tor-project November 2017

tor-project@lists.torproject.org

17 participants
23 discussions

An update on teams roadmaps coordination
by isabela 14 Nov '17

14 Nov '17

Hello Tor! I am happy to share some updates on how we are trying to better coordinate communication between teams, specially related to the work each team is doing. At Montreal I was in the laptop sitting at the inter-teams communication session where this was raised as a pain point, and it has been raised before as well in other conversations. So right after Montreal I suggested to Vegas leads to started a process for reviewing each other roadmaps and to acknowledge dependencies other teams might have on your team to better coordinate this collaboration between teams. This pad contains the outline of this plan: https://storm.torproject.org/shared/URX6Jkt3eFjDpAEjtq0oJeWs25AFj8eK-myHKzj… Last Friday, Nov 3rd, we had a meeting with all the teams leads (and others) for the first 'check in' about each others roadmaps. We organized questions for each team roadmap in another pad ( https://storm.torproject.org/shared/6_vKbNygWaF8WcG6xz3lTW6RWbJzlBdm8ZezRYW… ) and if you have one you can add yours there. But please make sure to ping the teams directly about it too. Otherwise they might miss it! :) This was just the kick off of the conversation. At this meeting we didn't had 2 roadmaps: UX Team roadmap and Service roadmap. Those are now integrated and we are already in touch with other teams about collaborating on projects etc. After November 17 - when this chat/coordination phase is over. We will continue with progress check-ins to make sure coordination is happening during execution phase as well. I will organize those too. The goal is to do something like this after each Tor Meeting. So in short the cycles would be: - At Tor Meeting teams meet and build roadmaps - After Tor Meeting we start this process - Once the 'acknowledging phase' and 'dependencies check in' is done we enter execution phase - We do periodically check ins during execution phase to learn about delays or road blocks - Next Tor Meeting is arriving, we do the balance of what we have finished, what we will carry on and start selecting tasks for the next roadmap we will be building at the next Tor Meeting. Not saying this is perfect, we will learn as we go. But at least now we have a process to use and modify. Here is a bonus for those who read so far:) a quick direct link to each team roadmap :P Network: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Ufrun1khEo5Cwd6OwngERn829wU3W3eskdr… Tor Browser: https://storm.torproject.org/shared/roevbMxlBi5rxSAh57iRjy8w1MB2HZArEmM2Jek… OONI: https://storm.torproject.org/shared/CTMRUHLTGG0VEA727afz3Unb7VWfkkRjcshyssP… Metrics: https://storm.torproject.org/shared/m-QJrsoQY23x9mv2SSfMPFjx2pbP91wsWpQtjyW… Community: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1biph8qhxvUc_VetcaJjkS9H3kKC95yPB9Z1… Service: https://storm.torproject.org/shared/h82FhoIDG9ZB9-qMd5w0F0GYyvNf0k0zovLjs5x… UX: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ELMvnIksL-m_r0vJt_rwpIkcjyzZpCyYiQJ… Cheers, isabela ps: Some of these spreadsheets was created as copies from the original team roadmap to be easy to consume and review. So, over time they might not stay updated. Please ask the teams directly for more information on their roadmaps like 3 months from now :P

2 2

Notes from weekly network team meeting, 13 Nov 2017
by Nick Mathewson 14 Nov '17

14 Nov '17

Hidden, we are free: Free to speak, to free ourselves, Free to hide no more. Hi! We had our weekly network-team meeting this week, but a lot of folks were busy with travel or healthcare or other important things. So, we had a little but awesome meeting. We love new people at these meetings! Come to the next one! The logs and the summary messages are at http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2017/tor-meeting.2017-11-13-16.59.html Below are the contents of the pad where we took our notes: Network team meeting pad, 13 November 2017 Welcome to our meeting! Every monday at 1700 UTC on #tor-meeting on OFTC. (This channel is logged while meetings are in progress.) Want to participate? Awesome! Here's what to do: 1. If you have updates, enter them below, under your name. 2. If you see anything you want to talk about in your updates, put them in *boldface*! 3. Show up to the IRC meeting and say hi! Note the meeting location: #tor-meeting on OFTC! (See https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-project/2017-September/001459.ht… for background.) Meeting notes from last week: - * https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-project/2017-November/001560.html - Announcements: - Review-group-25 is open - Does everybody know about the current time allocations that Brad sent around? (ie, where Accounting thinks that we're spending our time) - We need headcount for TeamRotation. Nobody is assigned for ticket triage this week. - Planning for 0.3.2.5-alpha around 24 Nov; and for stable releases and 0.3.2.6-rc around 8 Dec Discussion Topics: - Sprint updates: start of Nov, end of Nov. How did it go? - How are we doing on 032 stability? - Remember to cross-check other teams' roadmaps. (See Isa's email.) - Who needs help with end-of-november? teor (offline): Last week: * Ongoing work with Karsten to graph relay and bridge IPv6 ORPorts, and exit IPv6 support (This shows the impact of authority IPv6 support changes around 22 October) https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/23761#comment:5 * Looked at some security issues * Continued to implement domain counting in Experimental PrivCount * Reviewed the inter-team roadmap pad and added some info This week: * Revise the IPv6 proposal * Review the shamir sharing proposal draft by nickm, and add a section about noise limits * Confirm the details of noise limits with Aaron * Finish domain counting in Experimental PrivCount, and maybe do country/AS as well catalyst (might miss this meeting if medical stuff takes longer than expected): Last week (2017-W45): - some HackerOne review - more download schedule investigation - reviewed more floating point stuff (#23523, #23061) - looked at some circuit build timeout stuff (#24228) - more support on IRC: another instance of someone needing to delete the special macOS directory to get Tor Browser to work. filed #22611 so we can improve our documentation This week (2017-W46): - more bootstrapping research - make more progress on #23605 (don't report progress in building circuits when we don't have a sufficiently live consensus to initialize our guard state) asn: [Physical training starts colliding with the meeting schedule (training ends 19:10, meeting starts 19:00). Might be 20 mins late...] Last week: - Continued progress with md bugs and #23817. We still have some tests failing that we need to figure out. - Found #24228 which seems concering. Unclear if it's a bug and how to handle it. - Reviewed #23985, #23100. - Looked into #23764. Important hsv3 ticket, some work required. This week: - More progress with md stuff. - Get #24228 fixed. - More progress with prop224 stuff. - Figure out guard stuff. ahf - I wont be around during the meeting. My flight lands in Valencia airport an hour after the meeting is over. - Last week (don't have my notes from home - writing from Zurich airport): - Sponsor 8: - - Setup a VM locally to build android packages automatically when there are commits in Tor (runs every 5 min.): missing to setup an fdroid repo to give everyone access to the apk's (if people dare). - - Looked at Nick's proposal for hibernation. - - Finish up on doc/HACKING/android documents. Will create merge requests this week for it. - - Trying to find a way to run some automatic tests on the device for battery consumption reproducibility. - This week: - Misc: - - At the OTF summit in Valencia with GeKo, Shari, and a lot of other people. Let me know if I need to chat with anybody on your behalf or anything! :-) - Nick: - Last week: - - Piles of review and merging! - - Put out 0.3.2.4-alpha. Too many last-minute fixes :( - - Opened a few TROVE entries - - Wrote a proposal draft for improved hibernation design & implementation for mobile platforms. (#24107) - - Wrote a proposal draft for privcount + shamir secret sharing (#22955) - - Wrote a "move ed25519-to-consensus" proposal (#23170) - - Wrote an API draft for more controller C API improvements This week: - Begin preparing backports for upcoming stable releases. - More review and merging - Work on some mobile performance code with Ahf - Help people with end-of-November stuff. - Solicit feedback on designs. dgoulet: - Last week: * Worked on HSv3 control port spec (prop#284) and implementation (#20699). * Reviewed and made patches for 032 tickets. * Helped asn with #24228. * Opened #24186 and worked on getting it fixed asap for the last week alpha release. - This week: * Hope to finish the #20699 ticket (control port implementation) and set it in needs_review for 033 merge. * Plan to work on tor-sched stuff (#23993) from the answers I got on my tor-dev@ thread ("Intense Trek"). * Move forwards my 032 tickets in needs_information and review tickest from the review group. isabela: -Last week: * submitted DRL Q3 report (august and september) * didn't had time to send out Tor Launcher check in email - hope to do it today - This week: * Pinged people on follow up with other teams * Send out check in email for Tor Launcher work * coordinate with UX, HS and TB folks for HS usability work isis: Last week: - Finished up moat #22871 - Commented on H1 report and learned my way around the interface and how to use it - Meeting with Moz about Tor integration - (It's very early here, I'll remember more stuff as I boot up) This week: - Deploy beta moat - Start on proposal (re-)writing for prop#271 and prop#269 and/or PQ TLS proposal Mike: Last Week: - Submitted review/merge requests for #23100 and #23114; fixed them up a bit - Started working on #23101 and #13837 This week: - Fix up #23100 and #23114 as per reviews - Draft patches for #23101 and #13837

1 0

Coordination / booth for 34c3
by Roger Dingledine 10 Nov '17

10 Nov '17

Hi folks! 34c3 is getting closer, and I know a bunch of Tor people are considering going. (A) If you don't have lodging figured out, do it ASAP or earlier. There are not as many options in Leipzig as there were in Hamburg. (B) I hear that OONI is planning to have a real-live booth and assembly area. It would be awesome to get more Tor people than that, and turn it into a broader Tor booth, with swag and people to answer questions and so on. If you want to help there (like commit to working some hours at the booth), let us know. (C) If you are hoping that Tor will help pay for your travel, be sure to ask travel@tpo soon. I think Shari is (rightly) hesitant about paying for travel for a bunch of Tor people to "just go and hang out", so the more specific you can be about planned activities and how they will benefit Tor, the better that will go. --Roger

3 2

Notes from November 9 2017 Vegas team meeting
by Karsten Loesing 10 Nov '17

10 Nov '17

Notes for November 9 2017 meeting: Alison: 1) Submitted Tor 'State of the Onion' proposal to LibrePlanet 2) Montreal meeting survey responses: I just compiled them and I'll share with this group sometime in the coming week. Overall, very positive feedback for the meeting, and lots of requests about improving the open days. 3) Speaking in Paris next week! 4) Anyone have any idea when we can start submitting talk ideas to HOPE? 5) Coordinating with other teams on user support/support related feedback 6) Phoul is making plans to translate the website, starting with the Downloads page. 7) Phoul and I are working on a blog post to encourage new relay operators 8) Doing a lot of work to prepare for LFP's new IMLS grant (starts in December) Georg: 1) Done with a security release (7.0.9, 7.5a7) which was tricky as we only have a workaround which was incomplete first and breaks functionality; furthermore it did cost a lot of time at the end of Sponsor4; thanks again to Filippo Cavallarin + Mozilla and all the others that helped to make this a less bumpy experience than it could have been 2) We are trying to wrap up all remaining pieces for Sponsor4 this month Nick: 1) Onward with releases! 0.3.2 stability is a priority; work on 0.3.3 is slowing a bit because of that... but it's important. 2) Promising discussion with mozilla folks earlier this week. I should make sure that at least some folks attending moz all-hands are briefed on the issues that the moz folks were interested in. Arturo: 1) Many from the OONI team will be at the OTF summit next week (I will probably miss the vegas meeting) 2) We got nominated for the Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression Award for the Digital Activism category (see: https://www.indexoncensorship.org/2016/11/awards-2017/) and we are writing answers to their questions to hopefully get shortlisted. 3) Various 34c3 logistics. We have an OONI assembly at 34c3: https://events.ccc.de/congress/2017/wiki/index.php/Assembly:OONI-verse. Is Tor going to have a presence at 34c3? Should we join forces? 4) Circulated a call for volunteers to work with us on developing a methodology to measure internet blackouts in regions affected the most: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/ooni-talk/2017-November/000090.html 5) Gave an interview to an Italian TV channel about the TorMoil bug. 6) Maria gave a presentation about OONI at FSCONS in Norway 7) Simone started a ICFP fellowship at MLAB this month for on year to work on Measurement Kit 8) We contributed to the Citizen Lab's submission to the UN by providing relevant OONI data: https://citizenlab.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Final-UNSRVAG-CitizenLab.p… 9) Making progress on the mobile app revamping mockup. Karsten: 1) Put draft specification of Tor web server logs on Tor Metrics. https://metrics.torproject.org/web-server-logs.html 2) Discussed next steps for writing better notifications for metrics services and a unified Java package naming scheme for all metrics code bases. https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/metrics-team/2017-November/000523.ht… 3) Made some sample IPv6 graphs for Tor Metrics. https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/23761#comment:6 4) Made mockups for adding metrics timeline entries underneath graphs. https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/metrics-team/2017-November/000525.ht… Steph: 1) Enjoying being in Seattle 2) Working on comms strategy 3) Lining up blog content, fundraising emails, newsletter, post on Nyx out yesterday 4) Tweets, tweets, tweets 5) Fundraising: we're up to ~72k, 144k with match Brad: 1) In final stages of financial statement and compliance audit. Auditors expect to issue draft audit report this week. 2) TPI is required to issue formal response to DRL Monitoring Report issued after site visit in Aug 2016. Need assistance with response to Programmatic portion. 3) Between now and year-end, I'll be making a push to update all finance and accounting-related policies & procedures, and will be creating new policy docs as needed. I may reach out to some folks on the vegas team for assistance during that process. Isabela: 1) Roadmaps process is moving pretty good. Last week teams check in meeting were a good start. This week the UX team and Service have created their roadmaps. I will also send an update to tor-project for all community. ux roadmap -https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ELMvnIksL-m_r0vJt_rwpIkcjyzZpCyYiQJO1PveRZM/edit#gid=0 service roadmap -https://storm.torproject.org/shared/h82FhoIDG9ZB9-qMd5w0F0GYyvNf0k0zovLjs5xG80- 2) Submitted sponsor8 Q3 (august and sept) report - still for this week there are some sponsor4 reports 3) Organizing some ideas for a 2018 grant strategy meeting in Seattle early december 4) organizing new hires coming up with SIDA contract and kickoff meeting with people who will be involved in this project 5) organizing a plan for building support.tpo (while thinking about the other portals - cuz we will share a lot from design decision to framework). 6) working with Geko on Sukhbir onboarding - 'defining working plan', exercise we are doing/following is here: https://storm.torproject.org/shared/hFzY4dVTL4HJFg0ki0fTy6zu8LT2ajp_YKfJ76x… Shari: 1) met with funder in San Francisco 2) in Valencia next week for OTF Summit 3) so much going on, but not really much to report! Roger: 1) Shari, can you ask Marcin at the OTF summit about the "Roger goes to Sweden to do talk for SIDA" topic? Planning my travel ahead of time works best. 2) I'll be gone next week for two conferences (Monday to Thursday, then Friday to Saturday).

1 0

Community team October 2017 update
by Alison Macrina 09 Nov '17

09 Nov '17

Hello Tor World, Behold, the Community Team did some work in October: October 2017 Community Team report Meeting notes October 2017 ================================================================== https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/teams/CommunityTeam#Curre… Tor Meeting Montreal ================================================================== A bunch of us went to the Tor Meeting and had a great time! We had sessions on things like Global South outreach, the support portal, creating a code of conduct, and more. You can find the notes from those sessions, plus all the other sessions from the meeting, here: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/meetings/2017Montreal/Not… Support portal ================================================================== In October we began working more intensively with the UX team and hiro to build support.torproject.org, which will replace the current support wiki which is not very beautiful and not very easy for users to find. The new support portal will be beautiful and searchable with answers to all the most frequently asked questions about using Tor. After the support portal goes live, we will continue adding new content to it. We're also prioritizing localization for the portal. Front Desk ================================================================== We started promoting frontdesk(a)torproject.org for user questions. Ideally, once the support portal is in place, this address will receive much less traffic. Community documents ================================================================== We made a ton of progress on the Code of Conduct draft at the Montreal meeting. We expect to get this out for the proposal period by the end of November. Library Freedom Project ================================================================== LFP got a beautiful website redesign thanks to Mike Finch. Check it out: libraryfreedomproject.org. We're also doing the preliminary work for Library Freedom Institute, our new IMLS-supported 6-month privacy training program for US librarians. We'll open up the call for participants when the grant begins in May. Tor talks ================================================================== Sukhbir gave a talk at the CJFE in Toronto: http://www.cjfe.org/digital_self_defence Alison gave a talk at the Ohio Library Council's annual conference in Dayton, Ohio. Tor meetups ================================================================== There is a Tor meetup planned for Primavera Hacker, which will take place December 2-3 in Santiago, Chile. We hope to encourage many meetups like this, and we're currently thinking about how we could get funding to support them. Team roadmap ================================================================== Like the other teams, we worked on the community team roadmap a bunch at the Montreal meeting and right after. Teams are now in the stage of working out dependencies and adding them to our roadmaps, so once that's finished, we'll publish our roadmap on the community team wiki. The major themes of our roadmap include user support, Global South outreach, relay operator support, improving the Tor Meeting, Library Freedom Institute, more Tor talks from more people, community documents, and translation. ================================================================== -- Alison Macrina Community Team Lead The Tor Project

1 0

October 2017 Report for the Tor Browser Team
by Georg Koppen 07 Nov '17

07 Nov '17

Hi All! In October the Tor Browser team made three releases: Tor Browser 7.0.7[1], 7.0.8[2], and 7.5a6[3]. Tor Browser 7.0.7 and 7.5a6 were mostly releases enhancing the stability of Tor Browser: they fixed crashes on macOS High Sierra[4] and when accessing Google Drive[5], and dealt with issues related to our external helper app handling (in the 7.0.7 case)[6]. Tor Browser 7.0.7 is moreover the first stable release that contains the Firefox content sandbox enabled for Linux users.[7] Tor Browser 7.0.8 was a fix-up release to make our donation banner work correctly.[8] Non-release related work saw much progress regarding our remaining Sponsor4 items: we are about to ship the long-awaited 64bit bundles for Windows in our alpha series[9] and the new Tor Launcher UI[10][11] will be ready as well to get wider testing in Tor Browser 7.5a8. We spent almost a week together with other Tor folks in Montreal working on things face to face and creating the roadmaps for the next few months. Watch out on the tbb-dev or tor-project mailing list if you are interested, updates are coming soon. The full list of tickets closed by the Tor Browser team in October is accessible using the `TorBrowserTeam201710` keyword in our bug tracker.[12] This month we plan to finish most of our Sponsor4 deliverables, so this will be busy weeks for the whole team. Tickets for those deliverables can be easily found on Trac.[13] We will start as well to integrate developers working with the mobile port of Tor Browser targeting Android devices. This will be our first step towards a mobile browser in feature-parity with the desktop version of Tor Browser, which is very exciting! All tickets on our radar for this month can be seen with the `TorBrowserTeam201711` keyword in our bug tracker.[14] Georg [1] https://blog.torproject.org/tor-browser-707-released [2] https://blog.torproject.org/tor-browser-708-released [3] https://blog.torproject.org/tor-browser-75a6-released [4] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/23807 [5] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/23745 [6] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/22610 [7] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/22692 [8] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/23949 [9] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/20636 [10] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/23262 [11] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/23261 [12] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/query?status=closed&keywords=~TorB… [13] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/query?status=accepted&status=assig… [14] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/query?status=accepted&status=assig…

1 0

Network team meeting notes, 6 nov 2017
by Nick Mathewson 06 Nov '17

06 Nov '17

Hi! You can find the logs from our weekly meeting here: http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2017/tor-meeting.2017-11-06-16.59.html Below is the pad we used for our updates and discussions: Network team meeting pad, 6 November 2017 Welcome to our meeting! Every monday at 1700 UTC on #tor-meeting on OFTC. (This channel is logged while meetings are in progress.) Want to participate? Awesome! Here's what to do: 1. If you have updates, enter them below, under your name. 2. If you see anything you want to talk about in your updates, put them in *boldface*! 3. Show up to the IRC meeting and say hi! Note the meeting location: #tor-meeting on OFTC! (See https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-project/2017-September/001459.ht… for background.) Meeting notes from last week: - * https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-project/2017-October/001551.html - Announcements: * [dgoulet] I know it is quite big and it is fine to not reply but then that means I'll just go forward with what I think is best and we'll see from there ("Connection, Channel and Scheduler - An Intense Trek"): https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2017-October/012536.html * Please do not forget about 0.3.2! *How to get it stable?* Discussion topics: * Anybody great in the broader community to highlight this past week? https://bugs.torproject.org/24148 - [dgoulet: "Hello71" on IRC has been profiling and chasing memleaks lately, very useful imo. Also, someone submitted a patch to torsocks to fix it with Rust program #24116] * Still a few hackerone reports that need to be triaged by the fuzzer guy. * Did we finish everything from october? Updates: (Please use *boldface* to indicate discussion topics) dgoulet: [might be offline during the meeting, we'll see!] Last week: - HSv3 tickets in the 032 milestone. - Review tickets in the 032 milestone. - Worked on the prop224 control port specification which I just sent on tor-dev@ today: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2017-November/012559.html - Worked on a tor-dev@ thread about the connection, channel and scheduler subsystems: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2017-November/012559.html - From that thread ^, the improved scheduler interface came out for #23993 but not yet public as I'm waiting on possibly more feedback on the thread before going further. - We had a series of bad-relays last week that needed some investigation so I had to put some times in the health of the network side of things. - Profiling of 032 relay: #24127 This week: - Continue the roadmap tasks I have that is the HS circuit timoue issues and scheduler work. - Prop224 control port work aimed at 033 so I want to start the review as soon as possible for an "early" merge. - 032 ticket review and address my tickets as well in that milestone. asn [Might be a bit late for the mtng but will be there] Last week: - Lots of microdescriptor work. Did some debugging and some bugfixing. Opened #23985 and #24113 and #23989. - Mainly worked on #23817: an important md issue. Pushing branch tonight. *[NM: how complex will it be?]* - Also published prop224 blog post. We have now officially launched. Tracked the blog comments and the hackernews discussion. - Did some digging into the guard discovery stuff but not too much. - Some prop224 reviewing and ticket handling. This week: - More microdescriptor fixing. This is the highest priority for me rn. - Catching up with prop224 work and maybe guard discovery if time permits. - Will learn more info about my future phd and my future schedule. nickm: Last week: - Worked on revised (Shamir-based) privcount design - Much review & merge - Roadmapping coordination with other teams - Reviewed prop283 (ipv6 address into consensus for Teor) - Dealt with fuzzing false-positives from oss-fuzz; found one real memory leak (#24150) - This week: - Several proposals, including: - Revised privcount data collector behavior (#22955) - Improved APIs for control on mobile/embedded systems (#24107, #24108) - Ed25519 ID -> Consensus proposal (#23170, plus #24103) - Release another 0.3.2 alpha on Tuesday or Wednesday, ideally including the following. (*are they yours?*): - #23816 Use exponential backoff with jitter and/or tune its parameters - #24150 Memory leak in v3 hsdesc parsing with empty encrypted data. - #23414 rep_hist_format_hs_stats() should add noise, then round - #23623 hs: Cache current time period number and SRV start time - Review dgoulet's big scheduler/channel/connection email, time permitting - Meeting w Mozilla people about Tor integeration - Bug people about the *5 remaining tickets* in review-group-24 - Absent much of Tuesday & Friday ahf: Last week: Sponsor 8: - Wrote a patch to use Android's logging subsystem directly in Tor (ahf/android-logging on GL.com). - Looked into the syslog() inteface on Android as well and whether it works with adb's logging features too on all devices. - Created tickets for the performance and measurement work as well as controller interface bugs for battery/bandwidth control. - Wrote an introduction to Google's simpleperf tool for Tor: https://gitlab.com/ahf/tor/blob/android/doc/HACKING/android/Simpleperf.md (if you want to play around with the tool without doing all the device stuff you can download the sample file I made last week at https://people.torproject.org/~ahf/sponsor8/sample-reports/) - Started documenting `systrace` and `dumpsys` to get memory and battery information out of the device. Misc: - Started looking into Shawn's capsicum sandbox patches. This week: Sponsor 8: - Finish docuumenting and testing, ideally get someone else to try it out too. - Start working on #24065. - If I have time: setup an fdroid repository with "daily" builds of Orbot with tor.git's master version of Tor. Misc: - See if there is anything I need to prepare for the OTF meeting next week. Follow up on Isa's email on the topic. catalyst: Last week (2017-W44): - HackerOne triage - helped with bwauth trouble with control port oddities (#24110, #24128) - reviewing #23816. download_status code is very hard to read. updated #23354 and filed 24152 in hopes we can improve this - updated team wiki page with meetin time changes for DST stuff This week (2017-W45): - more jittered backoff review work (#23816) - review other tickets (#23523, maybe others) - *try to coordinate more with others about HackerOne triage* - investigate bootstrap hangs (mostly clock skew related?) some more - sponsor8 bookkeeping (ticket tagging, etc.) Isabela: Last week: - worked on sponsor8 Q3 report (august and september) - organized first meeting for teams to share their roadmaps - pinged testers to test our network speed This week: - submit sponsor8 Q3 report (august and september) - Tor Launcher work check in - moat implementation, check in with Browser team too, progress bar msgs. *[check-in note for: nick, catalyst, isis]* - hope to get ux team with a roadmap to share soon - will share all roadmaps and its dicussions on tor-project ml haxxpop: This week: - I will look at ESTRABLISH_INTRO, INTRODUCE1, and INTRODUCE2 and see if any of them is worth fuzzing isis: Last week: - reviewed #22342, a new buf-to-string api - worked mostly on #15967 and #22871 (moat stuff), which is coming along quite well but still has a couple kinks in it - deployed new bridgedb so that bridge-distribution-request lines are respected - planning/travel for mozilla all-hands in december - got setup in hackerone This week: - reimbursements for montréal - #22871 bugs and deploying a preliminary setup for testing * - wanted to talk with catalyst about writing down how we plan to use the github account, but other things might have to take priority this week* Mike: - Last week: - - Getting back up to speed on things and trying to normalize sleep schedule - - Writing tests for #23114 and #23100 This week: - Really trying to finish #23114 and #23100 - Paperwork, airfare, expense reports, time sheets for past couple months

1 0

October 2017 report for the metrics team
by Karsten Loesing 06 Nov '17

06 Nov '17

Hello Tor, hello world! Below you'll find the highlights of Tor metrics team work done in October 2017. On behalf of the Tor metrics team, Karsten Received funding [1] for some very important metrics work for the upcoming 12 months. This funding will allow us to document why we chose to do data collection, aggregation, and presentation the way we do. It also lets us specify how we're aggregating data on a level of detail that will be sufficient for others to reproduce our aggregated numbers. Initial work done with this funding is an internal collection of related questions from mailing lists and initial thoughts on structuring the documents to be written. [1] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/sponsors/Sponsor13 Attended the Tor meeting in Montreal and discussed the metrics team roadmap for the next 12 months, which will be finalized and published in November. Released CollecTor 1.4.0, metrics-lib 2.1.1, and Onionoo 4.2-1.6.0 [2] to publish the build revision of the software running on a particular Onionoo or Collector instance. Released CollecTor 1.4.1 and Onionoo 4.2-1.6.1 [3] to handle unusually structured (but valid) descriptors. [2] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2017-October/012479.html [3] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2017-October/012526.html Started work on metrics-bot [4], a tool to provide insights into data collected by the metrics team through Twitter [5], Mastodon [6] and IRC to boost awareness and community engagement. [4] https://people.torproject.org/~irl/metrics-bot/ [5] https://twitter.com/TorAtlas [6] https://botsin.space/@metricsbot Improved Tor Atlas by adding an alert to suggest updating Tor version on outdated relays, and also a link to the relay lifecycle blog post when a relay is less than 2 weeks old to help new operators understand more [7]. A change was also made to prepare for the removal of the $ prefixes for family fingerprints, making it easier to copy/paste these fingerprints into shell scripts [8]. [7] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/23767 [8] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/22261

1 0

Future of Tor Messenger
by Sukhbir Singh 04 Nov '17

04 Nov '17

Hi, As some of you may have already noticed, the Instantbird team (the chat client on which Tor Messenger is based) has announced that it will no longer maintain the user interface for Instantbird and instead will work towards improving the existing chat support in Thunderbird: http://blog.queze.net/post/2017/10/18/Thunderbird-is-the-next-version-of-In… So far, we have been maintaining two products: Tor Messenger and TorBirdy, and this change is an opportunity to consolidate those efforts into one application, which we are tentatively calling "Tor Communicator". By doing this, we can continue maintaining Tor Messenger for our users and adding new features to it, and also prototype the "Tor Mail" bundle as has been requested in the past. (This change will only take effect at the next ESR major version bump, in March 2018.) We would still like to stay within the Mozilla ecosystem so that we can continue making use of technologies like Tor Launcher and the secure automatic updater patches from Tor Browser. While we have not done builds for Tor Communicator yet, we expect no restrictions on the technical side as we have released "Tor Mail" bundles in the past. Tor Messenger releases have been based on Thunderbird's ESR schedule as Instantbird releases have been infrequent. This has been possible because Thunderbird and Instantbird share a common source tree in the comm-central repository. There is also the question of the future of Thunderbird itself, summarized in the "A Bright Future" section in the blog post detailing Thunderbird's future: https://blog.mozilla.org/thunderbird/2017/05/thunderbirds-future-home/ By making this switch: - Users will get access to secure chat from Tor Messenger and secure email from TorBirdy, in a single application - Thunderbird has a single-window chat interface which is different from Instantbird (and better) - We can continue supporting Tor Messenger as a chat client for IRC/Jabber/Twitter - Users will get a Tor Mail application which has been requested for a while The idea behind this email is to brainstorm this switch and solicit feedback from the community, so please share your thoughts! -- Sukhbir

12 22

Notes from November 2 2017 Vegas team meeting
by Karsten Loesing 03 Nov '17

03 Nov '17

Notes for November 2 2017 meeting: Karsten: 1) Making good progress on integrating webstats into CollecTor, but not there yet. Roger: 1) I'm finally getting time for the Tor Research Safety Board open cases this week 2) Alison and I should conspire to pitch a "tor relay operator liaison" paid position [alison: I have lots of notes on this from the meeting and also it's on the community team roadmap!] 3) Rob Jansen and I are submitting an NSF CRI Preliminary proposal today, on Shadow enhancements 4) Rome invites 5) Still optimistic about the China work Nick: 1) kudos to Isabela for organizing inter-team roadmap-share. Let's all remember to treat it as an alpha process, and iterate. 2) more hacking, more programming, stuff goes onward. 3) Another alpha next week. Trying to do two per month. 4) It's November! PLEASE REMEMBER that many people go on vacations in December: if you need to coordinate with another human, plan accordingly! Georg: 1) Final month for Sponsor4 stuff (looking at the remaining things it still seems doable to meet the deadline modulo the moat work maybe) [isa: we did got the extension for jan 31st] Shari: 1) got some grant proposals in 2) end of year campaign going pretty well; October donations: 2014-$4,025, 2015-$22,190, 2016-$45,840, 2017-$56,664 3) emailing major donors 4) getting ready for quick trip to San Francisco next week to meet with a potential funder 5) out of the office week after next for OTF Summit in Valencia 6) starting invitation process for Rome 7) we're moving headquarters to a bigger office downstairs in the same building Alison: 1) still brainstorming a RightsCon talk 2) also thinking about a Tor State of the Onion for LibrePlanet. Will discuss more with Steph tomorrow 3) the support portal is being built! hiro, Antonela, and Isa got right to work. Phoul and I gave them the content and are standing by. :) really excited about this. 4) one more day for Montreal meeting feedback; then we'll discuss it here. 5) meeting with some tor-south folks next week to talk about LatAm Tor Meetup needs and looking for some funding for that 6) Phoul and I are working on the blog post to encourage relay operators 7) waiting on some feedback about the code of conduct draft from Erin Wyatt and the Community Council. hoping to get it out for the proposal period in another week or so. anyone who wants to view and comment on the current draft can contact me. Steph: 1) Fundraising campaign going well 2) Tommy published a post on the new dirauth 3) Working w asn on next-gen post and sharing 4) Newsletter portal is ready, hiro added to the site. Will send an issue next week and once a month including donate call to action. We'll send a fundraising email every 2 weeks 5) Phoul helped me get the Tor Animation title translated 6) Talking to Alison tomorrow about LibrePlanet submission isabela: 1) working on DRL report 2) working on inter-teams roadmaps coordination 3) organizing things at the UX team to resume meetings next week - sent a note to the UX list about it. 4) submitted modularization proposal last friday and design proposal last monday 5) was invited to be part of a panel organized by MDF at the end of the month 6) planning at being in Seattle for the holiday party :) Arturo: 1) Published a blog post on writing cross platform desktop apps: https://ooni.torproject.org/post/writing-a-modern-cross-platform-desktop-ap… 2) Reviewed tickets related to improving mobile app embedding of Tor 3) CIPIT Kenya published a post based on OONI data, examining throttling during the elections: http://blog.cipit.org/2017/10/29/internet-speed-throttling-surrounding-repe… 4) Maria will be presenting OONI at FSCONS in Oslo this week 5) Started writing a specification and threat model for the OONI Probe orchestration system 6) Doing logistics around organising the OONI presence at CCC (having a stall, ordering t-shirts and other swag, etc.)

1 0

2024

2023

2022

2021

2020

2019

2018

2017

2016

2015

tor-project November 2017