tor-project March 2025

tor-project@lists.torproject.org

12 participants
18 discussions

TPA-RFC-80: Debian 13 ("trixie") upgrade schedule
by Antoine Beaupré 01 Apr '25

01 Apr '25

Summary: start upgrading servers during the Debian 13 ("trixie") freeze, if it goes well, complete most of the fleet upgrade in around June 2025, with full completion by the end of 2025, with a 2026 year free of major upgrades entirely. Improve automation, retire old container images. Deadline: 2 weeks, 2025-04-01 # Background Debian 13 ("trixie"), currently "testing", is going into freeze soon, which means we should have a new Debian stable release in 2025. It has been a long-standing … [View More]

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Felicia's Monthly Status Report, March 2025
by Priscila 31 Mar '25

31 Mar '25

Hi everyone, This is my status report for March 2025. It's a list of all tasks I've been involved with/responsible for. ## Design tasks 1. Allow authentication of Onion Services on Android: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser/-/issues/31672 2. Figure out how to display conflux circuits in Tor Browser’s UI: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser/-/issues/41716 3. Review error prompt shown when Tor exits: https://gitlab.torproject.org/… [View More]

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cve's monthly status report 03/2025
by Clara Engler 31 Mar '25

31 Mar '25

Hello tor-project@, this month I have done the following things for the Tor project. # Onion Service Reliability I performed research on the reliability of onion services in various setup environments, including arti to arti, ctor to ctor and the two ones being mixed together. These findings resulted in the conclusion that the arti implementation is well-done and has a similar failure of its ctor pedant, which is around 0.5% or 1 in every 200 connection being a failure. Those failures are … [View More]flaky circuits which probably happen due to simply having bad luck while choosing the circuit. Nonetheless, those results are acceptable. Besides, this research has led to an improvement within the arti documentation, namely the addition of a method named `is_fully_reachable` which checks whether the `State` of a `tor-hsservice` indicates that it is reachable from the outside. This change was necessary because there are right now two states which indicate that the service is reachable, with only one of them sounding like a success. After all, this research led to the creation of the following tickets and merge requests in the arti repository: * arti#1887 * arti#1890 * arti!2850 # GPN23 I have opened a ticket (outreach#40103) for Tor activities at the GPN23 in Karlsruhe this June. I will be present at the event myself and I am open for giving a Tor related talk there too. This is however still early planning. # oniux This month, I continued working on oniux, namely statically integrating onionmasq into the oniux binary, so oniux users no longer need to provide a path to the onionmasq binary themselves; instead oniux is now a beautiful self-container monolithic binary. Besides all of this, I also did some research regarding the use of `user_namespaces(7)` in oniux with the eventual goal of oniux being capable to no longer need any `capabilities(7)`. This change is non-trivial and would probably require a rewrite of the tool in a shell scripting language, as a network stack such as [pasta](https://passt.top) would be required for proper functioning. Right now, this is not a priority but a nice to have. Our current use of capabilities is probably not a security risk, as all capabilities are being dropped very early on and no code originating from a malicious actor is executed with capabilities at all. Also, I have made two release tags for oniux this month: v0.1.0 and v0.2.0. Last but not least I have fixed a bug, namely that procfs was not remounted in the PID namespace created by oniux leading to an incorrect view when performing process related operations such as `ps aux`. After all, the following tickets have been addressed: * oniux#1 (for now) * oniux#2 * oniux#3 # onionmasq This month I gave onionmasq more attention again, this mainly included fixing various RenovateBot related updates and keeping this up-to-date in general. Besides this, I have performed some clean-ups and fixed some clippy warnings that occurred during the development. Also, as outlined in oniux, I have moved code a little bit around, meaning it is now possible to integrate onionmasq as a library into existing Rust application like I did with oniux. Last but not least I performed some testing with the onionmasq CI in order to hopefully make it possible to run the integration tests outside of privileged containers, there has not been much success there though. After all, my work cumulated in the following tickets/MR's: * onionmasq#135 * onionmasq#136 * onionmasq#137 * onionmasq#138 * onionmasq!404 * onionmasq!403 * onionmasq!401 (WIP) * onionmasq!400 * onionmasq!398 * onionmasq!397 (WIP) * onionmasq!393 # arti Besides the addition of the `is_fully_reachable` method, I also support and supported gabi@ in the release of the new arti version. [View Less]

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Anti-censorship team meeting notes, 2025-03-27
by meskio 27 Mar '25

27 Mar '25

Hey everyone! Here are our meeting logs: http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2025/tor-meeting.2025-03-27-16.00.html And our meeting pad: Anti-censorship -------------------------------- Next meeting: Thursday, April 3 16:00 UTC Facilitator: onyinyang ^^^(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: meskio == Goal of this meeting == Weekly check-in about … [View More]

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TPA-RFC-71: Emergency email deployments, phase B
by Antoine Beaupré 26 Mar '25

26 Mar '25

Hi, So TPA has adopted this proposal, internally, to make yet another set of emergency changes to our mail system, to respond to critical issues affecting delivery and sustainability of our infrastructure. I encourage you to read the "Affected users" section and "Timeline" below. In particular, we will be experimenting with "sender rewriting" soon, which will involve mangling emails we forward around to try and fix deliverability on those. The schleuder mailing list will also move servers. … [View More]

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Anti-censorship team meeting notes, 2025-03-20
by Shelikhoo 20 Mar '25

20 Mar '25

Hey everyone! Here are our meeting logs: http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2025/tor-meeting.2025-03-20-16.01.html And our meeting pad: Anti-censorship work meeting pad -------------------------------- Anti-censorship -------------------------------- Next meeting: Thursday,March, 27 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 … [View More]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 == * == Discussion == Mar 20 New: * Snowflake Staging Server & rdsys containerization * TPA supported system doesn't allow to have more than one domain name per branch in a staging server * snowflake needs two: broker and server * shelikhoo is experiments with k8s + terraform * shelikhoo will keep working on this since there is no overall rejection to this design == Actions == == Interesting links == * https://github.com/doudoulong/Minecruft-PT/blob/main/README.md#tor-browser-… == Reading group == * We will discuss "Differential Degradation Vulnerabilities in Censorship Circumvention Systems" on April 3 * https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.06247 * 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): 2025-03-20 Last week: - found and fixed cause of sqs rendezvous errors (snowflake#40363) - implemented better timeouts at broker for client offers (snowflake#40449) - lower proxy answerTimeout for web-based proxies (snowflake-webext#115) - remove bad relay pattern log message and default-relay-pattern option for broker (snowflake#40454) - followed up on Snowflake rendezvous errors in general (snowflake#40447) - tagged and released snowflake proxy v2.11.0 - confirmed fixes for domain fronting issues on old android versions (lyrebird#40012) - opened issue to update PTs in Tor Browser (tor-browser-build#41299) - released snowflake-webext 0.9.3 This week: - support conjure work - follow up on snowflake rendezvous failures - reduce/remove use of mutexes for broker metrics (snowflake#40458) - take a look at potential snowflake orbot bug - https://github.com/guardianproject/orbot-android/issues/1183 - maybe do some lox work dcf: 2025-03-20 Last week: - archived a Kazakhstan URL blocklist https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/censorship-analysis/-/iss… Next week: - archive snowflake-webextension-0.9.3 - 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… Help with: meskio: 2024-03-20 Last week: - build rdsys containers in the CI (rdsys#219) - stop distributing dysfunctional bridges (team#156) - downgrade lyrebird to use go 1.22 (lyrebird#40026) - release lyrebird 0.6.0 - test covertdtls MR proxy (snowflake!448) - debug dependency proxy for snowflake (snowflake!522) Next week: - steps towards a rdsys in containers (rdsys#219) Shelikhoo: 2024-03-20 Last Week: - [Testing] Unreliable+unordered WebRTC data channel transport for Snowflake rev2 (cont.)( https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… ) testing environment setup/research - Snowflake Staging Server Discussion(https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/team/-/issues/42080) - Snowfalke Staging Server Experiment - Merge request reviews Next Week/TODO: - Merge request reviews - [Testing] Unreliable+unordered WebRTC data channel transport for Snowflake rev2 (cont.)( https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… ) improvements - Snowfalke Staging Server Experiment onyinyang: 2025-03-13 Last week(s): - continued work on ampcache registration method for conjure - WIP MR: https://github.com/cohosh/conjure/pull/1 - https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/conj… - lox issuer efficiency merged! Next week: - HACS/Zkproofs/OSCW/RWC - finish up ampcache registration method - Begin work on decoy registration option - review Tor browser Lox integration - https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser/-/merge_requests… - add TTL cache to lox MR for duplicate responses: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/lox/-/merge_requests/305 As time allows: - Work on outstanding milestone issues: - 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!): - 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: 2025-03-06 Last weeks: - Implementing key_share extension support in covert-dtls - Implementing mimicking DTLS 1.3 extensions - Debugging Tor Build with covert-dtls: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… Next weeks: - Update MR with new covert-dtls version. - Write instructions on how to configure covert-dtls with snowflake client - Fix merge conflicts in MR (https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow…). - Condensing thesis into paper (on hold) Help with: - Test stability of covert-dtls in snowflake Facilitator Queue: meskio onyinyang 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 [View Less]

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TPA-RFC-83: Mail log retention
by Antoine Beaupré 18 Mar '25

18 Mar '25

Summary: extend the retention limit for mail logs to 10 days # Background We currently rotate mail logs daily and keep them for 5 days. That's great for privacy, but not so great for people having to report mail trouble in time. In particular, when there are failures with mail sent just before the weekend, it gives users a very short time frame to report issues. # Proposal Extend the retention limit for mail (`postfix` and `rspamd`) logs to 10 days: one week, plus "flexible Friday", plus "… [View More]

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Anti-censorship team meeting notes, 2025-03-13
by onyinyang 13 Mar '25

13 Mar '25

Hey everyone! Here are our meeting logs: http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2025/tor-meeting.2025-03-13-16.00.html And our meeting pad: Anti-censorship work meeting pad -------------------------------- Anti-censorship -------------------------------- Next meeting: Thursday, March 20 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 … [View More]

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Haidi February '25 Report
by Haidi 11 Mar '25

11 Mar '25

Hi! Below is my February’25 (Period: 2025-02-01 - 2025-02-28) report! In February, I began working on tests and documentation, focusing on integrating pluggable transports with little-t-tor on Windows. I then collected data across different operating systems and contributed to the corresponding GitLab documentation ticket. Spent some time learning the workflow for merging and committing documents in GitLab for the Tor Project. *Add documentation about using pluggable … [View More]

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minutes from the sysadmins
by Antoine Beaupré 10 Mar '25

10 Mar '25

Hi, We had a quick monthly meeting, here are the minutes. # Roll call: who's there and emergencies anarcat, groente, lavamind, lelutin and zen. lavamind and groente star. Tails pipelines are failing because of issues with the debian APT servers, zen and groente will look into it. # Checkin 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%… [View More]

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tor-project March 2025