October 2023 - tor-project - lists.torproject.org

OONI Monthly Report: July 2023
by Maria Xynou 16 Oct '23

16 Oct '23

Hello, This email shares OONI's monthly report for July 2023. *# OONI Monthly Report: July 2023* Throughout July 2023, the OONI team worked on the following sprints: * Sprint 95 (3rd - 16th July 2023) * Sprint 96 (17th - 30th July 2023) Our work can be tracked through the various OONI GitHub repositories: https://github.com/ooni Highlights are shared in this report below. *## New partnership* We are excited to have formed a new partnership with Digital Rights Lab Sudan (https://twitter.com/DRLab_Sudan) The goal of the partnership is to collaborate on the study of internet censorship in Sudan. We published a dedicated partner page for Digital Rights Lab Sudan, highlighting their important work: https://ooni.org/partners/drlab/ *## Published report on China blocking OONI* In July 2023, China started blocking access to our website (ooni.org) and censorship measurement app (OONI Probe). We published a report documenting the blocking of OONI in China with OONI data: https://ooni.org/post/2023-china-blocks-ooni/ The block appears to be implemented by means of DNS injection and TLS interference. This is the first time that we're observing a large and persistent drop in OONI measurement coverage as a result of OONI Probe blocking. The report also includes advice for circumventing the blocking of OONI Probe in China. However, running OONI Probe in China is now probably riskier. *## OONI Probe Mobile* Throughout July 2023, we worked towards the release of OONI Probe Mobile 3.8.3. As part of this, we worked on extensive QA testing for both Android ( https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/2504) and iOS ( https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/2509) Based on community feedback, we worked on adding functionality to OONI Probe Android to automatically test new networks ( https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/900) We also worked on improvements to a new Android app (“News Media Scan”) that we have been developing in collaboration with Deutsche Welle over the past months. *## OONI Probe Desktop* In July 2023, we released OONI Probe Desktop 3.9.1 ( https://github.com/ooni/probe-desktop/releases/tag/v3.9.1) with the latest version of OONI Probe CLI and updated dependencies. *## OONI Run### Building OONI Run v.2* In July 2023, we added experimental support to the OONI Probe Engine for invoking the fetch API allowing a client to obtain OONI Run v2 descriptors ( https://github.com/ooni/probe-cli/pull/1176) This functionality allows the OONI Probe mobile app to start implementing OONI Run v2 ( https://github.com/ooni/probe-android/pull/582) We then worked towards adding support for running OONI Run v2 links in the OONI Probe mobile app ( https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/2474) The general idea for this first iteration is to implement minimal functionality into the Engine and let the app do most of the work. Notably, we reached a first milestone where we have an experimental version of the OONI Probe Android app where it is possible to: * Inspect and install an OONI Run v2 link into the OONI Probe Android app dashboard; * Run such a link directly or together with other nettests; * See the results it produced reusing the view used for experimental nettests. Subsequent development milestones will focus on implementing the missing functionality (e.g., updating OONI Run v2 links) and on optimizing the implementation. We continued working on the UI improvements for the OONI Run v2 web editor ( https://github.com/ooni/run/pull/131) We also added backend support for separating the versioning of the copy (included in translations) from the nettest data (https://github.com/ooni/backend/issues/694) and we added localization support to OONI Run v.2 ( https://github.com/ooni/backend/pull/699) To enable the development of the OONI Run platform, we allowed login redirection for more domains on the API (https://github.com/ooni/backend/pull/697) *### Launch of OONI Run supporting localization* In July 2023, we launched OONI Run (https://run.ooni.io/) with support for 9 languages (beyond English): Farsi, Russian, Thai, Turkish, Chinese (Taiwan), Chinese (China), German, Portuguese (Brazil), Spanish. This work is available here: https://github.com/ooni/run/pull/132/files We thank the Localization Lab community (https://www.localizationlab.org/) for making OONI Run available in so many languages, and for their ongoing OONI Run localization efforts (https://explore.transifex.com/otf/ooni-run/) *## OONI Probe CLI* We started preparing the release of OONI Probe CLI 3.18.1, which should include (a) better support for measuring throttling with Web Connectivity LTE; (b) updated dependencies and assets. We also continued to make progress towards OONI Probe CLI v3.19.0. Following up from the work done in previous sprints, we have continued to take advantage of the netem QA framework and we have started migrating some nettests to use it for QA purposes. By using netem, we are able to exercise more censorship conditions in an easier way compared to the previous framework we used (Jafar, based on Linux and iptables). For now, we have migrated the following experiments to netem: * dnsping (https://github.com/ooni/probe-cli/pull/1177) * facebook_messenger (https://github.com/ooni/probe-cli/pull/1178) * sniblocking (https://github.com/ooni/probe-cli/pull/1179) * whatsapp (https://github.com/ooni/probe-cli/pull/1181) * telegram (https://github.com/ooni/probe-cli/pull/1182) As a result, the availability of better QA tests opens up the possibility of being more confident in rewriting these experiments to use the DSL introduced as part of the richer input error. *## Expanding OONI’s testing model to support richer testing input* We continued to work on supporting richer testing input ( https://github.com/ooni/ooni.org/issues/1291) In previous months, we worked towards writing a DSL ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain-specific_language) to support richer testing input (https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/2494) in the context of our richer testing prototype (https://github.com/ooni/2023-05-richer-input) We completed this task in early July 2023 ( https://github.com/ooni/2023-05-richer-input/pull/7, https://github.com/ooni/2023-05-richer-input/pull/8) We now have a DSL that is both external and internal. The internal DSL is executable code but can also be serialized to JSON. We can read the JSON and execute it as an external DSL. We basically use the same code for both DSLs. The internal DSL uses Go generics and each stage in the measurement pipelines has specific input and output types. The external DSL wraps each internal DSL stage with a stage that performs type checking at runtime. The final DSL ( https://github.com/ooni/2023-05-richer-input/releases/tag/v0.3.0) is not Turing complete and only supports stage composition. We have primitive stages (e.g., DNS lookups, TCP connect, TLS handshake, QUIC handshake, HTTP transactions). We have stages for composing together measurement pipelines (e.g., we can compose a TCP connect operation and a TLS handshake operation). And we have primitives to compose pipelines that perform DNS lookups with pipelines that perform endpoint measurements (e.g., TCP connect, TLS handshake). Now that we have finished researching, we have also reached a better degree of clarity on what we can potentially achieve by expressing richer input using this DSL: 1) We can run code directly (internal DSL) or we can generate JSON that we can serve to OONI Probes (external DSL). By serving code to probes, we can update the definition of nettests. So, in the future, we would need less emergency releases when IM apps (such as Signal) change their testing requirements (e.g., they change the CA they use). 2) We can incrementally roll out better implementations of experiments without making new OONI Probe releases. For example, we can (easily!) add support for TLS handshakes to the Facebook Messenger nettest and run this extended version of the nettest only in a subset of probes, closely monitoring whether everything is working as intended, ready to back out the changes in case of issues, or roll out the functionality more extensively if all looks good. 3) We can support the use case of using OONI Probe for research. We (or anyone else concerned) will potentially be able to feed a specific measurement DSL pipeline to OONI Probe consisting of the operations that matter for research. For example, we can imagine serving extra follow-up tests that would run as part of the experimental suite on an opt-in basis in case there is a need to further investigate some censorship findings. To investigate the suitability of the DSL, we reimplemented the Facebook Messenger (https://github.com/ooni/2023-05-richer-input/pull/7) and RiseupVPN (https://github.com/ooni/2023-05-richer-input/pull/12) experiments. The latter, in particular, seems a good candidate to start upgrading production code to use the DSL since it is currently disabled due to concerns involving false positives. For this reason, we also sketched out an initial plan to upgrade it to use the DSL ( https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/2502) In subsequent months, we will continue to investigate this topic, refine our implementation, engage in internal discussions, work on streamlining possible use cases and on defining a path to start rolling this feature out in production. In the meanwhile, we have started to feel more confident about the DSL implementation, as we started adding integration testing using netem (https://github.com/ooni/netem) to it ( https://github.com/ooni/2023-05-richer-input/pull/7, https://github.com/ooni/2023-05-richer-input/pull/9) *## Creating a throttling measurement methodology* Regarding measuring throttling (https://github.com/ooni/ooni.org/issues/1296) we finished improving support for measuring the download speed ( https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/2493) As Web Connectivity LTE now implements collecting download speed samples during a download, we started preparing for making it the default Web Connectivity implementation and for retiring version v0.4. To this end, we started adding support for netem-based integration testing (https://github.com/ooni/probe-cli/pull/1170) and we backported the patch to collect download speed samples ( https://github.com/ooni/probe-cli/pull/1166) to the release/3.18 branch so that we can include this functionality in the upcoming 3.18.1 OONI Probe release. *## OONI Explorer* In July 2023, we released OONI Explorer in the following 2 additional languages: * Swahili: https://explorer.ooni.org/sw * Traditional Chinese: https://explorer.ooni.org/zh-Hant Beyond English, OONI Explorer now supports 10 languages! We thank the Localization Lab (https://www.localizationlab.org/) community for making OONI Explorer – and real-time open data on internet censorship worldwide – available in additional languages! *## Creating a Social Media Censorship Alert System* We continued to make progress towards building a Social Media Censorship Alert System (https://github.com/ooni/backend/pull/651) Based on internal review of the code, we updated the internal design document for further review. We added support for real-time notifications on Slack in the Social Media blocking event detector, along with a summary HTML page. We also created a dedicated Jupyter notebook to show a summary of recent events flagged as social media blocking alerts by our system. *## Creating a Censorship Incident Reporting Platform* In July 2023, we continued working on the UI implementation of the (new) Censorship Incident Reporting Platform ( https://github.com/ooni/explorer/pull/862) Specifically, we added form validations, we improved the layouts (also) by further expanding our component library (https://github.com/ooni/design-system/pull/163) and we added the report index view. *## Automating censorship detection and characterization based on OONI measurements* Improvements were made to how errors are handled while writing observations to the database. Specifically, support was added to dump failing rows to file and retry writing the affected row in the event of a failure ( https://github.com/ooni/data/pull/33) Through this we were able to identify some bugs in the processing of certain types of measurements and implement fixes for them. We started reaching out to third party researchers interested in using this new observation database and training them on how to use it. As part of this, we came up with a setup that allows independent researchers to connect to the database used by the OONI data analysis tool ( https://github.com/ooni/data) and run queries on the platform. *## OONI backend* We improved our Jupyter notebook that tracks test helper failures grouped by datacenter location. It detected a 1-hour long event impacting 0.th.ooni.org. The event was investigated and found to be benign. We continued ongoing work to predict the amount of incoming measurements on a per-country basis using basic machine learning in order to send alarms to the team in the event of a sudden loss of measurements. *## Published OONI Outreach Kit printing materials* In July 2023, we updated the OONI Outreach Kit to include materials designed for printing (https://github.com/ooni/ooni.org/pull/1394) The updated OONI Outreach Kit (including printing materials) is available here: https://ooni.org/support/ooni-outreach-kit/ *## Interviewed Project Manager candidates* In July 2023, we reviewed the final applications and we completed the second round of interviews for the OONI Project Manager position ( https://ooni.org/post/2023-job-opening-ooni-project-manager/) Based on these interviews, we reached a hiring decision and followed up with candidates. *## FOCI 2023 Community Award* On 10th July 2023, OONI’s Maria received the Free and Open Communications on the Internet (FOCI) 2023 Community Award, recognizing the impact of her work in the field of Internet freedom on the wider community. We dedicate this award to the whole OONI community, without whom this work would not be possible ( https://twitter.com/agrabeli_/status/1678722087953760256) *## Community use of OONI data### Report of the Tehran Electronic Commerce Association* In July 2023, the Tehran Electronic Commerce Association published a report on the low quality of the Internet in Iran, citing OONI in many pages (pages 4, 5, 6, 16, 20, 35, 37). Their report is available here: https://etchamber.ir/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Iran-Internet-v0.9.pdf OONI was also cited in an article by Peivast (one of Iran’s largest tech outlets), discussing the findings of the report of the Tehran Electronic Commerce Association: https://peivast.com/p/170337 *### Blocking of satirical news website in Jordan* Our partner, JOSA (https://ooni.org/partners/josa/) reported on the blocking of a satirical news media website (AlHudood) in Jordan, citing OONI data: https://twitter.com/jo_osa/status/1677041740107198465 *### TEDIC’s research report examining internet shutdowns in Northern Paraguay* Our partner, TEDIC (https://ooni.org/partners/tedic/) published a new research report investigating potential disruptions to internet access in the northern zone of Paraguay. We supported this study by providing relevant OONI data analysis. Their report was published in: * Spanish: https://www.tedic.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Informe-Apagones-de-Intern… * English: https://www.tedic.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Internet-Shutdowns-Report-… TEDIC also published a blog post about the study in: * Spanish: https://www.tedic.org/apagones-de-internet-en-paraguay/ * English: https://www.tedic.org/en/internet-shutdowns-in-paraguay/ *### Sinar Project’s report on the blocking of MalaysiaNow* Our partner, Sinar Project, published a report documenting the blocking of MalaysiaNow in Malaysia, through the use of OONI tools and data. Their report is available here: https://imap.sinarproject.org/news/blocking-of-malaysianow-website *### Sinar Project’s report on the blocking of a website of a former Malaysian MP* Sinar Project published a report documenting the blocking of a website ( weechookeong.com) which belongs to a former Malaysian Member of Parliament. Their report makes use of OONI data, and is available here: https://imap.sinarproject.org/news/internet-censorship-update-blocking-of-w… This report received press coverage from MalaysiaNow: https://www.malaysianow.com/news/2023/07/28/online-freedom-monitor-confirms… *### EngageMedia’s Advocacy Toolkit for Civil Society Organizations* In July 2023, EngageMedia published “Addressing Internet Censorship and Content Filtering: An Advocacy Toolkit for Civil Society Organizations” which features OONI tools and resources ( https://engagemedia.org/2023/toolkit-internet-censorship/) Their toolkit is available here: https://engagemedia.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/GIF-Regional-Toolkit-Add… *### PhD thesis on modeling and characterizing internet censorship technologies* In July 2023, a PhD thesis (titled “Modeling and Characterization of Internet Censorship Technologies”) by Alexander Master was published (making use of OONI data): https://www.doi.org/10.25394/PGS.23666784 *### FOCI 2023 academic paper studying worldwide view of nation-state Internet censorship* In July 2023, an academic paper studying a worldwide view of nation-state Internet censorship was published and presented at FOCI 2023. This paper makes use of OONI data for its analysis. The paper is available here: https://www.petsymposium.org/foci/2023/foci-2023-0008.pdf *### Other FOCI 2023 papers citing OONI* OONI was also cited in the following FOCI 2023 papers: * “Crowdsourcing the Discovery of Server-side Censorship Evasion Strategies”: https://www.petsymposium.org/foci/2023/foci-2023-0016.pdf * "Towards a Comprehensive Understanding of Russian Transit Censorship": https://www.petsymposium.org/foci/2023/foci-2023-0012.pdf * "Detecting Network Interference Without Endpoint Participation": https://www.petsymposium.org/foci/2023/foci-2023-0010.pdf *## Community activities### FOCI 2023* On 10th July 2023, OONI’s Arturo attended the Free and Open Communications on the Internet (FOCI) 2023 in Lausanne, Switzerland. Information about the workshop is available here: https://foci.community/ *### Keynote at HotPETs 2023* On 14th July 2023, OONI’s Maria delivered a keynote (titled “The Power of Community Participation in Shaping Digital Rights Tech”) at HotPETs 2023 in Lausanne, Switzerland. Information about the workshop is available here: https://petsymposium.org/2023/hotpets.php *### OONI workshop for Legal Resource Center in South Africa* On 24th July 2023, OONI’s Elizaveta facilitated an online OONI workshop for the team members of South Africa’s Legal Resource Center ( https://lrc.org.za/) The goal of the workshop was to introduce lawyers to the use of OONI tools and data. *### OONI workshop for civil society in Zimbabwe* On 31st July 2023, OONI’s Elizaveta facilitated an online OONI workshop for civil society groups in Zimbabwe, in preparation for the country’s upcoming elections (which may trigger censorship events). *### OONI Community Meeting* On 25th July 2023, we hosted the monthly OONI Community Meeting on our Slack channel (https://slack.ooni.org/) during which we discussed the following topics: 1) Updates from the OONI team 2) IODA Update: Design Standards and Outage Severity Map ( https://ioda.inetintel.cc.gatech.edu/reports/ioda-update-designstandards-ou… ) 3) Community feedback on the thematic presentation of censorship findings on OONI Explorer 4) Community feedback on push notifications: How should OONI utilize them going forward? What would be most useful? *## Measurement coverage* In July 2023, 62,256,645 OONI Probe measurements were collected from 3,135 networks in 172 countries around the world. This information can also be found through our measurement stats on OONI Explorer (see chart on “monthly coverage worldwide”): https://explorer.ooni.org/ ~ OONI team.

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Anti-censorship team meeting notes, 2023-10-12
by Shelikhoo 12 Oct '23

12 Oct '23

Hey everyone! Here are our meeting logs: http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2023/tor-meeting.2023-10-12-15.59.html And our meeting pad: Anti-censorship work meeting pad -------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ THIS IS A PUBLIC PAD ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Anti-censorship -------------------------------- Next meeting: Thursday, Oct 19 16:00 UTC Facilitator: onyinyang Weekly meetings, every Thursday at 16:00 UTC, in #tor-meeting at OFTC (channel is logged while meetings are in progress) This week's Facilitator: shelikhoo == Goal of this meeting == Weekly check-in about the status of anti-censorship work at Tor. Coordinate collaboration between people/teams on anti-censorship at the Tor Project and Tor community. == Links to Useful documents == * Our anti-censorship roadmap: * Roadmap: https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/anti-censorship/-/boards * The anti-censorship team's wiki page: * https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/team/-/wikis/home * Past meeting notes can be found at: * https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-project/ * Tickets that need reviews: from sponsors, we are working on: * All needs review tickets: * https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/anti-censorship/-/merge_requests?s… * Sponsor 96 <-- meskio, shell, onyinyang, cohosh * https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/milestones/24 * Sponsor 150 <-- meskio working on it * https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/anti-censorship/-/issues/?label_na… == Announcements == * A poll to set a date for a 'Future of PTs' voice conversation * https://www.systemli.org/poll/#/poll/YRRF8K19Bq/evaluation?encryptionKey=e1… * Times in UTC == Discussion == * (Network Health) 'Running' flag for counting bridges and network size https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/network-health/team/-/issues/318 * metrics are going to start using bridgestrap instead of the running flag to know if bridge is working * we need bridgestrap to publish results every hour * https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/bridgestrap/-/issues/39 (Oct 12) * Armored Bridge line Spec https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/team/-/issues/126#note_29… * the spec is ready to review * we'll discuss it next week * snowflake broker restart(deployment) needed, and deletion of ip-count-mask key https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… * shelikhoo will tag a snowflake version and deploy it == Actions == == Interesting links == * == Reading group == * We will discuss "" on * * Questions to ask and goals to have: * What aspects of the paper are questionable? * Are there immediate actions we can take based on this work? * Are there long-term actions we can take based on this work? * Is there future work that we want to call out in hopes that others will pick it up? == Updates == Name: This week: - What you worked on this week. Next week: - What you are planning to work on next week. Help with: - Something you need help with. cecylia (cohosh): 2023-10-12 Last week: - followed up on performing Snowflake tests in OONI without Tor - https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/1686#issuecomment-1753563763 - started some larger-scale shadow experiments - various MR reviews This week: - deploy lox distributor (waiting on TPA) - follow up on conjure reliability issues - visualize and write up some snowflake shadow simulation results Needs help with: dcf: 2023-10-12 Last week: - continued to document changes in snowflake bridge usage after the fastly domain front issue - snowflake-02 mysteriously and suddenly returned to former bandwidth levels (not yet former user levels) on 2023-10-04. https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/anti-censorship-team/2023-October/00… https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/anti-censorship-team/attachments/202… - investigated and reported a pluggable transports user counting bug that exists since tor 0.4.8.4. https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/network-health/metrics/website/-/issues/4… https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/core/tor/-/issues/40871 - did client-side experiments to compare the availability of proxies for snowflake-01 and snowflake-02 https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/anti-censorship-team/2023-October/00… - opened an issue to update documentation (bridge line args versus command line options) in snowflake client README https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… - opened an issue to restart the broker after disabling proxy churn metrics https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… Next week: - revise encapsulation.ReadData redesign to return an error in the case of a short buffer https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… - open issue to have snowflake-client log whenever KCPInErrors is nonzero https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… - parent: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… - open issue to disable /debug endpoint on snowflake broker Before EOY 2023: - move snowflake-02 to new VM Help with: meskio: 2023-10-12 Last week: - review sponsor 30 audit issues to be ready to publish - review webtunnel bridgeline args fixes (webtunnel!19) - mostly AFK Next week: - test the whatsapp bot (rdsys#147) Shelikhoo: 2023-10-12 Last Week: - [Merge Request Awaiting] Add SOCKS5 forward proxy support to snowflake (snowflake!64) (continue) - Write Tor Spec for Armored URL(continue) https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/team/-/issues/126#note_29… - Refine argument error processing in WebTunnel server https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/webt… - Renovate is Using Unexpected Golang Version During Dependency Update https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/renovate-cron/-/issues/9 Next Week/TODO: - Write Tor Spec for Armored URL (continue) - [Merge Request Awaiting] Add SOCKS5 forward proxy support to snowflake (snowflake!64) (continue): proceed to rebase - Merge request reviews onyinyang: 2023-10-12 Last week(s): - Made MRs to upstream zkp libs: - fixed bug(? hopefully this can be reviewed) in the zkp crate - made MRs to both dalek-cryptography and zkcrypto and will maintain lox-zkp This week: - Continue with metrics - Add functionality for a MAX_DAILY_BRIDGES (the number of bridges that can be distributed each day) - Start work on telegram distributor bot for Lox (long term things were discussed at the meeting!): https://pad.riseup.net/p/tor-ac-community-azaleas-room-keep - brainstorming grouping strategies for Lox buckets (of bridges) and gathering context on how types of bridges are distributed/use in practice Question: What makes a bridge usable for a given user, and how can we encode that to best ensure we're getting the most appropriate resources to people? 1. Are there some obvious grouping strategies that we can already consider? e.g., by PT, by bandwidth (lower bandwidth bridges sacrificed to open-invitation buckets?), by locale (to be matched with a requesting user's geoip or something?) 2. Does it make sense to group 3 bridges/bucket, so trusted users have access to 3 bridges (and untrusted users have access to 1)? More? Less?

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Online Tor's Hackweek from Nov 6th to Nov 10th 2023
by rhatto 11 Oct '23

11 Oct '23

Hi! The Tor Project and Tor community is going to be gathering online from November 6th to November 9th this year for a 4 days hackweek. ## About This is a call for projects for whoever wants to participate, put together a team and hack through one working week with us. In the context of this hackweek, a project is anything related to Tor documentation that you can work with other people in 4 days. It could be improving the documentation for a project, a tutorial or could also be a cartoon, a screencast or anything that do not necessary requires coding skills. You will work on this project during 4 days with other people in your team. This is an opportunity to discuss how documentation is working or not in your projects, as well as thinking, proposing, researching and testing solutions. Documentation is very important for any free software project as it is the way for people to start understanding the work we are doing, the way they can use our tools and start contributing with it. In the next All-Hands following the Hackweek we are going to have a demo in a Big Blue Button's room where your team will present the work you did through the hackweek. ## Timeline This will be the timeline for the hackweek this year: * Until Monday, November 6th: * Send hackweek project proposals to this issue queue: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/community/hackweek/-/issues (please use the "Proposal" issue template for the ticket Description). * Before hackweek begins, start looking for other people to join your team. * In order to join a proposal you liked, subscribe yourself to it's ticket. * Wednesday, November 1st - 16:00 UTC: All-Hands session prior to the Hackweek were people/teams will present their project proposals for other people to join their team if they want to. * Monday, November 6th: Hackweek begins. People start working on whatever they want related to documentation. By this time, you should have a few members of your team already identified. Hack hack hack hack... in whatever way you organize yourself. We will have the room #tor in irc.oftc.net to discuss general hackweek things. * Thursday, November 9th: Hackweek ends. * Wednesday, November 15th - 16:00 UTC: Each team presents the work they did in the All-Hands session happening after the Hackweek. ## Projects The updated list of projects will be available at https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/community/hackweek/-/issues. Each project can have one pad (you can use https://pad.riseup.net) and also use it's ticket to add all information that people need to add themselves to that project. ## References For best practices on documentation, we recommend the following material: * Diátaxis, "The Grand Unified Theory of Documentation": https://diataxis.fr/ * How to pick up a project with an audit: https://bluesock.org/~willkg/blog/dev/auditing_projects.html cheers, -- Silvio Rhatto pronouns he/him

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ebanam's status report for September 2023
by ebanam 10 Oct '23

10 Oct '23

Hello everyone! Most of my work last month was focussed around helping users troubleshoot and connect to Tor in regions where Tor is heavily censored. In particular, helping users when we got reports of issues connecting with Snowflake[0][1]. Some of my work was concentrated around post-release support work for Tor Browser releases (we had 3 stable and 3 alpha releases). In particular, we got a few user reports of expired subkey warnings with Tor Browser GPG verification[2] and numerous reports of the latest version of Tor Browser getting flagged as malware on Windows[3]. With the upcoming major stable release (Tor Browser 13.0), I did some alpha testing and provided some feedback to our browser and UX teams. Following is a thorough breakdown of tickets our user support team handled in September: Timeframe: 01 - 30 September 2023 # Frontdesk (email support channel) * 719(↓) RT tickets created * 643(↓) RT tickets resolved Most frequent tickets by numbers: 1. 256(↓) RT tickets: private bridge requests from Chinese speaking users. 2. 236(↓) RT tickets: circumventing censorship in Russian speaking countries. 3. 47 RT tickets: Tor Browser detected as malware on Windows. 4. 6(↑) RT tickets: circumventing censorship with Tor in Farsi. 5. 5 RT tickets: gpg verification on Tor Browser warns about expired subkey. # Telegram, WhatsApp and Signal Support channel * 522(↓) tickets resolved Breakdown: * 493(↓) tickets on Telegram * 22(-) tickets on WhatsApp * 7(↓) tickets on Signal The most frequent tickets on cdr.link have been about: 1. 277(↓) tickets: circumventing censorship in Russian speaking countries. 2. 40 tickets: Tor Browser detected as malware on Windows 3. 25(↑) tickets: circumventing censorship with Tor in Farsi. 4. 23(↑) tickets: private bridge requests from Chinese speaking users. 5. 4 tickets: gpg verification on Tor Browser warns about expired subkey. # Highlights from the Tor Forum 1. Problems with Snowflake since 2023-09-20: “broker failure Unexpected error, no answer.”[0] 2. Arti 1.1.8 is released: Onion service infrastructure[4] 3. A closer look at online privacy: new Tor tutorials[5] Thanks! e. Note: (↑), (↓) and (-) are indicative if the number of tickets we received for these topics have been increasing, decreasing or have been the same from the previous month respectively. [0]: https://forum.torproject.org/t/problems-with-snowflake-since-2023-09-20-bro… [1]: https://forum.torproject.org/t/temporary-fix-for-moat-and-connection-assist… [2]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser-build/-/issues/4… [3]: https://forum.torproject.org/t/torbrowser-12-5-6-no-longer-flagged-by-windo… [4]: https://forum.torproject.org/t/arti-1-1-8-is-released-onion-service-infrast… [5]: https://forum.torproject.org/t/a-closer-look-at-online-privacy-new-tor-tuto…

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Tor Browser meeting moved to Tuesday (2023-10-10)
by richard 09 Oct '23

09 Oct '23

Hey everyone, Monday is a holiday so we'll be moving our weekly meeting to Tuesday this week at 1500 UTC in #tor-meeting on OFTC IRC. best, -richard

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cohosh's monthly status report, September 2023
by Cecylia Bocovich 06 Oct '23

06 Oct '23

Hi! This is my status report for contract work done in September 2023. # Reputation-based bridge distribution - Worked on deploying the lox distributor for testing purposes - https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/rdsys/-/issues/167 - Discussed rdsys resource API - https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/rdsys/-/merge_requests/15… - Dependency updates # Conjure - Wrote some next steps for Conjure work - https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/operations/proposals/-/issues/51 # Snowflake - Helped recover from problem with cdn.sstatic.net front domain - Investigated alternative domain fronts - https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… - Looked into OONI and Orbot handling of bridge linse - https://github.com/guardianproject/orbot/issues/983 - https://github.com/ooni/probe-cli/pull/1337 - Implemented a feature in snowflake to randomly select from a pool of front domains - https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… - Discussed a weird increase in snowflake client polls - https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/anti-censorship-team/2023-September/… - Due to bridge outage: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/anti-censorship-team/2023-September/… - Followed up on reports of snowflake fingerprinting in Russia - Due to out-of-date OONI probe clients - https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/2533 - Dependency updates

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Nina’s Monthly Status Report: September 2023
by Nina 05 Oct '23

05 Oct '23

Hi! Below is my Setember’23 report! In September, I resolved 615 tickets: On Telegram (@TorProjectSupportBot) - 367 On RT (frontdesk@tpo) - 236 On WhatsApp (+447421000612) - 9 and on Signal (+17787431312) - 3. During that month I - 1. Helped Russian-speaking users to bypass censorship: shared bridges and assisted with using them and troubleshooting; 2. Collected user feedback; 3. Helped to solve Tor Browser issues like: - antivirussoftware blocking Tor Browser[1] - bug"Pluggable Transport process terminated with status code 0"[2], which is fixed in 0.4.8.x, but Tor Browser stable still use 0.4.7.x Tor version. The new attempts of the Russian government to block popular VPN protocols resulted in many users trying to use little-t-tor to proxytheir connection and circumvent censorship, so I helped themtoconfigure it. In September we also answeredmany tickets related to the domain frontingissue [3]. I also helped the Tor Localization team reviewing some Russian terms andtranslations for the Tor Browser and the Tor Project website. [1] https://forum.torproject.org/t/torbrowser-12-5-6-no-longer-flagged-by-windo… [2] https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/core/tor/-/issues/33669 [3] https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser/-/issues/42120

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Rhatto's Monthly Status Report, September 2023
by rhatto 02 Oct '23

02 Oct '23

Hi all :) This is my monthly status report for September 2023 with the main relevant activities I have done during the period. ## 0. Research ### Certificates The work for bringing TLS certificates for Onion Services was focused in the ACME for Onions proposal (https://acmeforonions.org) There were a series of relevant updates both on IETF ACME and on the CA/B Forum's Validation working groups: * https://lists.cabforum.org/pipermail/validation/2023-September/001927.html * https://magicalcodewit.ch/cabf-2023-09-07-slides/ * https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/acme/LMYC_Ou41E_9RuaVSYPr7SIhCCc/ * https://github.com/AS207960/acme-onion/issues/2 I focused in: * Helping to figure ways that CAA and .onion descriptors could be handled by ACME client and servers. I'm still compiling the list of options for an ACME server to parse and validate an Onion Service descriptor. * Doing a documentation update about CAA checking: https://tpo.pages.torproject.net/onion-services/onionplan/appendixes/acme/#… https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/onion-services/onionplan/-/commit/0234173… ## Tor Browser Quality Assurance for Onion Services (TBB .onion QA) I have completed the first three quarters of Tor Browser QA testing (since 2023.Q1). ### Testbed * Since this QA process started, it's methodology and tooling was bootstrapped and improved. * Some basic tests were defined to happen at every Tor Browser release (when applicable). * Additional, specific tests were also defined to check for specific and potential issues. * The "Faulty Onions" project was prototyped, and is intended to provide test Onion Services with different errors to check how Tor Browser and other applications handles them. More details to be expected soon. * A few alternatives for test automation were researched, to consider whether some of the regular tests can be automated. * Public documentation remains yet to be done. ### Versions tested Eleven Tor Browsers versions were formally tested: * 12.5.1 * 12.5.2 * 12.5.3 * 12.5.4 * 12.5.5 * 12.5.6 * 13.0a1 * 13.0a2 * 13.0a3 * 13.0a4 * 13.0a5 ## 1. Development ### Onionprobe * Onionprobe 1.1.2 was released: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/onion-services/onionprobe/-/blob/main/Cha… ## 2. Support ### Documentation Hackweek As a preparation for the upcoming [Hackweek][], I have submitted four project proposals: * Onion MkDocs tryout: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/community/hackweek/-/issues/13 * Onion TeX Slim enhancements: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/community/hackweek/-/issues/14 * Onion Reveal coding and documenting: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/community/hackweek/-/issues/15 * Etherpad management: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/community/hackweek/-/issues/16 I'm planning to work in just one of these projects, depending in which one is more popular or gets more attention. I'm also looking for people that wants to form a team, or even adopt one of these proposals. Please leave a comment, subscribe yourself or add your user name into the ticket description if you're interested :) [Hackeek][]: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-project/2023-August/003675.html ### Maintenance * I also did the ongoing sponsored work with deployment, maintenance and monitoring of Onion Services. ## 3. Organization Time spent (from the total available for Tor-related work): | Category | Percentage |---------------|------------ | Research | 57 | Development | 1 | Support | 9 | Organization | 33 |---------------|------------ | Total | 100 -- Silvio Rhatto pronouns he/him

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minutes from the sysadmin meeting
by Antoine Beaupré 02 Oct '23

02 Oct '23

Ahoy! Well it's just been way too long since we've done this, but we've done it! Here's our short sysadmin minutes from today's meeting. # Roll call: who's there and emergencies onionoo-backend running out of disk space ([tpo/tpa/team#41343][]) [tpo/tpa/team#41343]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/team/-/issues/41343 # Dashboard cleanup Normal per-user check-in: * https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/boards?scope=all&utf8=%E2%9C%93&… * https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/boards?scope=all&utf8=%E2%9C%93&… * https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/boards?scope=all&utf8=%E2%9C%93&… General dashboards: * https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/team/-/boards/117 * https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/web/-/boards * https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/tpa/-/boards Nextcloud roadmap / spreadsheet. Overall, it seems we are as you would expect when returning from a rather chaotic vacation. Backlog is large, but things seem to be under control. We added SVN back on the roadmap after one too many tickets asking for setup. # Metrics of the month * hosts in Puppet: 89, LDAP: 89, Prometheus exporters: 166 * number of Apache servers monitored: 37, hits per second: 626 * number of self-hosted nameservers: 6, mail servers: 10 * pending upgrades: 1, reboots: 0 * average load: 0.69, memory available: 3.58 TiB/4.98 TiB, running processes: 424 * disk free/total: 53.19 TiB/126.72 TiB * bytes sent: 403.47 MB/s, received: 269.04 MB/s * planned bullseye upgrades completion date: 2024-08-02 * [GitLab tickets][]: 196 tickets including... * open: 0 * icebox: 163 * needs information: 5 * backlog: 13 * next: 9 * doing: 4 * needs review: 2 * (closed: 3301) [Gitlab tickets]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/team/-/boards Upgrade prediction graph lives at: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/team/-/wikis/howto/upgrades/bookworm/ Now also available as the main Grafana dashboard. Head to <https://grafana.torproject.org/>, change the time period to 30 days, and wait a while for results to render. # Number of the month: 42 34 machines were upgraded from bullseye to bookworm in the two first days of last week! We calculated this was an average of 20 minutes per host to upgrade. The trick, of course, is that things often break *after* the upgrade, and that "fixing" time is not counted here. That said, last estimate for this was one hour per machine, and we're doing a whole fleet upgrade every 2-3 years, which means about ten hours of work saved per year. But the number of the month is, of course, 42, as we now have an equal number of bookworm and bullseye machine, after the upgrade. And that number is, naturally, [42][]. See also https://xkcd.com/1205/ which, interestingly, we fall out of scope of. [42]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/42 -- Antoine Beaupré torproject.org system administration

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PieroV's Monthly Status Report, September 2023
by Pier Angelo Vendrame 02 Oct '23

02 Oct '23

Hi everyone! Here is my status report for September 2023. This month, I continued working on the refactoring of the Tor integration in Tor Browser and finally merged the merge requested with the biggest changes [0]. During the month, I also fixed some bugs it caused and improved the compatibility with the external Tor daemons. Then, I worked on some audits for the 102 to 115 transition. In particular, I reviewed our profiles [1]. Some other tasks included swapping a few branding assets, such as the About dialog wordmark and the Windows installer icons. I also fixed the reproducibility bug with generated headers on Windows [2] and upstreamed the patch to Firefox. During September, we had two emergency releases. I helped with the stable channel: I prepared and built both 12.5.4 and 12.5.6. For 13.0a4, I only rebased it on top of Firefox 115.2.1. Finally, I worked on enabling system-wide installs for Mullvad Browser. However, it's a work in progress as it requires some non-trivial changes to the updater. Best, Pier [0] https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser/-/merge_requests… [1] https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser/-/issues/41496 [2] https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser/-/issues/41995

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