tor-project September 2024

tor-project@lists.torproject.org

13 participants
18 discussions

TPA-RFC-72: donate site maintenance on Wednesday 2024-10-02
by Antoine Beaupré 26 Sep '24

26 Sep '24

Summary: donation site will be down for maintenance on Wednesday around 14:00 UTC, equivalent to 07:00 US/Pacific, 11:00 America/Sao_Paulo, 10:00 US/Eastern, 16:00 Europe/Amsterdam. # Background We're having [latency issues][] with the main donate site. We hope that migrating it from our data center in Germany to the one in Dallas will help fix those issues as it will be physically closer to the rest of the cluster. [latency issues]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/web/donate-neo/-/issues/134 # Proposal Move the `donate-01.torproject.org` virtual machine, responsible for the production <https://donate.torproject.org/> site, between the two main Ganeti clusters, following the procedure detailed in [#41775][]. [#41775]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/team/-/issues/41775 Outage is expected to take no more than two hours, but no less than 15 minutes. # References See the discussion issue for more information and feedback: <https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/team/-/issues/41775> -- Antoine Beaupré torproject.org system administration

1 0

Anti-censorship team meeting notes, 2024-09-26
by Shelikhoo 26 Sep '24

26 Sep '24

Hey everyone! Here are our meeting logs: http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2024/tor-meeting.2024-09-26-16.00.html And our meeting pad: Anti-censorship work meeting pad -------------------------------- Anti-censorship -------------------------------- Next meeting: Thursday, Octember 03 16:00 UTC Facilitator: shelikhoo ^^^(See Facilitator Queue at tail) 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 projects, we are working on: * All needs review tickets: * https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/anti-censorship/-/merge_requests?s… * Project 158 <-- meskio working on it * https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/anti-censorship/-/issues/?label_na… == Announcements == * bridges(a)torproject.org is now served by rdsys, bridgedb is down now == Discussion == * drop in unrestricted proxies * https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… * not urgent, but something to invetigate early next week * since last week's (2024-09-12) meeting: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… * "The count is down to 2090. Whoever has historical Prometheus data, could you please check the drop in unrestricted NAT type per proxy type? See https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow…. I wonder if only iPtProxy is affected." * Currently there are virtually no unrestricted iptproxy proxies, but maybe there were more in the past (before 2024-09-13)? * https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… * cohosh will provide WofWca with prometheus data starting from a few days before the drop (Sep 26 New:) * probetest delay-before-disconnect to reduce incorrect "restricted" measurements * https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… * shelikhoo will deploy next week, maybe Monday 2024-09-30 == 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): 2024-09-26 Last week: - worked with meek bridge operator to update domain names - dove into family support for bridges (tor#40935) - TROVE-2024-012 - merged and then unmerged kcp library update This week: - take a look at WofWca's big changes to snowflake - finish snowflake dependency upgrades that were causing problems - take a look at snowflake web and webext translations and best practices - make changes to Lox encrypted bridge table - https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/lox/-/merge_requests/147 dcf: 2024-09-26 Last week: - archived snowflake-webextension-0.9.0 https://archive.org/details/snowflake-webextension-0.9.0 https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/anti-censorship-team/2024-September/… - archived snowflake-webextension-0.9.1 https://archive.org/details/snowflake-webextension-0.9.1 - commented on offline stun:stun.bluesip.net:3478 https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… https://lists.mayfirst.org/pipermail/guardian-dev/2024-September/005718.html - helped with replacement snowflake broker setup and commented on new configuration https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… - reviewed comment about packet size https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… - closed an obsolete issue, broker "status code 400" https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… - closed MR that proposed to rename RelayURL to DefaultRelayURL https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… - commented on proposed preflight HEAD request for snowflake bridge authentication https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… - reviewed broker bridge list not being set https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… - reviewed snowflake webextension manifest v3 running in background https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… - made a merge request for code quality in the snowflake webextension https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… - reviewed an error handling change for invalid relayURL in proxy https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… - commented on probetest delay-before-disconnect https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… - commented on kcp-go v5.6.10 upgrade causing new failing tests https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… - commented on adding port number to snowflake proxy allowlist https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… - commented on proposal to allow snowflake clients to freely choose their bridge https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… - replied to forwarded upstream communication with guardian-dev about inaccurate NAT self-tests by iPtProxy snowflake proxies https://lists.mayfirst.org/pipermail/guardian-dev/2024-September/005719.html - Next week: - 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 Help with: - tell me when to restart the brokers for https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… meskio: 2023-09-19 Last week: - fail to recover github gettor (rdsys#189) - switch email from BridgeDB to rdsys (rdsys#218) - deploy bridgedb metrics producer (rdsys#218) - review and fix X-Forwarded-From header handling in https and moat (rdsys!390 rdsys!388) - start a conversation with TPA on contanerizing rdsys (tpa/team#41769) Next week: - investigate if bridges are still jumping distributors (rdsys#232) Shelikhoo: 2024-09-26 Last Week: - snowflake broker update/reinstall(cont.): https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… - Unreliable+unordered WebRTC data channel transport for Snowflake rev2 (cont.)( https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… ) improvements - Merge request review: docs: improve proxy CLI param descriptions (https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow…) - Merge request reviews Next Week/TODO: - Merge request reviews - snowflake broker update/reinstall(cont.): https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… - Unreliable+unordered WebRTC data channel transport for Snowflake rev2 (cont.) ( https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… ) improvements onyinyang: 2023-09-19 Last week(s): - started looking into troll-patrol integration for Lox bridge blockage detection Next week: - Global Gathering - continue troll-patrol integration for Lox bridge blockage detection - update lox protocols to return duplicate responses for an already seen request - Work on outstanding milestone issues: in particular: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/lox/-/issues/69 - key rotation automation Later: pending decision on abandoning lox wasm in favour of some kind of FFI? https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser/-/issues/43096): - add pref to handle timing for pubkey checks in Tor browser - add trusted invitation logic to tor browser integration: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser/-/issues/42974 - improve metrics collection/think about how to show Lox is working/valuable - sketch out Lox blog post/usage notes for forum (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? theodorsm: 2024-09-12 Last weeks: - Next weeks: - Update Snowflake to use latest pion upstream releases, waiting for WebRTC v4 beta. - Test Snowflake fork with covert-dtls - Condensing thesis into paper Help with: - Feedback on thesis Facilitator Queue: onyinyang meskio shelikhoo 1. First available staff in the Facilitator Queue will be the facilitator for the meeting 2. After facilitating the meeting, the facilitator will be moved to the tail of the queue

1 0

PSA: GitLab tokens expiring
by Antoine Beaupré 19 Sep '24

19 Sep '24

Hi, GitLab recently introduced a maximum lifetime for *all* access tokens. The change is discussed in a [blog post][1] from last October. Most importantly: > As of the 16.0 milestone (May 2023), we applied an expiration date of > May 14, 2024, to any personal, group, or project access token that > previously didn't have one. We first noticed this issue in [January][2] and have looked at mitigations, but ultimately, there's no good workaround short of "service accounts" which is some Open Core thing they are pushing onto us. There's some work upstream to make it easier to rotate tokens (which make the entire security measure moot in the first place, fun). So anyways. Your things might break now. And when you recreate the tokens, they will still have an upper time limit (one year, IIRC), so you will need to fix this again and again. I'm sorry. Further discussion in [2]. For now our approach is wait and see what gitlab.com is going to do, because this is breaking a *lot* of things in a lot of places, and I can't imagine they will just let the thing burn for that long. The actual recommended workaround from upstream now is to have a *pair* of tokens that renew each other but we have found that to be really impractical. So for now, we're just trying to document the tokens we have and how to refresh them, as an immediate mitigation. I encourage you to pay attention to the "your token has expired" notification as well. Good luck! [1]: https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2023/10/25/access-token-lifetime-limits/ [2]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/team/-/issues/41510 -- Antoine Beaupré torproject.org system administration

1 2

Anti-censorship team meeting notes, 2024-09-12
by onyinyang 12 Sep '24

12 Sep '24

Hey everyone! Here are our meeting logs: http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2024/tor-meeting.2024-09-12-16.03.html And our meeting pad: Anti-censorship work meeting pad -------------------------------- Anti-censorship -------------------------------- Next meeting: Thursday, September 19 16:00 UTC Facilitator: meskio ^^^(See Facilitator Queue at tail) 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: onyinyang == 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 projects, we are working on: * All needs review tickets: * https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/anti-censorship/-/merge_requests?s… * Project 158 <-- meskio working on it * https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/anti-censorship/-/issues/?label_na… == Announcements == * https://bridges.torproject.org and moat are now served by rdsys == Discussion == * shadow integration for snowflake catching some good stuff * backwards compatibility break in snowflake!381 * https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… * problem with pion/webrtc or pion/transport dependency upgrade in snowflake!357 * https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… * do we want to create integration tests for other projects? * yes!!! * https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… * A regression is required for snowflake with this UDP-like transport mode merge request * longer-term goal is to retain backward compatibility, this MR is just meant to isolate the changes required to switch completely to the UDP-like transport, without backward compatibility negotiation * drop in unrestricted proxies * https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… * not urgent, but something to invetigate early next week == Actions == == Interesting links == * https://opencollective.com/censorship-circumvention/projects/snowflake-dail… * "??" country snowflake users? https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/anti-censorship-team/2024-September/… * https://mastodon.social/@tdp_org/113108525970163764 * "We monitor traffic to www.bbc.co.uk & www.bbc.com per country & got alerts that daily requests from Angola have dropped off loads recently. ... Digging in to the logs, looks like they removed their Fortigates on 6th Sept. which'd been sending 343k req/day for www.bbc.co.uk/, every single day!" * "I [Neil Craig at BBC] spoke to Fortinet about it once (and asked them to change how the poller works - it was originally doing plaintext http GET requests so I asked them to at least do HTTPS HEADs) - to their credit they made a real effort to help...anyway, I forget how often they poll but IIRC it's something like every 5 or 10s so it doesn't actually take all that many firewalls to get to 343K." * https://github.com/c-skills/passport * "Forwarding TCP ports through Passkey (https://fidoalliance.org/passkeys/) servers to bypass censorship." * "A quite new chapter about Hybrid Transports allows to use QR codes with the authenticator (in this case most likely your smart phone) to authenticate against a service in that authenticator and client platform (in this case most likely your browser) open a tunnel to send PDUs back and forth in a similar way that they would travel via USB or NFC." * https://dpidetector.org/en/ * VPN protocols availability monitoring in Russia == Reading group == * We will discuss "SpotProxy: Rediscovering the Cloud for Censorship Circumvention " on September 12 * https://www.cs-pk.com/sec24-spotproxy-final.pdf * https://censorbib.nymity.ch/#Kon2024b * 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): 2024-09-12 Last week: - rebased wasm-bindgen fork onto v0.2.93 - followed up on some meek bridge handover tasks - lots of reviews and gitlab todos This week: - take a look at WofWca's big changes to snowflake - grant writing (for conjure) - finish snowflake dependency upgrades that were causing problems - take a look at snowflake web and webext translations and best practices - make changes to Lox encrypted bridge table - https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/lox/-/merge_requests/147 dcf: 2024-09-12 Last week: - read about pion SetInterfaceFilter https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… - commented on STUN servers not supporting RFC 5780 NAT behavior testing https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… - commented on snowflake proxy NAT type metrics https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… - closed issue of stuck snowflake probetest https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… - commented on storage.sync for snowflake WebExtension proxy consent https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… Next week: - archive snowflake webextension v0.9.0 (manifest V3) - comment as requested on kcp v5.6.17 upgrade 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 - move snowflake-02 to new VM Help with: - tell me when to restart the brokers for https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… meskio: 2023-09-12 Last week: - switch moat and https from BridgeDB to rdsys (rdsys#218) - add ipversion subscription to rdsys (rdsys#221) - recover gitlab gettor account (rdsys#189) - improvements on error logs of the email distributor (rdsys!384) - sanitize prometheus metrics (rdsys#227) Next week: - recover github gettor (rdsys#189) - deploy bridgedb metrics producer (rdsys#218) Shelikhoo: 2024-09-12 Last Week: - snowflake broker update/reinstall: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… - Unreliable+unordered WebRTC data channel transport for Snowflake rev2( https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… ) improvements - Probetest Deployment 24-09-10 https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… - Merge request reviews Next Week/TODO: - Merge request reviews - snowflake broker update/reinstall: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… - Unreliable+unordered WebRTC data channel transport for Snowflake rev2( https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… ) improvements onyinyang: 2023-09-12 Last week(s): - finished up key rotation integration work - started looking into troll-patrol integration for Lox bridge blockage detection Next week: - continue troll-patrol integration for Lox bridge blockage detection - update lox protocols to return duplicate responses for an already seen request - Work on outstanding milestone issues: in particular: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/lox/-/issues/69 - key rotation automation Later: pending decision on abandoning lox wasm in favour of some kind of FFI? https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser/-/issues/43096): - add pref to handle timing for pubkey checks in Tor browser - add trusted invitation logic to tor browser integration: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser/-/issues/42974 - improve metrics collection/think about how to show Lox is working/valuable - sketch out Lox blog post/usage notes for forum (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? theodorsm: 2024-09-12 Last weeks: - Next weeks: - Update Snowflake to use latest pion upstream releases, waiting for WebRTC v4 beta. - Test Snowflake fork with covert-dtls - Condensing thesis into paper Help with: - Feedback on thesis Facilitator Queue: onyinyang meskio shelikhoo 1. First available staff in the Facilitator Queue will be the facilitator for the meeting 2. After facilitating the meeting, the facilitator will be moved to the tail of the queue -- --- onyinyang GPG Fingerprint 3CC3 F8CC E9D0 A92F A108 38EF 156A 6435 430C 2036

1 0

sysadmin meeting minutes
by Antoine Beaupré 10 Sep '24

10 Sep '24

Hi everyone, it's been a while! # Roll call: who's there and emergencies No fires. anarcat, gaba, lavamind, and two guests. # Dashboard review 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 # Security policy We had a discussion about the new security policy, details in confidential issue tpo/tpa/team#41727. # Roadmap review We reviewed priorities for September. We decided prioritize the web fixes lavamind was assigned over the Puppet server upgrades as it should be quick and people have been waiting for this. Those upgrades have been rescheduled to October. We will also prioritize the donate-neo launch (happening this week), retiring Nagios, and upgrading mail servers. For the latter, we wish to expedite the work and focus on upgrading over TPA-RFC-45, AKA "fix all of email", which is too complex of a project to block the critical upgrade path for now. # Other discussions Some conversations happened in private about other priorities, documented in confidential issue tpo/tpa/team#41721. # Next meeting Currently scheduled for October 7th 2024 at 15:00UTC. # Metrics of the month * hosts in Puppet: 90, LDAP: 90, Prometheus exporters: 323 * number of Apache servers monitored: 35, hits per second: 581 * number of self-hosted name servers: 6, mail servers: 10 * pending upgrades: 0, reboots: 0 * average load: 1.00, memory available: 3.43 TiB/4.96 TiB, running processes: 299 * disk free/total: 63.64 TiB/135.88 TiB * bytes sent: 423.94 MB/s, received: 274.55 MB/s * planned bookworm upgrades completion date: 2024-08-14 (yes, in the past) * [GitLab tickets][]: 244 tickets including... * open: 0 * icebox: 159 * future: 28 * needs information: 3 * backlog: 30 * next: 11 * doing: 6 * needs review: 9 * (closed: 3660) [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. -- Antoine Beaupré torproject.org system administration

1 0

Rhatto's Monthly Status Report, August 2024
by rhatto 10 Sep '24

10 Sep '24

Hi all :) This is my monthly status report for August 2024 with the main relevant activities I have done, was involved or are related to my work during the period. # Things I've done ## Notes from the Lisbon meeting Finally sorted and edited notes from the Lisbon Meeting! I would like to thank Rasmus Dahlberg for his impressive note taking skills! Public notes are available here: * Onion Plan: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/team/-/wikis/Meetings/2024/Lisbon/onion-p… * ACME for Onions: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/team/-/wikis/Meetings/2024/Lisbon/update-… * Self-authenticated certificates for Onion Services: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/team/-/wikis/Meetings/2024/Lisbon/self-au… ## Onion Services and Mixed content handling Did some security evaluation for Tor Browser about upcoming changes on mixed content handling on upstream Firefox: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser/-/issues/43013 ## Onion Discovery Updated some documents related to Onion Discovery: * Onion Association page: https://onionservices.torproject.org/research/proposals/usability/discovery… * Specs for DNS-based .onion records: https://onionservices.torproject.org/research/appendixes/dns/ ## Onionbalance Onionbalance documentation was migrated to Onion MkDocs and included in the Ecosystem: * New URL: https://onionservices.torproject.org/apps/base/onionbalance/ * Related issues: * https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/onion-services/onionbalance/-/issues/28 * https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/onion-services/ecosystem/-/issues/2 ## House keeping * Created monthly scheduled builds for all major projects at https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/onion-services * Created monthly scheduled builds for documentation generators such as Onion MkDocs, Onion TeX Slim and Onion Reveal: * https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/web/onion-mkdocs/ * https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/web/onion-reveal/ * https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/community/onion-tex-slim * Invited the Renovate Bot (https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/renovate-cron) to help keeping some more projects. ## Support * Ongoing sponsored work with deployment, maintenance and monitoring of Onion Services. # Other news from the Onionspace * The ACME for Onions (https://acmeforonions.org/) Internet Draft is going through the Last Call on the IETF working group! Current status available at https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-acme-onion/history/ -- Silvio Rhatto pronouns he/him

4 5

OONI Monthly Report: August 2024
by Maria Xynou 06 Sep '24

06 Sep '24

Hello, This email shares OONI's monthly report for August 2024. *# OONI Monthly Report: August 2024* Throughout August 2024, the OONI team’s work can be tracked through the various OONI GitHub repositories: https://github.com/ooni Highlights are shared in this report below. *## Published the OONI Outreach Kit in Arabic and Farsi* In August 2024, we published the OONI Outreach Kit in: * Arabic: https://ooni.org/ar/support/ooni-outreach-kit/ * Farsi: https://ooni.org/fa/support/ooni-outreach-kit/ Huge thanks to the translators for making the OONI Outreach Kit materials available in Arabic and Farsi, supporting OONI community engagement efforts in the Middle East! The OONI Outreach Kit is also available in English, Russian, French, Spanish, and Swahili ( https://ooni.org/support/ooni-outreach-kit/). *## Published report on the blocking of Instagram in Turkiye* On 2nd August 2024, we published a short report on the blocking of Instagram in Turkiye: https://explorer.ooni.org/findings/330022197701 This report shares relevant OONI data and an interpretation of the measurement findings. *## Research report on internet censorship in Kazakhstan* In preparation for the upcoming publication of a research report on internet censorship in Kazakhstan, we continued to review the findings and edit the text accordingly in collaboration with our partner, Internet Freedom Kazakhstan (https://ooni.org/partners/ifkz). Notably, we translated the whole research report in Russian so that we can publish it in both English and Russian, reaching more audiences. We also coordinated with designers to plan the upcoming design of the report in PDFs. We aim to publish this research report in September 2024. *## OONI Probe Mobile* In August 2024, we released OONI Probe 3.8.9 for both Android ( https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/2791) and iOS ( https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/2792). We also continued making progress on our multi-platform project. Specifically, we identified the initial suite of features we will focus on for our first internal build of the new application. We will use this application for testing, further development and to ensure feature parity with the old application. We worked on several different features, and some highlights include: * Implementing the dashboard: https://github.com/ooni/probe-multiplatform/issues/55 * Running tests: https://github.com/ooni/probe-multiplatform/issues/59 * Results lists: https://github.com/ooni/probe-multiplatform/issues/42 * Implementing application settings: https://github.com/ooni/probe-multiplatform/issues/50 The full list of completed issues can be found here: https://github.com/ooni/probe-multiplatform/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aclosed… *## OONI Probe CLI* In August 2024, we released OONI Probe CLI 3.23.0. The full changelog is available here: https://github.com/ooni/probe-cli/releases/tag/v3.23.0 *## OONI Probe Desktop* In August 2024, we released OONI Probe Desktop 3.9.7 ( https://github.com/ooni/probe-desktop/releases/tag/v3.9.7) and 3.9.8 ( https://github.com/ooni/probe-desktop/releases/tag/v3.9.8). The latest release integrates the OONI Probe CLI 3.23.0 into OONI Probe Desktop: https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/2793 *## OONI Run* As part of our work on creating the next generation version of OONI Run (“OONI Run v2”), we continued our efforts with QA testing for the Android version of the new OONI Probe app that will include both an improved UI and support for new OONI Run links. We addressed several bugs and UI improvements: * We improved the layout of the test overview screen: https://github.com/ooni/run/issues/186 * We fixed some issues with the updated tag not appearing properly: https://github.com/ooni/run/issues/188 In preparation for the upcoming launch of OONI Run v2, we: * Continued to test OONI Run v2 extensively; * Finalized the copy; * Wrote a blog post for the announcement of the OONI Run v2 launch (which includes a detailed user guide); * Updated the OONI Data Policy to account for changes introduced with OONI Run v2 (https://github.com/ooni/ooni.org/pull/1601); * Updated all documentation across our website to ensure the correct OONI Run domain (https://github.com/ooni/ooni.org/pull/1602). *## OONI Explorer* In August 2024, we worked on revising the navigation bar for OONI Explorer: https://github.com/ooni/explorer/issues/938 We wanted to do this because the current navigation bar is fairly crowded and we will eventually need the ability to add more items to it in the near future. We will launch this in the coming months. *## OONI Backend* We finished setting up integration tests for a framework to allow us to A/B test our improved APIs more effectively: https://github.com/ooni/backend/issues/856 We updated the OONI Explorer Findings platform to use postgresql to store findings, since our Clickhouse database is not backed up. This helps improve the stability of this feature: https://github.com/ooni/backend/issues/855 We also finished the core refactor of our measurements service, which implements improved API principles ensuring ease-of-use and stability of the API: https://github.com/ooni/backend/pull/851 *## Automating censorship detection and characterization based on OONI measurements* In August 2024, several important improvements were landed inside of the main branch of the OONI data pipeline v5. Specifically, we worked towards releasing the OONI Pipeline v5.0.0-alpha.3 ( https://github.com/ooni/data/pull/81) which includes the following improvements: * Switched to threaded workers via co-routines; * Removed unused commands; * Removed unused and dead code; * Added support for update assets from s3 instead of archive.org; * Removed file based locking for asset updates; * Added alter queries for buffer tables in DB migration helper; * Fixed bug in database migration generation; * Addressed issues related to setting workflow and schedule IDs to facilitate re-running backfills; * Properly set the transaction_id for more modern tests that support it (eg. web_connectivity 0.5). We then worked towards making a release candidate for OONI Pipeline v5. As part of this, in order to empower our team to view the new observations, we developed a simple web interface for viewing observations and plotting them in charts: https://github.com/ooni/data/pull/83 We also started experimenting with a Bayesian network based approach to analysis which is implemented as several notebooks inside of the following pull request: https://github.com/ooni/data/pull/85 *## Hiring process for OONI Junior Backend Developer job opening* As part of the hiring process for a new OONI Junior Backend Developer ( https://ooni.org/post/2024-job-opening-ooni-backend-developer/), we continued to review incoming applications, track applications, follow-up with applicants, and interview shortlisted candidates. *## Test list updates* We reviewed and merged updates to the test list for Myanmar: https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists/pull/1754 *## Updated Nepal report following the unblocking of TikTok* We updated our previous report on the blocking of TikTok in Nepal to include OONI data and information in relation to the unblocking of the service: https://explorer.ooni.org/findings/112092297601 *## Rapid response### Blocking of Signal in Russia, Venezuela, and Pakistan* In response to the blocking of the Signal Private Messenger app in Russia, Venezuela, and Pakistan (which was blocked in all 3 countries in August 2024), we shared relevant OONI data and information on social media channels: https://x.com/OpenObservatory/status/1828028323269611553 *### Blocking of Twitter/X in Tanzania* In response to the blocking of Twitter/X in Tanzania, we shared relevant OONI data and information on social media channels: https://x.com/OpenObservatory/status/1829600571327914094 *## Citations### USENIX paper on measuring the Great Firewall’s web censorship at scale* In August 2024, researchers from the University of British Columbia, University of Chicago, University of Toronto, Carnegie Mellon University, SRI International and Stony Brook University wrote a paper (“GFWeb: Measuring the Great Firewall’s Web Censorship at Scale”) which was published by USENIX. Their paper cites OONI quite extensively, and it’s available here: https://www.usenix.org/system/files/usenixsecurity24-hoang.pdf *### Global Voices article on Instagram block in Turkiye* Global Voices published an article on the blocking of Instagram in Turkiye, citing OONI data: https://globalvoices.org/2024/08/02/turkey-blocks-access-to-instagram/ *### Report on Internet shutdowns in Tanzania* Our partner, Zaina Foundation, published a report on internet shutdowns in Tanzania, which is available here: https://zainafoundationtz.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/TZReport-on-Intern… As part of their report, they cite OONI data (and include an OONI MAT chart) on the blocking of Twitter/X in Tanzania. *### RSF Resource for Journalists on OONI Probe and OONI Explorer* Reporters Without Borders (RSF) published an article about OONI Probe and OONI Explorer as part of their resources for journalists: https://safety.rsf.org/ooni-a-tool-to-check-whether-an-online-service-is-be… *## Measurement coverage* In August 2024, 60,819,022 OONI Probe measurements were collected from 3,238 networks in 170 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.

1 0

OONI Monthly Report: July 2024
by Maria Xynou 06 Sep '24

06 Sep '24

Hello, This email shares OONI's monthly report for July 2024. *# OONI Monthly Report: July 2024* Throughout July 2024, the OONI team’s work can be tracked through the various OONI GitHub repositories: https://github.com/ooni Highlights are shared in this report below. *## New partnership with Indonesia’s Southeast Asia Freedom of Expression Network (SAFEnet)* In July 2024, we established a new partnership with Indonesia’s Southeast Asia Freedom of Expression Network (SAFEnet): https://safenet.or.id/ We published a page to feature SAFEnet’s work on our Partner pages: https://ooni.org/partners/safenet/ Through our partnership with SAFEnet, we aim to collaborate on measuring internet censorship in Indonesia. *## Publication of OONI Partner Gathering 2024 Report* We published a report on the OONI Partner Gathering 2024: a 2-day event hosted in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, which brought our partners from Asia and the Middle East together to exchange skills and knowledge on internet censorship research. Read the report here: https://ooni.org/post/2024-ooni-partner-gathering-report/ In May 2024, we hosted the OONI Partner Gathering with the goal of strengthening regional and global collaborations on censorship measurement research and advocacy. The event included 45 individuals from 30 countries. Specifically, the participants included OONI partners from Southeast Asia, South Asia, East Asia, Central Asia, and the Middle East, some OONI partners who work internationally, as well as the OONI team. Why Malaysia? We developed a script which identified Malaysia as a visa-friendly location for our participants. We also loved the fact that this data finding coincided with the base of our long-term partner, Sinar Project! Based on partner feedback which shaped the agenda, the OONI Partner Gathering included a diverse set of 25 censorship-related sessions -- ranging from advocacy and litigation to research and data analysis. View the detailed Agenda here: https://ooni.org/documents/OONI-Partner-Gathering-Agenda.pdf As part of the event, we had the opportunity to exchange experiences, skills and knowledge, to improve our understanding of local challenges and community needs, and to collect invaluable feedback. We have documented the partner feedback here: https://ooni.org/post/2024-ooni-partner-gathering-report/#partner-feedback We expect such feedback to inform the improvement of OONI tools! As an outcome of the OONI Partner Gathering, we also expect to see increased use of OONI tools & data in support of research and advocacy over the next years! We share more details on the outcomes of the event here: https://ooni.org/post/2024-ooni-partner-gathering-report/#outcomes Huge thanks to our partners for their invaluable feedback and participation! You made the event an unforgettable experience for us all. Warm thanks to the Ford Foundation and Luminate for supporting the OONI Partner Gathering 2024 and making this event possible! We aim to host additional OONI Partner Gathering events for our partners in Africa and Latin America over the next few years. *## Published new reports on the OONI Censorship Findings page### Report on the blocking of Al Jazeera in Israel* On 4th July 2024, we published a report on the blocking of Al Jazeera in Israel: https://explorer.ooni.org/findings/62771144901 This report shares relevant OONI data and an interpretation of the measurement findings. *### Report on the blocking of Facebook in Bangladesh* On 18th July 2024, we published a report on the blocking of Facebook in Bangladesh amid student protests: https://explorer.ooni.org/findings/45013413801 This report shares relevant OONI data and an interpretation of the measurement findings. *### Report on the blocking of DuckDuckGo in Indonesia* On 30th July 2024, we published a report on the blocking of the DuckDuckGo search engine in Indonesia: https://explorer.ooni.org/findings/282511010901 This report shares relevant OONI data and an interpretation of the measurement findings. *## Release of the OONI Test Lists Editor in 9 languages* In July 2024, we released our Test Lists Editor ( https://test-lists.ooni.org/) in 9 new languages: Arabic, Burmese, French, German, Khmer, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Turkish. By adding such localization support to the Test Lists Editor, many more community members around the world can now more easily contribute to websites for censorship testing. We thank the Localization Lab community ( https://www.localizationlab.org/) for the translations! *## OONI Probe Mobile* Building on our proof of concept that we worked on in previous months, we took the next step in our multi-platform project. The goal of this is to unify how we build our applications across mobile and desktop to make it more efficient for us to build and maintain them. We will start with focusing on our Android and iOS applications first. You can see our repository for this work here: https://github.com/ooni/probe-multiplatform/issues The specific tasks we started include: * Building up a project backlog; * Working on tooling and instrumentation set up ( https://github.com/ooni/probe-multiplatform/pulls?q=is%3Apr+is%3Aclosed+); * Iterating on PoC to finalize approaches for specific features ( https://github.com/ooni/ooni.org/issues/1535). We also fixed a crash reported by the community https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/2750 *## OONI Run* As part of our work on creating the next generation version of OONI Run (“OONI Run v2”), we continued our efforts with QA testing for the Android version of the new OONI Probe app that will include both an improved UI and support for new OONI Run links. We addressed several bugs and UI improvements: https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/2756 We also took steps to ensure that OONI Run v2 links would also work on iOS, since we are prioritizing releasing OONI Run v2 on Android first: https://github.com/ooni/run/issues/182 In preparation for the upcoming launch of OONI Run v2, we edited the copy in the strings for the OONI Run v2 web interface, as well as the copy in the new strings for OONI Probe Mobile. We also tested OONI Run v2 extensively. *## OONI Design System* We wrapped up the changes required to migrate from Styled System to TailwindCSS. The changes included removing a lot of redundant components and replacing them with utility classes instead, and replacing old styles with tailwind utility classes for the remaining components: https://github.com/ooni/design-system/pull/175 *## OONI Explorer* We fully integrated the updated ooni-components (design system implementation), we fully removed redundant components (replaced with TailwindCSS utility classes), and we replaced Styled Components with TailwindCSS styling: https://github.com/ooni/explorer/pull/947 *## Automating censorship detection and characterization based on OONI measurements* In July 2024, OONI’s Arturo visited the Oxford Internet Institute – with whom we have a research collaboration (https://ooni.org/partners/glitch/) – to exchange knowledge and ideas with researchers on advancing OONI’s data analysis techniques. This led to exploring some other approaches in terms of analyzing OONI data through Bayesian network based techniques ( https://github.com/ooni/data/issues/84), and we worked on these techniques throughout August 2024. We also made progress on getting the OONI data pipeline ready for a production deployment. Specifically, we: * Added support for running the temporal workflows in temporal cloud: https://github.com/ooni/data/issues/78 * Fixed a bug related to parsing the new network_events data format, which was affecting our ability to process web_connectivity 0.5 and tor tests: https://github.com/ooni/data/issues/80 * Implemented several other code quality improvements: https://github.com/ooni/data/pull/79 *## OONI Backend* We worked on porting the OONI Findings API to our new pattern, as well as migrating it to Postgresql. Additionally, we got started on porting the Measurements API to the new pattern: https://github.com/ooni/backend/pull/862 https://github.com/ooni/backend/issues/814 We worked on setting up integration tests for a framework to allow us to A/B test our improved APIs more effectively ( https://github.com/ooni/backend/issues/856). We finalized our CloudHSM set up for managing certificates related to our desktop application ( https://github.com/ooni/devops/issues/55). We also shut down unneeded droplets we weren’t using on DigitalOcean ( https://github.com/ooni/devops/issues/64). *## Hiring process for OONI Junior Backend Developer job opening* Throughout July 2024, we reviewed applications submitted for our OONI Junior Backend Developer job opening ( https://ooni.org/post/2024-job-opening-ooni-backend-developer/). As part of this process, we tracked applications, followed up with applicants, and interviewed shortlisted candidates. *## Research report on internet censorship in Kazakhstan* Based on the analysis of OONI measurements ( https://github.com/ooni/backend/issues/846), we worked on writing a research report on internet censorship in Kazakhstan. We worked on this research report in collaboration with our partner, Internet Freedom Kazakhstan (https://ooni.org/partners/ifkz). Throughout July 2024, we completed the necessary research and writing of all sections of the research report. We aim to publish this research report in September 2024. ## Published designed PDFs for research reports on internet censorship in Russia and Iran Thanks to support from the Open Technology Fund (OTF) User Experience & Discovery Lab (UXD Lab), Ura Design (https://ura.design/) created designed PDFs for two of our research reports: Technical multi-stakeholder report on Internet shutdowns: The case of Iran amid autumn 2022 protests: https://ooni.org/documents/OONI-Iran-multi-stakeholder-report.pdf New blocks emerge in Russia amid war in Ukraine: An OONI network measurement analysis: https://ooni.org/documents/OONI-Report-New-blocks-emerge-in-Russia-amid-war… By designing PDF copies of the above 2 research reports, Ura Design helped ease the accessibility of the findings and support their dissemination and long-term impact. We therefore thank Ura Design and the OTF for these designs! *## Community use of OONI data* *### FOCI 2024 paper on automated DNS tampering detection using machine learning* A FOCI 2024 paper was published which applies supervised and unsupervised models to recent global DNS measurement data collected by OONI. This paper is available here: https://www.petsymposium.org/foci/2024/foci-2024-0008.pdf *### Other OONI citations in FOCI 2024 papers* OONI was also cited in the following FOCI 2024 papers: https://www.petsymposium.org/foci/2024/foci-2024-0007.pdf https://www.petsymposium.org/foci/2024/foci-2024-0006.pdf https://www.petsymposium.org/foci/2024/foci-2024-0012.pdf *### Tehran E-Commerce Association Report* In July 2024, the Tehran E-Commerce Association published a report on the “Quality of Internet in Iran”, which makes use of OONI data. Their report is available here: https://etchamber.ir/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Internet-Quality-Report-v3.… *### News article by Bangladesh’s Prothom Alo on the Facebook block* Bangladesh’s Prothom Alo media outlet published a news article on the blocking of Facebook in Bangladesh, citing OONI data. Their article is available here: https://www.prothomalo.com/bangladesh/h4uzv1zi9f *## Community activities### FOCI 2024* On 15th July 2024, OONI’s Arturo attended the Free and Open Communications on the Internet (FOCI) 2024 Summer Workshop in Bristol, UK ( https://foci.community/foci24.html#2024-summer-program). The event included the presentation of numerous academic papers on internet censorship research, including some that cite OONI data (as mentioned previously). As part of his participation, Arturo served as the session chair for the sessions on “Censorship Circumvention Strategies”. He also generally serves on the FOCI Program Committee. *### OONI Community Meeting* On 30th July 2024, we hosted the monthly OONI Community Meeting on our Slack channel (https://slack.ooni.org/). As part of this meeting, we discussed the outcomes of the OONI Partner Gathering 2024 and the possibility of hosting similar sessions online for the broader OONI community. We also discussed plans for OONI’s new Social Media Censorship Alert System, research based on OONI data, and how to contribute fingerprints for censorship detection. *## Measurement coverage* In July 2024, 58,294,513 OONI Probe measurements were collected from 2,996 networks in 173 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.

1 0

OONI Monthly Report: June 2024
by Maria Xynou 06 Sep '24

06 Sep '24

Hello, This email shares OONI's monthly report for June 2024. *# OONI Monthly Report: June 2024* Throughout June 2024, the OONI team’s work can be tracked through the various OONI GitHub repositories: https://github.com/ooni Highlights are shared in this report below. *## Published Job Opening for OONI Junior Backend Developer* In June 2024, we published a new job opening for a Junior Backend Developer: https://ooni.org/post/2024-job-opening-ooni-backend-developer/ We are looking for a dedicated backend developer to join our team to work on our backend components and infrastructure, and to provide OONI data analysis support for our research efforts. Following the publication of the job opening, we started to receive many applications and we allocated team resources towards reviewing incoming applications. *## Published OONI Community Interview with Tawanda Mugari (Digital Society of Africa)* In June 2024, we published a new OONI Community Interview with Tawanda Mugari, the Co-Founder and Geek in Chief of Digital Society of Africa ( https://digitalsociety.africa/). You can watch Tawanda’s interview and learn about his work here: https://ooni.org/post/2024-interview-with-tawanda-mugari/ Through the OONI Community Interview series, we aim to share the amazing work of our partners, highlighting the different ways through which they make use of OONI tools and data. You can find more OONI Community Interviews through our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pam2UQoZ1qM&list=PL1sH9kYR-16nlPlFT-RDBs8O0… *## OONI Probe Mobile* In June 2024, we released OONI Probe 3.8.8 on Android ( https://github.com/ooni/probe-android/releases/tag/v3.8.8) and iOS ( https://github.com/ooni/probe-ios/releases/tag/v3.8.8). We also released version 3.8.8 of the News Media Scan app, which included support for OONI Run V2 functionality so that Deutsche Welle can maintain their list of test URLs. We also worked on fixing the following bugs on OONI Probe iOS: https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/2710 https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/2744 *## OONI Run* After completing the work for the News Media Scan app, we turned our attention back to our implementation of OONI Run v2. We started working on the iOS implementation of the new dashboard view: https://github.com/ooni/ooni.org/issues/1512 https://github.com/ooni/ooni.org/issues/1516 https://github.com/ooni/ooni.org/issues/1514 We also fixed the following bugs and addressed feedback during our internal beta testing round: https://github.com/ooni/run/issues/180 https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/2756 Additionally, we discussed how we want to handle backwards compatibility for v1 OONI Run links, once we launch v2. We decided that v1 links will have an intermediary page before launching the mobile application which will encourage users to migrate to v2 before a specific date ( https://github.com/ooni/run/issues/183). *## OONI Probe CLI* Notably, we merged the OpenVN experiment, implemented by Ain Ghazal as part of their OTF ICFP fellowship with us: https://github.com/ooni/probe-cli/pull/1585 This experiment allows OONI Probe users to measure OpenVPN blocking. Further information about the experiment is available in the specification: https://github.com/ooni/spec/blob/master/nettests/ts-040-openvpn.md *## Creating a methodology for measuring throttling* We revised our plan for performing the A/B testing to make sure that Web Connectivity v0.5 produces the same results as v0.4 in terms of top-level metrics (i.e., the “blocked” and “accessible” values and the resulting colors shown by OONI Explorer). Between 11th to 13th June 2024, we traveled to Atlanta, USA, to participate in the first Open Measurement Gathering: a 3-day event (hosted at Georgia Tech) that brought the OONI, IODA, Censored Planet, M-Lab and Cloudflare Radar teams together to share skills, knowledge, and methods on network measurement. As part of this event, we co-facilitated a session with IODA on “Existing and new methods for measuring throttling”. During this session, we shared details of our methods, and learned details of the new methods that IODA are developing for measuring cases of throttling. While our approaches and methods for measuring throttling are very different (and look at different types of throttling), they are very complementary, and we identified opportunities for future collaboration. *## Expanding OONI’s testing model to support richer testing input* We have successfully expanded our testing model to support richer testing input: https://github.com/ooni/probe-cli/pulls?q=label%3A2024-06-richer-input+is%3… In June 2024, we refactored the OONI Probe engine to improve its internal representation of richer input and to enable each experiment to define its own richer testing input structure ( https://github.com/ooni/probe-cli/pull/1615). This refactoring change enabled us to reduce the entailed complexity by moving richer testing input around. In turn, this lower complexity enabled us to read richer testing input from experiment-specific APIs, as well as from OONI Run v2 descriptors. We merged the OpenVPN experiment (developed by Ain Ghazal as part of their ICFP fellowship with OONI) with full support for using richer testing input (https://github.com/ooni/probe-cli/pull/1585). We also published a document which provides details of our design choices for supporting richer testing input, the refactoring of the OONI Probe engine to enable richer testing input, our implementation of richer testing input through the OpenVPN experiment, as well as our implementation of other related improvements. This document also lists next steps for potential future work: https://github.com/ooni/probe-cli/blob/master/docs/design/dd-008-richer-inp… *## OONI Explorer* As part of the effort to update our design system implementation, we updated most of the components to use Tailwind CSS (instead of previously used styled-system and styled-components): https://github.com/ooni/explorer/pull/947 *## General backend work* We added IPv6 support to ooni-backendproxy and other AWS based deployments, allowing us to migrate DigitalOcean-based test helpers to the new deployment strategy: https://github.com/ooni/devops/pull/61 *## Automating censorship detection and characterization based on OONI measurements* Notably, we merged a large area of work related to: Optimizing the performance of the table writers for observations; Refactoring of the observation data model. Details on what was done are available through the following pull request description: https://github.com/ooni/data/pull/74 Between 11th to 13th June 2024, we also presented and shared our new pipeline (https://github.com/ooni/data) and data analysis advancements with internet measurement experts as part of our participation at the Open Measurement Gathering in Atlanta, USA. This enabled us to gather feedback from experts working on similar problems (such as Censored Planet). Quite similarly, we continued to collect feedback for the improvement of our data analysis methods through meetings with internet measurement experts at the Oxford Internet Institute. *## Data analysis for upcoming research report* As part of an upcoming research report on internet censorship in Kazakhstan, we analyzed OONI measurements collected from Kazakhstan over the past year. We completed this data analysis in June 2024, and further details about the analysis are available here: https://github.com/ooni/backend/issues/846 *## Test list updates* In response to the adoption of an LGBT propaganda law in Georgia, we updated the Georgian test list to include the websites of LGBTQ+ organizations: https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists/pull/1739 Based on the statement of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs ( https://www.mid.ru/ru/foreign_policy/news/1959391/), we added 80 foreign news media websites (whose services were suspended in Russia) to the Russian test list: https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists/pull/1744 We also reviewed and merged community contributions to the following test lists: * Vietnam, Malaysia: https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists/pull/1745 * Belarus: https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists/pull/1738 * South Korea: https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists/pull/1700 * Brazil: https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists/pull/1701 * Cambodia: https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists/pull/1699 * Slovenia: https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists/pull/1697 * Other: https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists/pull/1705 *## Call for LGBTQ website testing during Pride Month* LGBTQ websites are blocked in many countries around the world. Similarly to previous years, we made a call to action to encourage the OONI Probe testing of LGBTQ websites during Pride Month (and beyond) through our social media channels: https://x.com/OpenObservatory/status/1806284856998936597, https://mastodon.social/@ooni/112688417530827272 The threads through the above links: * Include a call for OONI Probe testing of LGBTQ websites (which we previously collected in collaboration with OutRight International); * Encourage people to contribute LGBTQ websites for ongoing monitoring/testing through our Test Lists Editor; * Share our previous reports documenting the blocking of LGBTQ websites based on OONI data; * Share links for ongoing OONI Probe testing and for monitoring the blocking of LGBTQ websites worldwide based on real-time OONI data. *## Outreach Kit with new illustrations* In June 2024, we updated the materials of the OONI Outreach Kit with the new illustrations created by Ura Design: https://github.com/ooni/ooni.org/pull/1569 *## Community use of OONI data### ISOC Pulse blog post on internet disruptions in Kenya* In June 2024, ISOC published a blog post documenting the internet disruptions in Kenya amid protests: https://pulse.internetsociety.org/blog/kenya-internet-disrupted-amidst-prot… Their blog post cites OONI data, includes OONI data charts and encourages readers in Kenya to run OONI Probe to contribute more measurements. *## Community activities### Ford Foundation Retreat* Between 3rd-5th June 2024, OONI’s Maria attended the Ford Foundation Tech & Society Retreat in Nebraska City, USA. As part of her participation, Maria co-facilitated a session on partner engagement, and facilitated a session which provided a live demo on using OONI Explorer to investigate internet censorship. *### Open Measurement Gathering* Between 11th-13th June 2024, OONI’s Jessie, Maria, Maja, and Simone traveled to Atlanta, USA, to participate in the first Open Measurement Gathering (OMG): a 3-day event which brought internet measurement projects together to exchange skills and knowledge on measuring and reporting on internet censorship globally ( https://x.com/OpenObservatory/status/1803734336300032218). This event was hosted by IODA at Georgia Tech, organized in collaboration with M-Lab, and supported by the Open Technology Fund. The participants included team members from the following organizations/projects: IODA, M-Lab, Censored Planet, Cloudflare, and OONI. As part of our participation in this event, we: * Presented OONI’s measurement methodologies and tools (“OONI Measurement 101” session); * Presented OONI’s open dataset and methods for interpreting the data (“OONI Data Dive” session); * Co-facilitated a session on methodologies for measuring cases of throttling; * Facilitated a session on strengthening collaboration on research and reporting on internet censorship. We thank the Open Technology Fund for supporting this event, and we thank IODA, M-Lab, Censored Planet and Cloudflare for the valuable insights and discussions! *### OONI Partner Quarterly Meeting* On 25th June 2024, we hosted the first OONI Partner Quarterly Meeting (a private video meeting with our partners) to gather feedback and discuss the future of the Partnership Program with the OONI Partner Network. During the call, we agreed to host similar calls every quarter to share updates from the community, share OONI updates, and to discuss partner needs. *### OONI Community Meeting* On 25th June 2024, we hosted the monthly OONI Community Meeting on our Slack channel (https://slack.ooni.org/). As part of this meeting, we gathered feedback from the community on the structure of OONI’s documentation and received a request to update the structure of the community documents and educational materials. We also discussed the possibility of hosting open training sessions for the OONI community. *## Measurement coverage* In June 2024, 54,898,348 OONI Probe measurements were collected from 2,825 networks in 173 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.

1 0

OONI Monthly Report: May 2024
by Maria Xynou 06 Sep '24

06 Sep '24

Hello, This email shares OONI's monthly report for May 2024. *# OONI Monthly Report: May 2024* Throughout May 2024, the OONI team’s work can be tracked through the various OONI GitHub repositories: https://github.com/ooni Highlights are shared in this report below. *## Hosted the OONI Partner Gathering 2024 in Malaysia* On 8th and 9th May 2024, we hosted an in-person OONI Partner Gathering 2024 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. As part of this 2-day event, we brought our partners (primarily from Asia and the Middle East) together to exchange skills and knowledge on internet censorship research. The goal of the event was to strengthen global and regional collaborations on censorship measurement research and advocacy. The OONI Partner Gathering 2024 brought together 45 individuals from 30 countries. Specifically, the participants included OONI partners from Southeast Asia, South Asia, East Asia, Central Asia, and the Middle East ( https://ooni.org/partners), some OONI partners who work internationally, as well as the whole OONI team. The event was possible thanks to generous support from the Ford Foundation (https://www.fordfoundation.org/) and Luminate (https://www.luminategroup.com/). As part of the OONI Partner Gathering 2024, we had the following objectives: * Exchange skills, knowledge, and methodologies to empower community participation in censorship measurement research and advocacy; * Better understand local challenges and develop strategies for improving censorship measurement research around the world; * Better understand partner/community needs; * Collect community feedback to support the improvement of OONI tools and methodologies; * Strengthen partnerships and strategically define goals and priorities on the study of internet censorship in collaboration with partners. The ultimate goal of the OONI Partner Gathering 2024 was to strengthen the OONI partnership network to help ensure that internet censorship is well-documented and rapidly addressed so that the world’s most at-risk individuals – human rights defenders, journalists, activists, and marginalized people in repressive environments — have consistent and open access to the internet. The agenda included a mixture of skill-share sessions, presentations, hands-on exercises, and interactive group discussions. We included a variety of parallel sessions to accommodate more sessions in the agenda, and to encourage more active participation in smaller group discussions. To provide space for discussions on ideas and needs that may emerge during the event, we also included a slot for “unconference” style sessions. Overall, the two-day OONI Partner Gathering 2024 event included 25 sessions, 20 of which were part of the official agenda, while 5 were proposed and facilitated by participants as part of the “unconference” session slots. The sessions were facilitated by both the OONI team and our partners. Notably, 9 sessions (from the official agenda) were facilitated by 11 of our partners, who provided amazing presentations sharing their work! We thank all those who facilitated sessions and participated in note-taking, helping to ensure a dynamic, inclusive, interesting, and well-documented event. To help ensure a safe, inclusive, and welcoming environment for all participants of the OONI Partner Gathering 2024, we shared the event’s Code of Conduct (CoC) with all participants prior to the event, and we set up an Incident Response Committee (composed of two partners and two OONI team members). No CoC violations were reported. The main outcomes of the OONI Partner Gathering 2024 include: * *Deeper understanding of regional challenges and partner needs. *Throughout the sessions of the OONI Partner Gathering, we gained deeper insight into the challenges experienced by our partners. Specifically, we mapped out current and emerging digital rights threats, the challenges that our partners experience in measuring internet censorship in their countries and regions, and we gained a deeper understanding of our partners’ needs. This insight will help with informing the improvement of OONI tools, as well as with informing opportunities for collaboration, shared strategies, and future goals. * *Collection of partner feedback.* OONI tools and methods have always been informed by community feedback. Based on the documentation of partner feedback, we will improve upon our tools, methodologies, and dataset to better meet the needs of our community. We may also create new tools based on partner feedback to support censorship measurement efforts. * *Increased partner ability to lead censorship measurement efforts in their countries/regions. *Through skillshares and knowledge-shares at the event, our partners gained an improved understanding of how to use OONI tools and data. This will support their community engagement activities, expanding OONI censorship measurement coverage and the documentation of censorship events. As an outcome of their participation at the OONI Partner Gathering 2024, we expect to see our partners make greater use of OONI tools and data in support of their research and advocacy efforts. * *Strengthened partnerships.* This was the first time that we met many of our partners in person, as the COVID-19 pandemic over the last years had reduced this opportunity. As a result of sharing knowledge, skills, and meals together, we now have stronger partnerships. The challenges and needs (as identified through sessions facilitated at the OONI Partner Gathering) will inform (many of) the goals and priorities of OONI partnerships moving forward. * *New partnerships.* We strategically invited a few (regional) organizations to the OONI Partner Gathering with whom we hadn’t established a partnership (yet), but with whom we hoped to formalize a partnership given our mission alignment and the impact of their work. One of these organizations was Indonesia’s SAFEnet (who are known for having successfully litigated and advocated against the 2019 Internet shutdown in Indonesia), with whom we established a partnership in July 2024. We are also currently in the process of discussing and formalizing partnerships with prominent digital rights organizations in Central Asia. Moreover, our partners had the opportunity to learn from each other during the event and to explore opportunities for new collaborations between them. As a result of the above, we expect to see increased use of OONI tools and data in support of research and advocacy efforts aimed at monitoring and responding to censorship events in Asia and the Middle East over the next few years. At the Closing Ceremony of the event, all participants received a certificate for their participation at the OONI Partner Gathering 2024. Following the OONI Partner Gathering 2024, we shared a survey with all participants to collect their feedback on the event and to learn how we can improve future events. As part of this survey, we collected very positive feedback and participants provided a very positive evaluation of the event. Further details are available through our OONI Partner Gathering 2024 Report: https://ooni.org/post/2024-ooni-partner-gathering-report/ We thank all participants who took time out of their busy schedules to fly across the world to join us in Kuala Lumpur for the OONI Partner Gathering 2024. Thanks to their invaluable feedback and participation, they made the event an unforgettable experience for us all. We also thank the Ford Foundation and Luminate for supporting the OONI Partner Gathering 2024, believing in our mission, and making this event possible! *## OONI Team Meeting 2024 in Malaysia* Following the OONI Partner Gathering 2024 (which brought together the whole OONI team), we hosted an OONI Team Meeting Day on 10th May 2024 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. As part of this meeting, we discussed OONI’s strategy, roles and responsibilities within the team, and we improved upon our roadmaps. Specifically, the OONI Team Meeting Day included the following sessions: * OONI Strategy * Roles, responsibilities, and decision making within the OONI team (Part 1) * Roles, responsibilities, and decision making within the OONI team (Part 2) * Presenting Thematic Censorship Findings on OONI Explorer and Revamping the OONI Explorer Navigation * VPN measurement update from OTF Information Controls Fellow * Roadmap updates (Part 1) * Roadmap updates (Part 2) As an outcome, we improved our roadmaps, we had important strategic discussions in person, and we discussed the next steps for some of our core projects. *## Published new report on the OONI Censorship Findings page* In May 2024, we published a report documenting the blocking of Grindr in Malaysia: https://explorer.ooni.org/findings/44213966401 OONI data suggests that Malaysia started blocking access to Grindr – the world’s largest social networking app for gay, bi, trans, and queer people – on 17th April 2024. Recent OONI data suggests that the block remains ongoing. *## Research collaborations with partners on upcoming reports* We continued to coordinate with our partners on research efforts required for upcoming research reports. Specifically, we coordinated with our partners on extensive updates to the Citizen Lab test lists for Bangladesh and Iran. In May 2024, the updates for the test lists of Bangladesh and Iran were finalized. Specifically: * Digitally Right updated the test list for Bangladesh: https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists/pull/1733 * Miaan Group contributed more updates to the test list for Iran: https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists/pull/1726 *## OONI Probe Mobile* We released News Media Scan v3.8.7: https://github.com/ooni/probe-android/pull/549 Notably, this release includes localization support for French, German, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Turkish. *## OONI Probe Desktop* In May 2024, we released OONI Probe Desktop 3.9.6: https://github.com/ooni/probe-desktop/releases/tag/v3.9.6 The latest version makes use of OONI Probe CLI v.3.22.0. *## OONI Probe CLI* In May 2024, we released OONI Probe CLI 3.22: https://github.com/ooni/probe-cli/releases/tag/v3.22.0 We documented the interaction between OONI Probe and the “probe services” (i.e., the OONI backend APIs providing services to OONI Probe). As part of this work, we also seized the opportunity to simplify and rationalize the code: https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/2700 We refactored the algorithm used by OONI Probe to communicate with possibly blocked probe services to prioritize the DNS results over the bridge strategy and previous knowledge about existing working strategies: https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/2704 *## OONI Run* Throughout May 2024, we focused on delivering OONI Run v2 support for the Deutsche Welle News Media Scan application ( https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/2733). Adding this functionality to their application will enable Deutsche Welle to independently maintain and update lists of URLs they wish to test. We focused on adding the specific functionality they required to do so, as well as on bug fixing and testing. With regards to the OONI Run v2 implementation in OONI Probe Mobile, we continued our efforts to test and fix bugs. In May 2024, we fixed the following bugs: https://github.com/ooni/run/issues/161, https://github.com/ooni/run/issues/165, https://github.com/ooni/run/issues/147, https://github.com/ooni/run/issues/151 *## OONI Explorer* In May 2024, we continued our efforts to update our design system to TailWindCSS (https://github.com/ooni/design-system/issues/174) by updating components to use the new framework ( https://github.com/ooni/design-system/pull/170). We also continued our efforts to ensure that the OONI Explorer Country pages matched recently re-designed components (https://github.com/ooni/explorer/issues/915, https://github.com/ooni/explorer/issues/914). Based on community feedback collected as part of our previous user research studies, we concluded that the new thematic censorship findings pages on OONI Explorer will focus on the following themes: * News Media: https://github.com/ooni/explorer/issues/940 * Social Media: https://github.com/ooni/explorer/issues/939 * Circumvention: https://github.com/ooni/explorer/issues/941 Community feedback also informed the ways through which information can be presented on each of these thematic pages, as well as which information to prioritize. While in Kuala Lumpur, we held a session during the OONI Team Day (10th May 2024) to further discuss our plans for both our projects on “Presenting Thematic Censorship Findings on OONI Explorer” and “Revamping the OONI Explorer Navigation”. We reviewed the mockups that had been made and we discussed the next steps. We have created the following issues to track this work: https://github.com/ooni/explorer/issues/938 https://github.com/ooni/explorer/issues/940 https://github.com/ooni/explorer/issues/941 https://github.com/ooni/explorer/issues/939 We also added simple event tracking ( https://github.com/ooni/explorer/pull/942) to the existing navigation bar so that we can better understand the top-visited pages on OONI Explorer. We will compare the data to the new navigation bar, once it is launched. *## General backend work* In May 2024, we: * Worked on porting the oonifindings API over to our new API pattern ( https://github.com/ooni/backend/issues/814); * Worked on refactoring the oonimeasurements service ( https://github.com/ooni/backend/pull/851); * Tried out a few devops PoCs to improve our devops processes ( https://github.com/ooni/devops/pull/59). *## Automating censorship detection and characterization based on OONI measurements* To help boost the performance of the new data processing pipeline, we started working on optimizing the performance of table writers and refactoring the table model: https://github.com/ooni/data/pull/72 Notably, we had the opportunity to present and share our new data analysis methods (for automating the detection and characterization of censorship) with our global network of partners and with experts from the internet measurement community. On 8th and 9th May 2024, we hosted the OONI Partner Gathering: a 2-day event in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, which brought OONI partners together to exchange skills and knowledge on internet censorship research and advocacy. During this event, we facilitated a session (“OONI data analysis deep dive”), as part of which we presented the OONI pipeline v5 ( https://github.com/ooni/data) and shared details of our methodological improvements for automating the detection and characterization of internet censorship based on OONI data. This enabled us to collect feedback from our partner network and to discuss how this could be useful to research and advocacy groups in highly censored environments (once the new pipeline is shipped into production). *## Community use of OONI data### Access Now’s #KeepItOn 2023 Report* In May 2024, Access Now published their annual 2023 #KeepItOn Report on Internet shutdowns around the world, which is available here: https://www.accessnow.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/2023-KIO-Report.pdf Many OONI reports from our Censorship Findings platform ( https://explorer.ooni.org/findings), as well as OONI research reports ( https://ooni.org/reports/) and OONI Explorer measurements ( https://explorer.ooni.org/) were cited quite extensively as part of Access Now’s (annual) #KeepItOn Report on Internet shutdowns in 2023. *## Community activities### iMAP Regional Partners Meeting in Malaysia* On 6th and 7th May 2024 (prior to the OONI Partner Gathering 2024), OONI’s Maria, Arturo, and Elizaveta participated in the iMAP Regional Partners Meeting in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (https://imap.sinarproject.org/). This event was organized and hosted by our partner, Sinar Project, who lead censorship measurement efforts in Southeast Asia. As part of our participation, we attended sessions that involved discussions on iMAP research reports (https://imap.sinarproject.org/reports), as well as on metadata collection for test list updates. *### Cross-Regional Convening of Digital Rights Activists in Malaysia* On 7th May 2024, OONI’s Elizaveta attended the Cross-Regional Convening of Digital Rights Activists of Central Asia and Southeast Asia that was organized by Internews in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. As part of this event, Elizaveta facilitated a session on documenting and researching internet censorship in Central Asia through the use of OONI tools and data. *### Countering Digital Threats to Democracy conference in Kenya* On 21st-22nd May 2024, OONI’s Elizaveta traveled to Nairobi, Kenya, to participate in the “Countering Digital Threats to Democracy” conference organized by USAID (https://events.pneumaav.com/USAID). As part of the event, Elizaveta presented OONI’s tools and work on documenting and investigating internet censorship in African countries. *### OONI workshop in Tanzania by community member* On 24th May 2024, our community member, Loveness Muhagazi (Digital Safety Consultant and author of the #Kiganjajanja online campaign) hosted an OONI training session for human rights defenders, civil society organizations and journalists in Tanzania. *### OONI Community Meeting* On 28th May 2024, we hosted the monthly OONI Community Meeting on our Slack channel (https://slack.ooni.org/). As part of this meeting, we discussed the following topics: 1) OONI Explorer user research: Does anyone have more feedback? 2) New OONI data processing pipeline v5: Testing and next steps for rolling it out in production 3) A new approach to characterize network blocking with decision trees (with an example in Russia) 4) Using soax.com for remote measurements *## Measurement coverage* In May 2024, 58,639,174 OONI Probe measurements were collected from 2,851 networks in 176 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.

1 0

2024

2023

2022

2021

2020

2019

2018

2017

2016

2015

tor-project September 2024