tor-project August 2018

tor-project@lists.torproject.org

19 participants
27 discussions

Board Minutes from July 14, 2016, to April 16, 2018
by biella 18 Aug '18

18 Aug '18

Hello, The board is releasing our first batch of Tor Project meeting minutes from July 14, 2016, to April 16, 2018 [1]. After our next reunion, to be held on August 20, 2018, we will release minutes as a single item shortly after we meet. Before the board made the decision to publish them, I had volunteered to write a report about board work and accomplishments. Now that we are releasing our minutes, there is less of a need to write a detailed report, but I’ve decided to highlight some of things we’ve done and what we are up to in the next few months. As is probably obvious, board minutes are a fairly conventional genre of documentation for providing an official record of decisions taken by the board. They reference our collective discussions and include other standard information such as the start time of meeting, place or method of connecting, and a list of present and absent members. They tend to contain regular items of business, such as a discussion of pending and current grants and the finance reports, both of which relate to one of the core of duties of a board: fiduciary oversight of the organization. But these notes also provide a limited window into other aspects of the organization, as well as its shifting concerns and priorities depending on unforeseen factors and events. Early in this board’s tenure, we, along with TPI (The Tor Project, INC.) officers (Shari, Roger and Nick) dealt with matters of organizational housekeeping: filling board positions, establishing email voting protocols, clarifying and defining roles around the officers, and approving new policy documents or changes in existing policy documents. (These documents are included with the minutes.) With that in place, we moved on to other tasks that are also typical of boards, such as the ED review, which was carried out in the winter of 2017. As the organization stabilized, we were free to take on more time consuming projects, such as board expansion and diversification, which involved a number of meetings outside of the regular board reunions as we vetted and interviewed potential new members. Another fairly large undertaking for the current board was finding a replacement for Shari after she notified us of her plans to retire. While a search committee was constituted and tasked with the bulk of the initial work—compiling names, reaching out to candidates, scheduling meetings, and holding initial interviews—the entire board and TPI officers were also pulled in at various points to rate the long list of applications, hammer out procedures and timing, and interview and discuss the final few candidates. While the minutes provide a fairly accurate record of board duties, roles, and accomplishments, board members contribute in ways that are not registered or reflected in our minutes. Shari has reached out to individual board members to help build strategic partnerships, as she did with Mozilla, for instance. Other board members have many informal discussions with members of the Tor community that directly loop back into board discussions, while organization officers like Roger reach out to board members to discuss particular grants. We’d also like to remind everyone that they should feel free to contact us at any time on any matter related to the Tor Project (I've included our contact information below). Now that we’ve wrapped up the ED search, we’ve returned again to expanding the board, and a few of us are in the process of reaching out to a couple of other candidates, one of whom was recommended by a Tor community member (and we happily continue to welcome recommendations like these). Like everyone else, we are also thrilled to work with the incoming ED, Isabela, who will be joining us for our August board meeting. While there will be period of transition as we work with a new ED, we feel the organization has matured and stabilized under Shari’s careful and skilled guiding hand to the point where we can help Isabela fulfill her strategic vision. We were exceedingly impressed by her plan to make Tor more usable and more technically robust and we felt her wide-ranging experience running projects and teams, her intense familiarity with Tor, and her dedication to the fight for privacy and the people of Tor, made her the ideal candidate to shepherd this organization forward into the future. Don’t hesitate to contact any of us if you have any questions, queries, suggestions, and/or comments. Gabriella Coleman, on behalf of the entire board. ps-- I'd like to thank Linus for formatting all the minutes and putting them online. [1] https://gitweb.torproject.org/company/policies.git/tree Gabriella Coleman, biella(a)riseup.net <mailto:biella@riseup.net> Megan Price, meganp(a)hrdag.org <mailto:meganp@hrdag.org> Cindy Cohn, cindy(a)eff.org <mailto:cindy@eff.org> Linus Nordberg linus(a)torproject.org <mailto:linus@torproject.org> rsa4096/8C4CD511095E982EB0EFBFA21E8BF34923291265 Ramy Raoof, ramyraoof(a)riseup.net <mailto:ramyraoof@riseup.net> Bruce Schneier, schneier(a)schneier.com <mailto:schneier@schneier.com> Matt Blaze, blaze(a)cis.upenn.edu <mailto:blaze@cis.upenn.edu> Julius Mittenzwei, julius(a)mittenzwei.com <mailto:julius@mittenzwei.com>

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July spreadsheet: users queries, demands, and issues
by cy63113 17 Aug '18

17 Aug '18

Hi everybody, As many of you know, I've been gathering, for the last for 3 months, issues, comments, demands, and suggestions from different sources like IRC channels, blog comments, Stack Exchange, Tor and Tails Reddit, RT, Facebook, and Twitter. During these months, I noticed that there are multiple users reporting of the same issues, the number #1 are connection problems in TBB alpha and unstable version (7.5.6 & 8.09): "TOR unexpectedly exited" "It is not working" "Fail to connect" and so on, mostly in Windows 10. Also, there are lots of users concern is if is safe to use Tor in Windows. You can check the July spreadsheet here: https://ethercalc.org/fk4bgj7ntrbj A curious fact, seems (there's no way to know for sure) that many more men than women make questions, looking for answers, ask for help... in the monitored channels. Please feel free to reach me out if you have feedback, comments or something else. Cheers, Cybelle

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Notes from August 16 2018 Vegas team meeting
by Karsten Loesing 17 Aug '18

17 Aug '18

Notes for August 16 2018 meeting: Georg: 1) got back from vacation and dealt with my backlog 2) We prepared Tor Browser 8.0a10 and are currently building it. Planned release is 8/20. 3) We are close to get our first alpha for Tor Browser on Android out. Planned build date is tomorrow, 8/17, and it will go out next week. isabela: 1) Working on sponsors reports (I need to get this done asap) 2) Attended FOCI, met a lot of people. Had meetings w/ Sarah, Arturo and Roger as well. Time well spent :) 3) Organizing 2 things related to our Brand: 1. Mozilla want to do a research on Tor brand perception, we will meet w/ them next week and 2. Berkeley University has a student program called the Berkeley Group that helps non-profits with different things, we are in touch with them to help us build a strategy to help improve our brand perception. 4) Working on hiring, interviewing candidates, job posts. Also building onboarding for PMs and general onboarding. 5) Trying to catch up with emails and with sending Alison the sessions suggestions I have. steph: 1) DEF CON last weekend: ama went well! very friendly tone, in depth questions / answers. demand for us to have a booth next year! who’s in? will keep an eye on submission dates. 2) presented at 2nd cybersecurity program for HS girls. thanks to gman999 for the help. talking with Yin about possible future events and media collabs. {It took me a few seconds to figure out that HS=High School, not Hidden Service --Nickm} [haha :D] 3) edited a nice post tommy wrote about sina for the blog 4) working on website copy 5) talking with sarah about possible newsletter changes 6) trying to get a mozilla blog post mentioning Tor updated 7) talking with Gunnar about media outreach for mexico Alison: 1) Back from vacation and catching up 2) Held LFI weekend on the first weekend of August, and it was awesome! 3) Continuing with meeting planning for Mexico. Please encourage your teams to submit their agenda ideas emails to me. 4) Gus is working on further developing the open days. Ideally we'll have a blog post out soon, just waiting on the location details of the feminist meetup after the meeting. 5) Colin is working on a relay operators meetup for the open days 6) We started organizing our team plans for developing community.tpo 7) The Outreachy term is ending, and we're encouraging Cy and Jaruga to stick around Tor :) 8) Gus is getting ready to go to Kenya 9) Once we catch up with this week, we'll get back to the TB 8.0 docs for Android Sarah: 1) Met with isabela and Roger at FOCI. 2) Working to optimize the email list and make the subscribe/unsubscribe process better for the user and have clear data collection in Civi. 3) Finalizing Donate page changes with Giant Rabbit. 4) YE campaign planning. 5) Networking to find a great grant writer. Nick: 1) Getting somewhat bogged down with team deliverables; must remind various folks. 2) Worked with mike et al to try to find some direction on congestion control/datagram issues. 3) Privcount marches on 4) NSS+TLS is still eating my brain as a programmer. Shari: 1) preparing for board meeting next week 2) continuing to interview people for various jobs 3) met with auditors last week; preparing for 2017 audit 4) talking with UC Berkeley group about branding 5) need to make small budget revisions for Sida Karsten: 1) Moved ExoneraTor to its own webpage on Tor Metrics in an attempt to bundle all user-facing metrics-related content and services on the Tor Metrics website. 2) Modified per-graph CSV files available on Tor Metrics in preparation of deprecating and removing the pre-aggregated CSV files one month later. 3) Removed the "Fraction of relays reporting onion-service statistics" graph after including its data in existing per-graph CSV files. 4) Put out several Onionoo releases and patch releases to fix regressions introduced in protocol version 6.2. Mike: 1) Coordinating research on congestion control/Tor performance topics 2) Finishing up Sponsor2 report 3) I think that Tor could benefit from (at least one?) more research/transition to practice developer(s). I can't do all the coordination and all the development, and fill in missing research/experimentation pieces too. I am still thinking about what this looks like, but in particular there are often experiments that are left out of published papers, and aren't quite enough for papers on their own. This means the academic community won't do them. There's also a lot of work to do things like eg transition the various subcomponents from vanguards into core-tor.

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Tor Browser team meeting notes, 13 Aug 2018
by Georg Koppen 14 Aug '18

14 Aug '18

Hi all! We had another Tor Browser team meeting yesterday 1800 UTC in #tor-meeting at irc.oftc.net. The meeting log can be found at: http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2018/tor-meeting.2018-08-13-17.59.log… The entries from our meeting pad are below: Discussion: - The TBA strings file seem to contain Fennec strings. Compare: https://gitweb.torproject.org/translation.git/tree/en/android_strings.dtd?h… https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/file/812e732d0928/mobile/android/bas… mcs and brade: Past two weeks: - Tried a few more things for #26514 (intermittent updater failures on Win64). - Fixed #26985 (Tor Launcher help button icons missing). - Fixed #25509 (Tor Launcher misleading proxy prompt). - Created an updated patch for #26960 (implement new about:tor). - Worked on desktop onboarding: - Created a patch for #26961 (new user onboarding). - Created a patch for #27082 (enable a limited UITour). - Researched #26962 (new feature onboarding). This week: - We will be unavailable on Thursday and Friday of this week due to family commitments. - Try jacek's suggestion for #26514 (intermittent updater failures on Win64). - Incorporate final artwork for #26961 (new user onboarding). - Work on #26962 (new feature onboarding). - Review our notes from #22074 (undocumented bugs since FF52esr) and file additional tickets if necessary. - Revisit #26381 (about:tor page does not load on first start in localized Windows bundle). Does anyone else have time to work on this ticket? -pospeselr: I can take a look! - After the Tor Browser nightly builds include the network team's fix for #26876, do some testing for #26251 (Adapt macOS snowflake compilation to new toolchain). boklm: Past two weeks: - made a patch adding an option for incremental firefox builds (#27045) - found some way to make a program requiring GLIBCXX_3.4.22 for #25485 (Fix libstdc++.so.6 compatibility for Tor Browser) and reviewed patch from sukhe - reviewed #27020 (RBM build fails with runc version 1.01) - made patch for #27101 (Error building tor in tor browser nightly builds) - the machine doing nightly builds has some network issue, but I won't be able to fix it until next week, so I set up a new replacement VM - fixed some testsuite issues: #26981, #27106 This week: - continue working on #27105 (fixing testsuite for esr60) and subtickets - look at #12968 (HEASLR) - help with #25485 if needed (libstdc++ issue with updater) - help with building new release pospeselr: Last weeks: - got cross-compiled incremental mingw windows builds working, initial setup and build still takes awhile (but less than a full rbm build), but subsequent builds after changes around ~2 minutes, mostly linking (in a VM) - workflow for printf debugging windows tor-browser is now way less painful - winsetup and winbuild scripts available in a branch here: https://gitweb.torproject.org/user/richard/tor-browser.git/commit/?h=winbui… - shouldn't we apply ifdef'd versions of the build-time windows specific patches ( 1464084.patch, 1467041.patch and strcmpi -> stricmp) to the firefox source directly rather than applying them in rbm? [GeKo: it's meant to indicate their temporal status essentially being patches not meant to be carried around in tor-browser, although this could possibly be debated in the strcmpi->stricmp case] - fix for #26874 ( Investigate UNC path restrictions failure in Tor Browser 8.0a9 ) - turns out this is actually broken in ESR60 when FF is *not* installed to an SMB share This week: - uplift fix for #26874 - update wiki with cross-compile mingw build instructions - review #27045 ( Add option for firefox incremental builds ) - review gk's patches - #26381 (about:tor page does not load on first start in localized Windows bundle) - #21785 (Keep an eye on the Storage API ) - Portland for Rustconf Thursday-Friday - my initial reason for going to this was to get some hands on experience with rust, but do we as a team have any goals we wish to accomplish with a presence here? - considerations for rust for tbb standalone launcher, rust-qt bindings? igt0: Last Weeks: - Make sure the #26884 works with noscript webextension (it does!) - Worked on TBA onboarding #25696 - The final assets are missing, I am working together with Antonela on it. - The design is slightly different than the one in the bug. In landscape mode the UI doesn't have enough space, so the whole view scrolls. - Started #27111 (about:tor for mobile) This Week: - Finish #27111 - Update #26574 addressing Geko's comments - Review mobile related patches sysrqb: Last weeks: Audited third party libraries in Fennec (#26982, #25851 (plus child tickets)) Reviewed permissions requested by Fennec and created patches (#24796, #26825, #26826) Investigated Fennec's Firefox Account code and nearly finished a patch for it (#26858) Researched how Mozilla localize Fennec and build localized releases (#26843) This week: Finish Firefox Account Manager patch (#26858) TBA onboarding ticket Make sure we're ready for releasing the first alpha version of TBA RustConf on Friday tjr mingw - Have a build in -central that builds.... just doesn't run =( pospeselr: you using msvcr whatever spec file? nevermind! tjr: this is using mingw-clang w/ ucrt so we shouldn't need it fuzzyfox needs some feedback from david; but it probably getting closer arthuredelstein: Last two weeks: * Was afk for a few days * Audited HTTP2 implementation and patch for #14952 * Wrote patch for #24056 (UI locale is detectable by button width) * Wrote patch for #17252 (Confirm TLS session resumption/ID respect FPI) * Confirmed #21787 (Make sure exposing calendar info does not leak the locale) * Reviewed #26655 (onion button wrong size and color) * Re-verified #17512 (Tor Browser installer isn't properly localized) * Opened #27123 (ping/settings timing side-channels, #27098 (monthly giving banner), #23925 (2018 donation banner) #27097 (Join email list) * Updated Tor Browser locale monitoring: torpat.ch/locales * Wrote patch for #26609 (investigate whether the -moz-windows-accent-color-in-titlebar media query adds a fingerprinting vector) -- patch soon Coming week: * Revise #14952 as needed * More tbb-fingerprinting patches * torbutton banner GeKo: Last Week: -being on vacation (the week before mainly reviewing patches, working on #26475 and a bit on the network code review) This Week: -trying to get releases out -I need help with reviews, in particular a second review for #26456, #24056 and tickets I provided patches for (#26628, #26833, #26655) -work on my backlog -work on #26475 -work on network code review sukhe: Last Weeks: - #25485 (libstdc++): merged but will need revision - #26476 (Windows crash): still investigating, doing log comparison now - no longer blocks on tjr - #12968 (HEASLR): no progress so now asked boklm to look into it - (offline two days last week) This Week: - #26476 (Windows crash) - Revise #25485? - Hooman and I are going to resume #25483 (Windows reproducible build of snowflake) - anything else I can pick since the above two involve building and won't take up all my time? [GeKo: I'll look at some tickets after the meeting, e.g.:#27061 and #24465] sisbell: Last Week: Confirmed that generated Android APKs have different checksums after 2 builds (classes.dex different) Investigating diffs and android grade builds This Week: Continue investigating why classes.dex isn’t reproducible Setup Mac environment for builds Attending RustConf Thurs/Fri Georg

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Network team meeting notes, 13 Aug 2018
by Nick Mathewson 14 Aug '18

14 Aug '18

Good hello! Logs at: http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2018/tor-meeting.2018-08-13-17.06.html Meeting notes below-- = Network team meeting pad! = Welcome to our meeting! Mondays 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.) After each week's meetings, the contents of this pad will be sent to tor-project @ lists.torproject.org. After that is done, the pad can be used for the next week. == Previous notes == 11 June: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-project/2018-June/001828.html 18 June: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-project/2018-June/001835.html 25 June: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-project/2018-July/001863.html 2 July: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-project/2018-July/001866.html 9 July: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-project/2018-July/001884.html 16 July: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-project/2018-July/001888.html 23 July: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-project/2018-July/001926.html 30 July: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-project/2018-July/001928.html 6 Aug: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-project/2018-August/001936.html == Stuff to do every week = * Let's check and update the roadmap. What's done, and what's coming up? url to roadmap: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Ufrun1khEo5Cwd6OwngERn829wU3W3eskdr… * Check reviewer assignments at https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Ufrun1khEo5Cwd6OwngERn829wU3W3eskdr… * Also, let's check for things we need update on our spreadsheet! Are there important documents we should link to? Things we should archive? * Check rotations at https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/teams/NetworkTeam/TeamRot… * Community guides, it's time to hand off to the next guide! * Let's look at proposed tickets! [but see discussion] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/query?status=accepted&status=assig… == Reminders == * Remember to "/me status: foo" at least once daily. * Remember that our current code reviews should be done by end-of-week. * Make sure you are in touch with everybody with whom you are doing work for the next releases ------------------------------- ---- 13 August 2018 ------------------------------- == Announcements == - Nick is on a plane flight, scheduled to land 30 minutes before this meeting. He might miss this one. :( == Discussion == - Did everybody answer on the pad about roadmap status at https://pad.riseup.net/p/huDStrBDgqi5 ? - How are reviews coming? == Updates == Nick: * Last week: - Put out a release candidate - Privcount revisions - NSS TLS prep-work, and started hacking on it - Various NSS bugfixes - Roadmap revisions. - Visiting inlaws - Misc review * This week: - Further privcount revisions TBD - NSS TLS implementation ? - Finalize roadmap revisions. - Welcome dgoulet back (on/after the 16th), ask about memory profiles - In theory 0.3.4 becomes stable on August 15. Delay it? (Decided: yes, esp wrt 27080) teor (offline): last week: - I was on the community hero rotation. It was a quiet week. We have a great community! - revised macOS CI for Core Tor (#24629) - chutney 0.3.5 refactor fix (#26067, #26068) - PrivCount in Tor: blinding and encryption (#24629, #26970, #26972, #26973) - bwauth mentoring (mainly https://github.com/pastly/simple-bw-scanner/issues/182 ) - code reviews (#26972, #23588, #27089) - Discovered that bridges are broken in 0.3.4 and master (#27080) - meeting planning this week: - I'm on leave for the local holiday on Wednesday - Try to fix bridges are broken in 0.3.4 and master (#27080) - PrivCount in Tor: blinding and encryption - reviews, fixes, design meeting - work out the earliest rust version tor supports, and add CI for it rest of 0.3.5: - Implement PrivCount in Tor noise generation (#26637, maybe #26398) - Merge PrivCount in Tor - Reduce my revision backlog asn: [Will be commuting during meeting time. Will attend based on net connectivity.] Last week: - Reviewed #26885, #27003, #23576. - Did some more vanguard testing and submitted edits to mike's vanguard docs. - Revised and posted latest iteration of v3 client auth spec to [tor-dev]: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2018-August/013386.html Will wait a few days before merging it upstream. - Read teor's et al. (unpublished) paper on Tor statistics. There are a few oddities highlighted in that paper that we might want to look at. - Got travel arranged for Mexico! - Did review assignments. We have two people in vacations this week (ahf, and dgoulet until thursday), so load was spread less thinly. If you are too overwhelmed with reviews, please let us know and we will try to load balance better. This week: - Debug v3 issues. - Look at some vanguard stuff and maybe think about turning the README to a blog post. - Do reviews catalyst: last week (2018-W32): - reviewed #24629 (macos Travis support) and related tickets - more NSS patch review (problems with test-network) - gave feedback on Rust stuff to prep for Rustconf - made some subtickets for #25502 (intermediate PT bootstrap status) and #22266 (jump-to-80% bootstrap problem) - talked with ahf briefly about #25502 this week (2018-W33): - CI/Coverity roation - ticket review - more work on #25502 and #22266 - home maintenance backlog haxxpop: last week: - discussed with asn and we concluded that we should merge the torspec branch first to make it final before I start revising my client auth branch [asn: how long do you think i should wait before merging? i could do it tomorrow even. wondering because the branch is lined up for 035, so torspec merge influences final merge date][haxpop: I think 3 days is enough because we already had a long discussion about it] this week: - I will try to rebase my branch with master first and see if there is anything broken - Revise my branch after the torspec is merged Mike: Last week: - Wrote Sponsor2 report, sent it to our grants list, did not submit yet. - Did most of my code reviews; will need a second review with #25152 [Nickm volunteers -nm] - Worked with packagers/prepped for next vanguard release - Dug into #27066. Still digging.. - Updated branch for #25573 - In dicussions with various people about congestion control research. Please see my network-team mail. Do we have any preferences for direction and collaboration wrt that mail? This week: - Make sure Sponsor2 report is good for submission - Keep digging into #27066 - Put out vanguard release - Continue discussions about congestion control - Chat with Tobias Pulls about adaptive padding implementation variants - Vanguards/onion service security blog post with asn? - Work with Chelsea+others on a peer review checklist for research?

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July Communications Report
by Stephanie A. Whited 13 Aug '18

13 Aug '18

Hello Tor! Last month, we were out and about + working on copy for upcoming releases and our new site. I joined Alison, David, George, and Matt at HOPE for the Onion Report: https://livestream.com/internetsociety/hope/videos/178158095 We had a booth the whole weekend and were cleaned out of shirts for donations in a few hours. Matt and I (with help from gman and Yin) led a Tor session as part of the Computer Science for Cyber Security (CS4CS) Summer Program for High School Women. Another session with a new group is happening next week. July in links and stats: Blog posts https://blog.torproject.org/help-us-translate-our-new-support-portal https://blog.torproject.org/explore-tor-nyc-qa-isabela-bagueros https://blog.torproject.org/how-do-effective-and-impactful-tor-research https://blog.torproject.org/tors-open-research-topics-2018-edition https://blog.torproject.org/announcing-vanguards-add-onion-services https://blog.torproject.org/support-torservers https://blog.torproject.org/egypt-internet-censorship Twitter https://twitter.com/torproject avg at least 3 tweets/weekday New followers: 994* *We lost between 2,000-3,000 followers in the Twitter purge[1]. We gained 944 more back this month than however many we lost (exact number unknown). Top tweets https://twitter.com/torproject/status/1013859982876561408 https://twitter.com/torproject/status/1015311953596764160 https://twitter.com/torproject/status/1016712421044604929 https://twitter.com/torproject/status/1016307257771003904 https://twitter.com/torproject/status/1016712421044604929 https//twitter.com/torproject/status/1015311953596764160Mastodon https://mastodon.social/@torproject at least 1 post/week New followers: 221 Instagram https://www.instagram.com/torproject/ at least 1 post/month New followers: 57 LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/tor-project/ at least 1 post/week New followers: 59 Facebook https://www.facebookcorewwwi.onion/TorProject/ at least 1 post/weekday New followers: 178 Newsletter 1/month https://newsletter.torproject.org/archive/2018-07-31-research-tips-topics-e… Notable press https://www.techrepublic.com/article/5-ways-to-protect-your-privacy/ https://www.cyberscoop.com/domain-fronting-ban-letter-ron-wyden-marco-rubio… https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/wjkjzm/what-went-wrong-at-the-ho… [1] https://www.nytimes3xbfgragh.onion/2018/07/12/technology/twitter-followers-… o/ -steph -- Stephanie A. Whited Communications Director The Tor Project IRC: stephw PGP Key ID: 39A876AD <https://pgp.mit.edu/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x6D6B72C339A876AD>

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[TSoP] stem.client - status report #6
by Dave Rolek 13 Aug '18

13 Aug '18

Hi everyone! This is my sixth status report for the stem.client TSoP project [1]. You may see my previous reports on the tor-project ml. [2][3][4][5][6] This report is about a week late. # Updates It's been roughly 2.5 weeks since my last update. I've still suffered from illness during this time - I'd say it knocked out most of a week :( - but I think I've made some decent progress in stem.client. I'm working through it, somewhat successfully. ## stem.client I'm working through my plans for the stem.client roadmap. You may recall from a previous status report [5] these early items on the roadmap: 1. refactor: Relay cell encryption/decryption/processing 2. centralize ORPort reads/sends (demux/mux) at connection level 3. implement required RelayCell subclasses (e.g. parsing of decrypted body) (1) is mostly done in #27112 [7], with just a few more changes I wish to make [8]. Both (2) and (3) have had some groundwork laid with #27112, as well. Notably I've created an intermediate RawRelayCell class that can handle arbitrary payloads (mostly to be used for encrypted payloads), and started to move the finer details of encryption/decryption/processing into the Cell abstraction. ## stem, general Discovering a py3 bug in #26432 [9], I filed #27030 [10]. I concurrently ran into some of the problems Damian did, and took notes about / fixed them concurrently: * hashing super() causing an infinite loop, a la b48ce682ef1a5fc1d4237d106700ec929f49246b (but not exactly this) [11] * a bit of cleanup from #26420 [12] I ran into a lot of trouble with the tests in #27053 [13], and provided a few rounds of input that has helped move that ticket forward. ## other project-related I convened with plcp a bit over IRC in discussing stem.client code and functionality of the tor-spec, reviewing some of their code [14]. And I did some stem ticket bookkeeping / responses. ## tor, general I've continued to do some bookkeeping / ticket triage as I run across things: * #25573, #25574 "DropMark" * #26228, respond on PR and close out PR * probably more at such lower notability that I didn't take a note about it ## misc I've improved my IRC client config for rejoining the registered IRC channels on reconnect - I should be easier to reach now, even when I'm not personally paying attention to the IRC client. # What's next There's only a bit over a week left in the project. I plan to focus as much as possible on stem.client! ## stem.client Please refer above to the roadmap bullets. I've highlighted a few more changes I wish to make for (1) in the ticket [8]. Between (2) and (3), I'm not sure what's best to tackle next. For (2), the work primarily involves rearchitecting the recv/send into its own thread(s) and centralizing the handling. I've done that sort of work before, so I think I could design and implement that well. For (3), the work is a bit more mundane, but it *does* provide the building blocks to do higher-level management of circuits, like extending a circuit (building blocks, naturally: EXTEND[ED][2] cells). I'm thus leaning to tackle (3) first. These are both important, but I think (3) enables other work to be done, whereas (2) is an architectural improvement that improves stability and usage, but doesn't open way for much functionality. ## tor-spec File tickets to track spec improvements resulting from TSoP experience. (These are bookkeeping / awareness tickets for my WIP changes.) I still haven't filed these, and the spec has changed a bit, so I'm deprioritizing this further until after stem.client coding. ## misc I've generated a backlog of tasks that I haven't gotten to, including ones I've mentioned in previous status reports. I'm deprioritizing these for now, but I really do hope to get to them. I'm not going to repeat / enumerate them here, for sanity's sake :) # Other Tor things Multiple in-person chats, yet again. While a sample size of 1 (i.e. me) is by no means scientific, I'd say there's a definite, growing interest in Tor and digital privacy overall. # Closing With illness persisting, I had another period where I stopped reading IRC scrollback proactively, but I think I might be back on track again. Nonetheless, please still mention my nick (dmr) if you want to get my attention! As with before, please don't hesitate to reach out to me via IRC or email! Thanks, Dave [1] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2018-April/013090.html [2] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-project/2018-May/001811.html [3] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-project/2018-June/001830.html [4] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-project/2018-June/001858.html [5] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-project/2018-July/001886.html [6] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-project/2018-July/001917.html [7] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/27112 [8] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/27112#comment:2 [9] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/26432 [10] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/27030 [11] https://gitweb.torproject.org/stem.git/commit/?id=b48ce682ef1a5fc1d4237d106… [12] https://gitweb.torproject.org/stem.git/commit/?id=d1284e6d0301de59ddf286b5e… [13] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/27053 [14] https://github.com/plcp/stem-client/tree/6593f56f6dfdfc54102091b537b63f8dd1…

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Notes from August 9 2018 Vegas team meeting
by Karsten Loesing 10 Aug '18

10 Aug '18

Notes for August 9 2018 meeting: Karsten: 1) Released Onionoo 6.2 which added a few enhancements, but also contained a regression or two. Our plan is to put out a minor or patch release early next week. 2) Handled an issue with CollecTor instances not syncing properly, which led to a data loss of one day. Fortunately, with teor's help, we were able to recover the missing data from friendly relay operators. Sarah: 1) Working with Arthur on including fundraising messaging in banners on the Tor Browser. 2) Looking into ways to increase subscription to Tor Newsletter. 3) Working with Giant Rabbit on updating the Donate page. 4) Reaching out to past major donors. 5) Excellent meeting with Dan and Nat from OTF on Monday. They offered to serve as resources in our efforts to diversify our funding. Shari: 1) meeting with auditor and Sue, who is coming to town 2) interviewing potential bookkeepers 3) reviewing other job applicants 4) budgeting fun with Sida 5) generally getting things ready to hand off to Isa isabela: 1) working on reports for sponsors 2) working on onboarding for pms 3) reviewing alpha launch copy / organizing comms and ux team collaboration 4) helped sue and shari deal w/ some requests from drl 5) met w/ matt about nyc tor workspace and more collaboration with IFF; met with jigsaw ux team and devs; met with Karsten about metrics team. 6) trying to organize all the things for mexico that I think are important and should happen 7) planing to have syncs with Sarah (on fundraising opportunities calendar) and Steph (on overall comms strategy) 8) got my visa for taiwan will get tickets today for OTF summit 9) plans for the future: general onboarding documentation for tor; diversity report and strategy for tor. Steph: 1) getting ready for def con, land fri morn in Vegas. Bringing stickers, relay flyers, one pagers. Roger's AMA is 6pm Saturday in Crypto & Privacy Village 2) working on tpo copy 3) led LFI media training Saturday 4) doing another Tor session at Computer Science for Cyber Security (CS4CS) Summer Program for High School Women on Wednesday 5) edited some copy for a Tor Browser feedback survey 6) Sarah and I are on a new alias to gather Tor stories - stories@ 7) Tommy is drafting a couple posts Mike: 1) Fixing more vanguards issues for another release next week (wrote README material that can be a blog post, but still hashing it out with asn). 2) Started working on Sponsor2 report; may have NSF portal permissions issues? Arturo: 1) We supported Zimbabwean communities on investigating censorship events during the riots that followed the general elections. 2) Maria gave an OONI lecture at Oxford University, as part of the Annenberg-Oxford Media Policy Summer Institute. 3) We have continued to interview community members to collect their feedback for the revamp of the OONI Probe mobile apps. 4) Submitted the July OONI status report: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-project/2018-August/001939.html 5) Next week Arturo is going to be at FOCI, Baltimore presenting OONI

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July 2018 report for the ux team
by Antonela Debiasi 09 Aug '18

09 Aug '18

Hello Tor! You'll find the highlights of Tor UX team work done in July 2018. ## Tor Browser Onboarding and about:tor Page We have been working closely with the Tor Browser team to have our new about:tor and onboarding user flow ready to test for next TB8 and TBA Alpha releases. We thought of each step of this onboarding as a possibility of learning. When a new user opens Tor Browser for the first time, we have the opportunity to explain how we are protecting them. Describing it in plain words is the best way to introduce the technology and the complex concepts it carries around. On Isabela's words: "The onboarding experience on the product should be to teach the user about the product, so they have a glance of what to expect out of their investment (investment here is the act of finding it, installing, opening it). It is the moment where you present the value proposition of our product to the user. In our case, Tor Browser is considered to be the highest standard to do what it does in comparison with what is out there in the market." You can read more about this process here: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/25695 https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/25696 ## Tor Browser Icon We are changing visual elements related to Tor Browser's image for a new release scheduled later this year, and we want to come up with a concept that resonates with our users and community. To inform our efforts, we'd like to know what Tor Browser means to you. So, what does Tor Browser mean for you? We want to hear your feelings! We will be collecting community feedback for the following weeks here: http://bogdyardcfurxcle.onion/index.php/844392 https://survey.torproject.org/index.php/844392 Are you a designer or someone opinionated about product logos? Follow this trac ticket and braindump your ideas! https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/25702 ## User Testing Reports Helen has been reporting the last user testing we did once back in India, Spain, Uganda, and Colombia. Take a look here! This work is still in progress and we will review them with devs during our next Dev meeting. https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/27010 ## Support Portal The Support Portal has been launched last month, but we still need translators to help us to reach the Tier1 languages. Do you want to help us? https://blog.torproject.org/help-us-translate-our-new-support-portal We changed our UX Team meeting time. You are welcome to join us on Tuesdays at 1400 UTC in #tor-meeting :) On behalf of the Tor UX team, Antonela

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OONI Monthly Report: July 2018
by Maria Xynou 09 Aug '18

09 Aug '18

Hello Tor world, In July 2018, the OONI team published two research reports in collaboration with local partners, examining censorship events in Egypt and Mali. We updated several test lists, continued to work on revamping the OONI Probe mobile apps and made significant progress on the OONI Probe desktop apps. We also carried out UX research (via a survey and interviews) to collect community feedback on the current and upcoming/revamped OONI Probe mobile apps. ## Report on internet censorship in Egypt In collaboration with Egypt's Association for Freedom of Expression and Thought (AFTE), we published a research report examining internet censorship in Egypt. The full report is available here: https://ooni.torproject.org/documents/Egypt-Internet-Censorship-AFTE-OONI-2… We also published a summary of the report on: * Our site: https://ooni.torproject.org/post/egypt-internet-censorship/ * The Tor blog: https://blog.torproject.org/egypt-internet-censorship Thanks to AFTE, we published Arabic translations: * Full report: https://ooni.torproject.org/documents/Egypt-Internet-Censorship-AFTE-OONI-2… * Report summary: https://ooni.torproject.org/documents/summary-egypt-internet-censorship-ara… Our research report received the following press coverage: * Mada Masr (English): https://www.madamasr.com/en/2018/07/02/news/u/report-internet-censorship-ha… * Mada Masr (Arabic): https://www.madamasr.com/ar/2018/07/02/news/u/%D8%AA%D9%82%D8%B1%D9%8A%D8%B… * Al Araby: https://www.alaraby.co.uk/medianews/2018/7/2/%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B1%D9%82%D8%A7… * Al Manassa: https://almanassa.net/ar/story/10567 OONI's Maria was also interviewed about the report on the Al Araby TV channel: http://alaraby.tv/video/26968523/%D8%A8%D8%AA%D9%88%D9%82%D9%8A%D8%AA-%D9%8… (starts at 38 minutes). ## Report on internet censorship in Mali during 2018 elections During Mali's 2018 presidential election, locals reported that social media was inaccessible. Thanks to daily measurements collected (for more than a year) from Mali by our local partners, we were able to detect changes in censorship policies on Mali's election day. In collaboration with Internet Sans Frontieres, we published a report that shares OONI data, corroborating local reports on the blocking of WhatsApp and Twitter during the elections. We also found circumvention tool sites guardianproject.info and anonymizer.ru to be blocked on the election day as well. Our research report is available here: https://ooni.torproject.org/post/mali-disruptions-amid-2018-election/ Internet Sans Frontieres referenced OONI data from this report as part of their press statement: https://internetwithoutborders.org/mali-censure-des-reseaux-sociaux-pendant… In response, the EU election observation mission in Mali called on the government to guarantee access to the internet and to social media during the whole electoral period (including the second round of elections on 12th August 2018): https://eeas.europa.eu/election-observation-missions/eom-mali-2018/49004/d%…. Internet Sans Frontieres also published a blog post on this: https://internetwithoutborders.org/eu-asks-mali-to-protect-access-to-social… ## Progress on OONI Probe desktop apps A lot of progress was made in working towards a beta release of the OONI Probe desktop apps. See: https://github.com/ooni/probe-desktop/pull/2 We have reached a point where it's possible via the OONI Probe desktop app to run all the experiments currently supported by the mobile app, as well as to view the results. Several views are implemented based on the desktop app mockups and we did some testing and debugging of the app on Windows and macOS. As part of this work, we also made a lot of progress on the command line interface OONI Probe client. See: https://github.com/ooni/probe-cli/pull/13 Some highlights include being able to build a CLI ooni tool that will run on Linux to empower a fellow OONI developer that is developing on the Linux platform. Although we believe that we have made enough progress to call this a beta, we have decided to hold back a bit from "officially" calling it a beta, since we would like to do a bit more polishing of the desktop and CLI app. In particular, the outstanding issues are noted in the following two GitHub milestones: * OONI Probe Desktop: https://github.com/ooni/probe-desktop/milestone/1 * OONI Probe CLI: https://github.com/ooni/probe-cli/milestone/1 ## Progress on revamping OONI Probe mobile apps On the iOS version (of the revamped OONI Probe mobile apps), we made some UI and code improvements. See: https://github.com/ooni/probe-ios/commits/feature/gson_objects On the Android version, we finished the dashboard, the class to run tests asynchronously with callbacks and the first test results screen. See: https://github.com/lorenzoPrimi/ooniprobe-android/pull/2 & https://github.com/lorenzoPrimi/ooniprobe-android/pull/3 ## UX research As part of our work on revamping the OONI Probe mobile apps, we carried out UX research that aimed to collect community feedback on the current OONI Probe mobile apps, as well as on our mockups for the revamped/upcoming OONI Probe mobile apps. To this end, we created and circulated a survey, and interviewed multiple community members. We have many more interviews scheduled for August as well. We also published a blog post sharing the links to the survey, and encouraging community members to participate in usability feedback interviews: https://ooni.torproject.org/post/ooniprobe-ux-survey-and-interviews/ ## Updated test lists We carried out research (https://ooni.torproject.org/get-involved/contribute-test-lists/#test-list-r…) to update the following test lists: 1. South Sudan: https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists/pull/366 2. Eritrea: https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists/pull/367 Based on URLs provided by community members, we also updated the following test lists: 1. Uzbekistan: https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists/pull/363 & https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists/pull/368 2. Multiple country test lists with Wikipedia domains: https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists/pull/365 ## Community use of OONI data ### Human Rights Censorship Dashboards: Monitoring internet censorship in Southeast Asia We are thrilled that Southeast Asian communities have set up a regional Open Observatory! Malaysia's Sinar Project launched the Internet Censorship Dashboards project which engages communities all across Southeast Asia with censorship measurement research through the use of OONI Probe and OONI data. The collected measurements will be displayed in a dashboard, enabling local monitoring of and response to regional censorship events. Their project is available here: https://sinarproject.org/digital-rights/updates/human-rights-censorship-das… ### Blocking of websites in Malaysia Malaysia's Sinar Project published a list of censored websites based on OONI data: https://data.sinarproject.org/dataset/list-of-censored-websites/resource/b2… ### Blocking of websites in Burundi CIPESA reported on the blocking of websites in Burundi through the use of OONI Probe and OONI data: https://cipesa.org/2018/07/a-new-interception-law-and-blocked-websites-the-… ### Tor blocking Briar's Torsten Grote created and published data tables that show the blocking of Tor around the world based on OONI measurements. This resource is available here: https://grobox.de/tor/ ## Community activities ### OONI Probe workshop in Albania OONI's Simone and Elio hosted an OONI Probe workshop at the Open Labs Hackerspace in Tirana, Albania, on 6th July 2018. Information about their workshop is available via the following links: https://www.facebook.com/events/396021484219636/ https://wiki.openlabs.cc/faqja/OONI_Probe_Workshop ### Lecture & OONI Probe usability workshop in Ukraine OONI's Maria gave an OONI lecture in Kiev, Ukraine, on 13th July 2018. Information about the event is available here: https://m.facebook.com/events/251993642054831/ She also facilitated a day-long OONI Probe usability workshop in Kiev on 14th July 2018. The aim of this workshop was to introduce local communities to censorship measurement research and collect their feedback on the usability of the OONI Probe apps. As part of the workshop, participants were requested to provide feedback for the current OONI Probe mobile apps, as well as for the mockups of the upcoming/revamped mobile apps. The feedback collected as part of this workshop is guiding the revamp of the OONI Probe mobile apps. ### Cambodia election monitoring Malaysia's Sinar Project leads most OONI community engagement activities across Southeast Asia. Leading up to Cambodia's 2018 elections (29th July 2018), Sinar Project led a campaign to engage locals in Cambodia with OONI Probe testing to montior (potential) censorship events. As part of these efforts, they created customized OONI Run links to measure the blocking of local media and NGO sites, embedded in the following site: https://sinarproject.org/digital-rights/kh-2018-elections/cambodia-2018-ele… ### Community meeting We held a community meeting on Slack (https://slack.openobservatory.org/) on Tuesday, 31st July 2018. As part of our July community meeting, we discussed the following: 1. Updates on internet blackouts methodology and next steps 2. Monitoring internet censorship during Cambodia's elections: Discussion of strategies carried out, lessons learned, feedback for the OONI team, and planned next steps 3. Presentation of Magma: A guide for network measurement and data analysis in risky environments ## Userbase In July 2018, OONI Probe was run 217,316 times from 4,497 different vantage points in 210 countries around the world. This information can also be found through our stats: https://api.ooni.io/stats ~ The OONI team. -- Maria Xynou Research & Partnerships Director Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) https://ooni.torproject.org/ PGP Key Fingerprint: 2DC8 AFB6 CA11 B552 1081 FBDE 2131 B3BE 70CA 417E

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tor-project August 2018