2013-June/thread.html) On 6/6/13 7:32 PM, Norman Danner wrote: > I have two questions regarding a possible research project. > > First, the research question: can one use machine-learning techniques > to construct a model of Tor client behavior? Or in a more general form: > can one use <fill-in-the-blank> to construct a model of Tor client > behavior? A student of mine did some work on this over the last year, > and the results are encouraging, though not strong enough to do anything > with yet. > > Second, the meta-question: is it worthwhile to answer the first > question? It seems to me that if the answer to the first question is > "yes," then the solution could be used to (at least) provide better > simulations of Tor (e.g., via Shadow or ExperimenTor). This possibly > naive thought would imply that the answer to the second question is "yes." > > I'd be interested to hear responses to my second question, either > validating my naive thought or explaining why the first question isn't > worth answering. I'd accept responses to my first question, too, in > case this has already been done. Hi Norman, yes, it's worthwhile to answer this question! I can imagine how at least Shadow and the Tor path generator would benefit from better client models. User number estimates on the metrics website might benefit from them, too. I found two tickets where we asked similar questions before, and maybe there are more tickets like these: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/2963 https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/6295 Some very early thoughts: - How do we make sure that we ask a representative set of people to instrument their clients and export data on their usage behavior? If we only ask people who read their favorite news site twice per day, our client model will be just that, but not representative for all Tor users. (Still, we would know more than we know now.) - Can we somehow aggregate usage information enough to make it safe for people to send actual usage reports to us? I could imagine having a torrc flag that is disabled by default and that, when enabled, writes sanitized usage information to disk. For this we need a very good idea what we're planning to do with the data, and we'll need to specify the aggregation approach in a tech report and get it reviewed by the community. Are your student's results available somewhere? Best, Karsten

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XMPP Pluggable Transport
by Alex Eftimiades 25 Jun '13

25 Jun '13

I have been working on creating an XMPP pluggable transport for Tor for a couple of weeks now, and someone suggested I send an email to this mailing list for suggestions. At this point, my priorities are ordered as follows: 1. Speed--I can watch low quality youtube videos on a bad internet connection, but there is a lot of down time while it buffers (not an unbearable amount of time, but enough to be annoying). This has been a big problem for a while, and I could really use some suggestions on how to speed it up. 2. Full GTalk compatibility. It seems you need to be on a recipient's contact list to send a message to them (at least without supplying a resource). However, I currently use messages to send connection requests to JIDs with unknown resources. Then when they reply, their resource is saved in a table. This technique works fine for everything but GTalk, which of course is by far the fastest of the chat servers I have tested. 3. Error handling--I need to make sure I take everything into account. I do not have anything that can reestablish connections if one computer disconnects from the chat server and reconnects. In fact, if it acquires new resources (which is what happens on GTalk), the other computers will be stuck sending messages to a JID with the wrong resource. I am pretty sure I can come up with some ways of dealing with this. Right now, looking for potential problems is just as important as pointing out solutions to more obvious ones. 4. Security. I know security is important, but the nature of the program just does not seem to admit many security threats. There are really just three that I can see: - The server can be told to connect to any ip:port by a client. - The server and client exchange their Python interpreter's sys.maxsize values (which could lead to profiling a computer's OS). The former can be fixed with a whiltelist and the latter is not even necessary (I just have not gotten around to tweaking that out of the protocol yet). - DoS. This would be relatively easy to take into account by limiting the number of connections a bot is willing to accept. Then the chat server itself will limit the amount of data sent from any one JID (for better or worse). If you think you are able/willing to help, read on for a summery of the concept and protocol below. Even if you are not well versed in XMPP protocols (I myself am learning as I go), just helping to test the program would be a big help. Thanks, Alex Eftimiades A brief summery of how the program works can be found here: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/9022#comment:42 , and is reproduced below: ---------------------------------------------<Summery of concept > --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- When using hexchat, the data is sent to a local TCP socket running hexchat (call it hexchat1). Hexchat1 then reads the data (thereby stripping it of its TCP header) and passes it over a chat server to another hexchat program (call it hexchat2) that sends the data to the appropriate ip:port (giving it a new TCP header in the process). The client thinks it is sending the data to hexchat1, and the server thinks it is receiving data from hexchat2, but the data itself is never changed. It might be broken into smaller chunks or combined into bigger chunks, and it might be delivered at unpredictable rates, but it is never altered. ---------------------------------------------</Summery of concept > --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A more detailed overview of the protocol can be found in the protocol- spec here, though I will summarize it: ---------------------------------------------<Summery of protocol > --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- When the program is started, it is told what JID(s) to use to connect to a chat server, and possibly the following optional parameters: 1. An ip:port to listen on. 2. A JID. Connection requests will be sent to this JID when a connection is is made to the ip:port specified in (1). 3. Another ip:port. This is the ip:port the bot connected from the JID in (2) should connect to. Note that any bot can connect to any ip:port that client asks for. This could be a 127.0.0.1 address, or a remote address (but will probably be the former). I plan to add a feature in which you can provide a list of acceptable ip:ports to connect to and refuse to connect to anything else (for security). However, that is not a priority at the moment. When a connection is made, the server and client exchange all JIDs they are using to connect to the chat server so they can each rotate through JIDs to send messages from and JIDs to send messages to. With the exception of initial connections, all messages are sent as IQ stanzas. When data is sent, it is base 64 encoded and sent with an ID number that is incremented each time a message is sent. When data is received, the id is checked against the id of the last message that resulted in writing data to a socket. The difference between these two ids is used as an index in a buffer. Then, messages are read from the buffer and sent to the appropriate socket. When a socket closes, a disconnect message is sent. Like when sending messages, an id stanza is included. When a disconnect message is received, the bot checks if there are any entries in the appropriate socket's message buffer. If not, it closes the socket and deletes it from the routing table. If there are messages in the buffer, the disconnect message is added to the buffer at the appropriate index as a string "disconnect" as though it were normal data. When a "disconnect" string is found in the buffer, the socket is closed and deleted from the bot's routing table. ---------------------------------------------</Summery of protocol > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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