August 2026 - tor-project - lists.torproject.org

Anti-censorship team meeting notes, 2026-08-27
by meskio 27 Aug '26

27 Aug '26

Hey everyone! Here are our meeting logs: https://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2026/tor-meeting.2026-08-27-16.00.ht… And our meeting pad: Anti-censorship -------------------------------- Next meeting: Thursday, 17 16:00 UTC Facilitator: cohosh ^^^(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 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… * Projects the TPI anti-censorship team is working on: * Project 146: Expanding access to digital media through the use of secure communications, infrastructure, tools, and techniques * https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/anti-censorship/-/issues/?label_na… * Project 170: Monitoring and reporting on censorship against the Tor network * epic: https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/epics/17 * Project 201: Signaling channels * board https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/boards/2675?label_name[]=Project… == Announcements == * No meeting September 3 and 10, everybody at Global Gathering == Discussion == * snowflake broker deployment * new version of probetest is already deployed in the broker but not configured in nginx * the deployment of broker will also include the proxy ratelimiting feature * shelikhoo will deploy it next week * cohosh will write to tor-relays warning about the proxy fairness change * A developer of an open source stack is asking a few questions regarding snowflake-proxy, it's relevant because the developer implemented snowflake-proxy as a feature that the stack server-side users can optionally run to help the Tor network users, but the dev eloper has a few questions regarding it here: * https://forum.torproject.org/t/running-snowflake-with-moav-260-gb-relayed-a… * What happens to Tor on a whitelisted mobile network in Russia? * either like 100 whitelisted sites or any internet but 16KB/s * Tor connects but webbrowsing doesn't work * services are allowed by IP, not just DNS == Actions == * == Interesting links == == Reading group == * We will discuss "CensorLess: Cost-Efficient Censorship Circumvention Through Serverless Cloud Functions" on Aug/20/2026 * https://www.petsymposium.org/popets/2026/popets-2026-0096.pdf * https://www.petsymposium.org/popets/2026/popets-2026-0096.php * 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? * Next in the Reading Group Queue: * == 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): 2026-08-27 Last week: - revised cost analysis of serverless rendezvous - read ASL19 report "Resilience runs through people" - https://asl19.org/en/blog/2026-06-01-the-future-of-internet-resilience-lies… - reviewed UAT MRs - wrote up some thoughts on proxy reachability checks Next week: - continue review of UAT (team#178) - make proxy-bridge reachability checks robust to bridge outages (snowflake#40504) - research working group tasks: open issues for relevant pets/foci papers - open issue about ASL19 report suggestions dcf: 2026-08-20 Last week: Next week: Help with: meskio: 2026-08-27 Last week: - prepare .deb packages for PTs - update telegram doc strings with TB text - make a rdsys release Next week: - research existing DNS transports (team#199) Shelikhoo: 2026-08-27 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 - Merge request Reviews - [Research] proxy pool overload and potential blocking in Iran ( https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… ) - [Research] Add three NAT type buckets to the snowflake broker ( https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… ) - [Develop] Work on TLSDelegate development - [Document] Updated the Snowflake Broker Installation Guide (https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/team/-/wikis/Survival-Gui…) (Done) - [Deployment] Snowflake Probetest deployment(https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-tran… (Done) Next (working) Week/TODO: - Merge request reviews - [Deployment]Unreliable+unordered WebRTC data channel transport for Snowflake rev2 (cont.)( https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… ) Building custom Tor Browser with patch applied - Vantage point maintaince - [Research] proxy pool overload and potential blocking in Iran ( https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… ) - [Research] Add three NAT type buckets to the snowflake broker ( https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… ) - Add 3 type nat bucket to snowflake broker - Implement TLS Delegate in Rust (cont.) onyinyang: 2026-08-27 Last week(s): - Work for project #170 to detect bridge blocking - create API endpoint to poll for flagged bridges? Next week: - Continue tasks for project #170 - send flagged bridges to vantage point or else collect them to be sent Switch back to some of these: As time allows: - Continue work on rdsys#196 - Continue Investigating rdsys#248 i.e., why dysfunctional webtunnel bridges are being distributed - Troubleshooting conjure not connecting in China - waiting for more information from conjure authors/maintainers - Lox still seems to be filling up the disk on the rdsys-test server despite changes made to delete old entries, look into what's going wrong Blog post for conjure: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/conj… - 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 - 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: 2026-05-28 Last weeks: - Researching possible DTLS block in Russia - https://github.com/net4people/bbs/issues/603#issuecomment-4451730751 - Implementing DTLS 1.3 in pion Next weeks: - Implementing DTLS 1.3 in pion Help with: - Facilitator Queue: cohosh onyinyang shelikhoo meskio 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 -- meskio | https://meskio.net/ -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- My contact info: https://meskio.net/crypto.txt -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Nos vamos a Croatan.

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Duplicate tor browser icons on Debian 13 / GNOME 48
by fa 25 Aug '26

25 Aug '26

Hello, Thank you very much for developing Throne. I really appreciate your work on the client. I have a small issue/question. After installing tor browser, two separate Throne icons appear in the GNOME application menu, almost as if the application has been installed twice. I’ve attached a screenshot showing the issue. My system information: - *OS:* Debian GNU/Linux 13 (trixie) - *Architecture:* 64-bit - *GNOME:* 48 - *Windowing System:* Wayland - *Kernel:* Linux 6.12.101+deb13-amd64 - *Firmware Version:* GGCN49WW Is this a known issue, or could there be two different .desktop entries being installed? Thank you again for your work. Best regards

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Anti-censorship team meeting notes, 2026-08-20
by Shelikhoo 20 Aug '26

20 Aug '26

Hey everyone! Here are our meeting logs: https://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2026/tor-meeting.2026-08-20-16.01.ht… And our meeting pad: Anti-censorship work meeting pad -------------------------------- Anti-censorship -------------------------------- Next meeting: Thursday, August 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 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… * Projects the TPI anti-censorship team is working on: * Project 146: Expanding access to digital media through the use of secure communications, infrastructure, tools, and techniques * https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/anti-censorship/-/issues/?label_na… * Project 170: Monitoring and reporting on censorship against the Tor network * epic: https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/epics/17 * Project 201: Signaling channels * board https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/boards/2675?label_name[]=Project… == Announcements == * Reading group next week (August 20) CensorLess: Cost-Efficient Censorship Circumvention Through Serverless Cloud Functions https://www.petsymposium.org/popets/2026/popets-2026-0096.php == Discussion == * snowflake broker deployment * new version of probetest is already deployed in the broker but not configured in nginx * the deployment of broker will also include the proxy ratelimiting feature == Actions == * == Interesting links == == Reading group == * We will discuss "CensorLess: Cost-Efficient Censorship Circumvention Through Serverless Cloud Functions" on Aug/20/2026 * https://www.petsymposium.org/popets/2026/popets-2026-0096.pdf * https://www.petsymposium.org/popets/2026/popets-2026-0096.php * 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? * Next in the Reading Group Queue: * == 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): 2026-08-20 Last weeks: - Implemented and merged rate limit map for proxy polls (snowflake#40506) - Fixed proxy prometheus metrics in the case a client doesn't have SDP candidates (snowflake#40544) - Updated wording of help text for -outbound-address proxy option (snowflake#40515) - decommissioned old Conjure bridge (conjure#46) - reviewed 3 bucket NAT type MR (snowflake!727) - wrote a summary of CensorLess and some Tor integration options (research#19) Next week: - continue review of UAT (team#178) - make proxy-bridge reachability checks robust to bridge outages (snowflake#40504) dcf: 2026-08-20 Last week: Next week: Help with: meskio: 2026-08-20 Last week: - research existing DNS transports (team#199) - redirect bridgest.torproject.org/info to the distributors documentation (rdsys!659) - catching up after AFK Next week: - research existing DNS transports (team#199) Shelikhoo: 2026-08-20 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 - Merge request Reviews - [Research] proxy pool overload and potential blocking in Iran ( https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… ) - [Research] Add three NAT type buckets to the snowflake broker ( https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… ) - [Push] Update staging environment for 3 type nat https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… - [Document] Updated the Snowflake Broker Installation Guide (https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/team/-/wikis/Survival-Gui…) - [MR Merged] Snowflake’s Go 1.25 toolchain update (https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow…) ; sadly go1.27 released the same day - [Deployment] Snowflake Probetest deployment(https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-tran… Next (working) Week/TODO: - Merge request reviews - [Deployment]Unreliable+unordered WebRTC data channel transport for Snowflake rev2 (cont.)( https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… ) Building custom Tor Browser with patch applied - Vantage point maintaince - [Research] proxy pool overload and potential blocking in Iran ( https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… ) - [Research] Add three NAT type buckets to the snowflake broker ( https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… ) - Add 3 type nat bucket to snowflake broker - Implement TLS Delegate in Rust (cont.) onyinyang: 2026-08-20 Last week(s): - Work for project #170 to detect bridge blocking - flag bridges that have a drop - create API endpoint to poll for flagged bridges? Next week: - Continue tasks for project #170 - send flagged bridges to vantage point or else collect them to be sent Switch back to some of these: As time allows: - Continue work on rdsys#196 - Continue Investigating rdsys#248 i.e., why dysfunctional webtunnel bridges are being distributed - Troubleshooting conjure not connecting in China - waiting for more information from conjure authors/maintainers - Lox still seems to be filling up the disk on the rdsys-test server despite changes made to delete old entries, look into what's going wrong Blog post for conjure: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/conj… - 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 - 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: 2026-05-28 Last weeks: - Researching possible DTLS block in Russia - https://github.com/net4people/bbs/issues/603#issuecomment-4451730751 - Implementing DTLS 1.3 in pion Next weeks: - Implementing DTLS 1.3 in pion Help with: - Facilitator Queue: cohosh 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

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"Napping Guard" (2020)—was it reported to Tor?
by David Fifield 18 Aug '26

18 Aug '26

I was looking at this 2020 research paper: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9343014/ https://sci-hub.ru/10.1109/TrustCom50675.2020.00097 "Napping Guard: Deanonymizing Tor Hidden Service in a Stealthy Way" Chen Muqian, Wang Xuebin, Shi Jinqiao, Zhao Can, Wang Meiqi, Fang Binxing In the abstract and introduction, they say: In addition, we also propose a mitigation of Napping Guard attack, and report the design flaw to the Tor project. But they don't give details of reporting the flaw or what happened after that, as far as I can see. Did the reporting happen, and did it result in changes in Tor? I also noticed this more recent paper by some of the same authors: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10570737 "Knock-Knock: De-Anonymise Hidden Services by Exploiting Service Answer Vulnerability" Zhang Qingfeng, Chen Muqian, Wang Xuebin, Zhao Can, Liu Qingyun, Shi Jinqiao This one, too, says "Lastly, we present a method to mitigate watermark attacks and report the design flaw to the Tor Project." Did that happen?

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Anti-censorship team meeting notes, 2026-08-13
by onyinyang 13 Aug '26

13 Aug '26

Hey everyone! Here are our meeting logs: https://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2026/tor-meeting.2026-08-13-16.01.ht… (text): https://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2026/tor-meeting.2026-08-13-16.01.txt And our meeting pad: Anti-censorship work meeting pad -------------------------------- Anti-censorship -------------------------------- Next meeting: Thursday, August 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 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… * Projects the TPI anti-censorship team is working on: * Project 146: Expanding access to digital media through the use of secure communications, infrastructure, tools, and techniques * https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/anti-censorship/-/issues/?label_na… * Project 170: Monitoring and reporting on censorship against the Tor network * epic: https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/epics/17 * Project 201: Signaling channels * board https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/boards/2675?label_name[]=Project… == Announcements == * Reading group next week (August 20) CensorLess: Cost-Efficient Censorship Circumvention Through Serverless Cloud Functions https://www.petsymposium.org/popets/2026/popets-2026-0096.php * Regarding the UAT OTF Application * Concept Note (first-stage review) has been approved. * New snowflake probetest deployment next week * https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… * the deployment manual is not written * to support the newer 3-type NAT type classification (open, moderate, strict) * https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… * https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… * test staging server (may stop working at some point) * "snowflake-proxy" \ -broker "https://snowflake-broker-aeetxkomqe7a0gi3.vwyjlwqyoh3sqmycg6wmi5e732the58s3…" \ -nat-probe-server "https://snowflake-probetest-aeetxkomqe7a0gi3.vwyjlwqyoh3sqmycg6wmi5e732the5…" \ -keep-local-addresses \ -verbose \ -allowed-relay-hostname-pattern '$' \ "$@" * Bridge snowflake 192.0.2.3:80 fingerprint=2B280B23E1107BB62ABFC40DDCC8824814F80A72 url=https://snowflake-broker-aeetxkomqe7a0gi3.vwyjlwqyoh3sqmycg6wmi5e732the58s3png-testing.v2fly.org:10443/ ice=stun:stun.antisip.com:3478,stun:stun.epygi.com:3478,stun:stun.uls.co.za:3478,stun:stun.voipgate.com:3478,stun:stun.mixvoip.com:3478,stun:stun.nextcloud.com:3478,stun:stun.bethesda.net:3478,stun:stun.nextcloud.com:443 utls-imitate=hellochrome_auto == Discussion == == Actions == * == Interesting links == == Reading group == * We will discuss "CensorLess: Cost-Efficient Censorship Circumvention Through Serverless Cloud Functions" on Aug/20/2026 * https://www.petsymposium.org/popets/2026/popets-2026-0096.pdf * https://www.petsymposium.org/popets/2026/popets-2026-0096.php * 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? * Next in the Reading Group Queue: * == 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): 2026-08-06 Last week: - updated reading group wiki - https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/team/-/wikis/Anti-censors… - updated Snowflake costs - https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/team/-/wikis/Snowflake-co… - discussed snowflake webext poll loop refactor (snowflake-webext!100) - worked on adding proxy poll rate limiting to broker Next week: - continue to review PT spec implementation in UAT - more work on rate limiting proxy polls - make proxy-bridge reachability checks robust to bridge outages (snowflake#40504) dcf: 2026-08-13 Last week: Next week: Help with: meskio: 2026-08-06 Last week: - partly AFK - research existing DNS transports (team#199) - debian packaging work Next week: - research existing DNS transports (team#199) Shelikhoo: 2026-08-13 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 - Merge request Reviews - [Research] proxy pool overload and potential blocking in Iran ( https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… ) - [Research] Add three NAT type buckets to the snowflake broker ( https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… ) - [Merge Request Merged] Implement 3 Type NAT matching system in broker, client, proxy (https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow…) - [Merge Request] Opened MR !729 to update Snowflake’s Go toolchain to v1.25 (https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow…) - [Research] Setup Staging environment for snowflake 3 type nat(https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/… - [Admin] Relicensed and transferred InteractiveConnectivitySimulator (https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/inte…) into the team namespace, completing work item #197 (https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/team/-/work_items/197) Next (working) Week/TODO: - Merge request reviews - [Deployment]Unreliable+unordered WebRTC data channel transport for Snowflake rev2 (cont.)( https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… ) Building custom Tor Browser with patch applied - Vantage point maintaince - [Research] proxy pool overload and potential blocking in Iran ( https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… ) - [Research] Add three NAT type buckets to the snowflake broker ( https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… ) - Add 3 type nat bucket to snowflake broker - Implement TLS Delegate in Rust (cont.) onyinyang: 2026-08-06 Last week(s): - Work for project #170 to detect bridge blocking - collect connection stats for bridges for each region - flag bridges that have a drop Next week: - Continue tasks for project #170 - send flagged bridges to vantage point or else collect them to be sent Switch back to some of these: As time allows: - Continue work on rdsys#196 - Continue Investigating rdsys#248 i.e., why dysfunctional webtunnel bridges are being distributed - Troubleshooting conjure not connecting in China - waiting for more information from conjure authors/maintainers - Lox still seems to be filling up the disk on the rdsys-test server despite changes made to delete old entries, look into what's going wrong Blog post for conjure: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/conj… - 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 - 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: 2026-05-28 Last weeks: - Researching possible DTLS block in Russia - https://github.com/net4people/bbs/issues/603#issuecomment-4451730751 - Implementing DTLS 1.3 in pion Next weeks: - Implementing DTLS 1.3 in pion Help with: - Facilitator Queue: cohosh 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 -- --- onyinyang GPG Fingerprint 3CC3 F8CC E9D0 A92F A108 38EF 156A 6435 430C 2036

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Hello
by Николай Колесников 08 Aug '26

08 Aug '26

-- Отправлено из Mail ( https://mail.ru/ ) для Android

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User Support Report for July 2026
by ebanam 06 Aug '26

06 Aug '26

Hello everyone, This is the report from the user support team for the month of July 2026. Note: (↑), (↓) and (-) are indicating if the number of tickets we received for these topics have been increasing, decreasing or have been the same from the previous month respectively. - Summary of updates from user support - General user support - Farsi-speaking user support - Russian-speaking user support - Frontdesk (email user support channel) - Telegram, WhatsApp and Signal user support channels - Highlights from the Tor Forum - Highlights from Google Play Store # Summary of updates from user support ## General user support * 358 tickets in total (↓1) * 245 tickets on Email * 106 tickets on Telegram * 7 tickets on Signal * Our WhatsApp support channel was unreachable for sometime at the end of July. The issue has been resolved now and the WhatsApp support channel is fully functional as of now. If you reached out to us via WhatsApp in the meantime, your tickets have been processed by the team. But in case you haven't received a message please do not hesitate to reach out again. Apologies for the inconvenience. * Added documentation to explain why Tor VPN will not work if the [Private DNS][] option is set on Android's Network and internet settings. * In light of the [tor 0.4.8 deprecation][] that is scheduled for September, we received a few queries about it. Whenever noticeable, we have been actively encouraging users to update their tor version. * Tails user support parity: the team has been looking at Tails user support parity issue. In this initial phase, the Tor user support team got access to Tails mailbox and learned their ticket triage workflow. We did a [short summary of their tickets]. * In July, dir auths dropped support for [Tor 0.4.6 and 0.4.7-before-0.4.7.120.4.6.x], we had a few users reaching out to us asking why their Tor didn't connect. * We have received a [report] that Orbot for Android is no longer available from the Google Play Store in India. [Private DNS]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/vpn/-/issues/147 [tor 0.4.8 deprecation]: https://blog.torproject.org/sunsetting-tor-048/ [short summary of their tickets]: https://gitlab.tails.boum.org/tails/tails/-/work_items/20773#note_288224 [Tor 0.4.6 and 0.4.7-before-0.4.7.120.4.6.x]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/network-health/team/-/work_items/460#note… [report]: https://forum.torproject.org/t/orbot-for-android-is-no-longer-available-fro… ## Farsi-speaking user support * 26 tickets in total (↓41) * 4 tickets on Email * 22 tickets on Telegram * We received several tickets from users in Iran reporting that Google's "My Location" feature showed their location as "Tehran" while using Tor Browser. After investigating, we found that this was caused by Google's geolocation service flagging some Tor exit nodes in Europe as being from Tehran. Our team was able to reproduce the same behavior using Tor Browser, confirming that the issue is not specific to Iranian users. Checking with other geolocation checking services, did not exhibit the same behavior and as expected reflected the location of the Tor exit. * Although the number of support tickets from Iran dropped in July, as per Tor Metrics, [Tor usage in Iran remains stable][]. Iran also remains one of the [top countries by bridge usage]. [Tor usage in Iran remains stable]: https://metrics.torproject.org/userstats-bridge-country.html?start=2026-05-… [top countries by bridge usage]: https://metrics.torproject.org/userstats-bridge-table.html?start=2026-05-08… ## Russian-speaking user support * 442 tickets in total (↓56) * 156 tickets on Email (↓35) * 283 tickets on Telegram (↓22) * 3 tickets on Signal (↑2) * Direct connections to Tor have been gradually blocked in [Belarus][] for a while, and now it is almost completely blocked. Users from Belarus need to use bridges to connect to Tor. [Belarus]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/censorship-analysis/-/wor… # Frontdesk (email user support channel) * 479(↑) RT tickets created * 405(↓) RT tickets resolved Tickets by topics and numbers: 1. 202(↑) tickets: instructions to circumvent censorship for Chinese speaking users. 2. 156(↓) tickets: circumventing censorship in Russian speaking countries. 3. 47(↑) tickets: help with troubleshooting existing Tor Browser install on Desktop (Windows, macOS and Linux). 4. 15(↑) tickets: help with troubleshooting Tor VPN beta. 5. 11(↑) tickets: instructions to use WebTunnel bridges with Tor apps. 6. 5(↓) tickets: circumventing censorship with Tor in Farsi. 7. 3(↑) tickets: reports of fake apps on iOS AppStore masquerading as official Tor Browser. 8. 1(↓) tickets: report of websites blocking Tor connections or not performing well in Tor Browser. 9. 1(↑) ticket: instructions to download and install Tor Browser. 10. 1(↑) ticket: query about the [privacy policy][] of Tor applications. [privacy policy]: https://www.torproject.org/about/privacy_policy/ # Telegram, WhatsApp and Signal user support channels * 421(↓) tickets resolved Breakdown: * 411(↓) tickets on Telegram * 10(↓) tickets on Signal * 0(↓) tickets on WhatsApp Tickets by topics and numbers: 1. 286(↓) tickets: circumventing censorship in Russian speaking countries. 2. 35(↑) tickets: instructions to circumvent censorship for Chinese speaking users. 3. 22(↓) tickets: circumventing censorship with Tor in Farsi. 4. 16(↓) tickets: help with using censorship circumvention methods on Onion Browser (iOS) or Orbot (Android / iOS). 5. 10(↓) tickets: help with troubleshooting Tor VPN beta. 6. 8(↓) tickets: help with troubleshooting existing Tor Browser install on Desktop (Windows, macOS and Linux). 7. 7(↑) tickets: instructions to use GetTor. 8. 6(↑) tickets: query about Tor Browser support legacy operating systems. 9. 5(↓) tickets: instructions on how to get Tor Browser binaries from GetTor. 10. 4(↑) tickets: questions about onion services and how to access them. 11. 3(↑) tickets: questions about [Tor 0.4.8 end-of-life][]. 12. 3(↓) tickets: query about Tor Browser support legacy operating systems. 13. 2(↓) tickets: help with using bridges with Tails. 14. 2(↑) tickets: report of websites blocking Tor connections or not performing well in Tor Browser. 15. 2(↑) tickets: donation related query. 16. 1(↑) ticket: can't use Tor VPN when Private DNS is configured on Android's Network settings. 17. 1(↑) ticket: instructions to setup Snowflake proxy. 18. 1(↑) ticket: questions about Tor Browser's Security Levels and how to disable / enable JavaScript when using Tor Browser. [Tor 0.4.8 end-of-life]: https://blog.torproject.org/sunsetting-tor-048/ # Highlights from the Tor Forum * Update to [tor 0.4.9][] by September. [tor 0.4.9]: https://forum.torproject.org/t/consensus-not-signed-by-sufficient-number-of… # Highlights from Google Play Store ## Tor Browser for Android * Tor Browser for Android (TBA) had a Google Play rating of 4.28 stars in July, which is higher as compared to in June. * Tor Browser for Android (TBA) got 629 (↑58) new reviews. The total count of reviews for the app stands at 69,813. * For Tor Browser, the most common issue mentioned on reviews were the censorship against Tor in countries like Russia, China, Iran and Tor Browser being slow to browse. ## Tor Browser for Android Alpha * Tor Browser for Android Alpha app had a rating of 4.115 (↓0.004) in July which is lower compared to June. * Tor Browser for Android Alpha got 4 (↓2) new reviews. The total count of reviews for the app stands at 8,789. ## Tor VPN Beta * Tor VPN beta number of unique daily users is around 73,000 at the end of July. * The top 5 countries by the number of installations being (in descending order): Russia, India, Iran, the United States, and Turkmenistan. Thanks! -- ebanam

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Anti-censorship team meeting notes, 2026-08-06
by Shelikhoo 06 Aug '26

06 Aug '26

Hey everyone! Here are our meeting logs: https://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2026/tor-meeting.2026-08-06-16.00.ht… And our meeting pad: Anti-censorship work meeting pad -------------------------------- Anti-censorship -------------------------------- Next meeting: Thursday, August 13 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: 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… * Projects the TPI anti-censorship team is working on: * Project 146: Expanding access to digital media through the use of secure communications, infrastructure, tools, and techniques * https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/anti-censorship/-/issues/?label_na… * Project 170: Monitoring and reporting on censorship against the Tor network * epic: https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/epics/17 * Project 201: Signaling channels * board https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/boards/2675?label_name[]=Project… == Announcements == * == Discussion == (New: Aug 6) * Update snowflake golang toolchain version * Missing dependencies piled up * what are Tor Browser's requirement? * they tend not to be more than 1 version behind * debian stable is still at go1.24 * shelikhoo will create a merge request with a toolchain version update, and ask for comment from the browser team * New reading group paper? * CensorLess: Cost-Efficient Censorship Circumvention Through Serverless Cloud Functions https://www.petsymposium.org/popets/2026/popets-2026-0096.php * Who Carries Tor? Measuring Bandwidth-Weighted Transit Concentration https://www.petsymposium.org/foci/2026/foci-2026-0014.php * We'll go with "CensorLess" for the next reading group. == Actions == * == Interesting links == * https://blog.torproject.org/snowflake-volunteer-standalone-app-to-help-peop… * https://opencollective.com/censorship-circumvention/projects/snowflake-dail… == Reading group == * We will discuss "CensorLess: Cost-Efficient Censorship Circumvention Through Serverless Cloud Functions" on Aug/20/2026 * https://www.petsymposium.org/popets/2026/popets-2026-0096.pdf * https://www.petsymposium.org/popets/2026/popets-2026-0096.php * 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? * Next in the Reading Group Queue: * == 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): 2026-08-06 Last week: - updated reading group wiki - https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/team/-/wikis/Anti-censors… - updated Snowflake costs - https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/team/-/wikis/Snowflake-co… - discussed snowflake webext poll loop refactor (snowflake-webext!100) - worked on adding proxy poll rate limiting to broker Next week: - continue to review PT spec implementation in UAT - more work on rate limiting proxy polls - make proxy-bridge reachability checks robust to bridge outages (snowflake#40504) dcf: 2026-08-06 Last week: - reviewed a merge request for snowflake poll interval options https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… - revised some snowflake probetest documentation https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… - did review of snowflake webextension proxy poll interval refactoring https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… Next week: Help with: meskio: 2026-08-06 Last week: - partly AFK - research existing DNS transports (team#199) - debian packaging work Next week: - research existing DNS transports (team#199) Shelikhoo: 2026-08-06 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 - Merge request Reviews - [Research] proxy pool overload and potential blocking in Iran ( https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… ) - [Research] Add three NAT type buckets to the snowflake broker ( https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… ) - Implement TLS Delegate in Rust (cont.) - Add 3 type nat bucket to snowflake broker, client, proxy: (https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow…) - Completed Snowflake WebExtension 0.10.1 publication and confirmed the Chrome Store release succeeded ( https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… ) - GitLab CI runner connectivity failure report (https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/team/-/work_items/42748) Next (working) Week/TODO: - Merge request reviews - [Deployment]Unreliable+unordered WebRTC data channel transport for Snowflake rev2 (cont.)( https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… ) Building custom Tor Browser with patch applied - Vantage point maintaince - [Research] proxy pool overload and potential blocking in Iran ( https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… ) - [Research] Add three NAT type buckets to the snowflake broker ( https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… ) - Add 3 type nat bucket to snowflake broker - Implement TLS Delegate in Rust (cont.) onyinyang: 2026-08-06 Last week(s): - Work for project #170 to detect bridge blocking Next week: - Continue tasks for project #170 Switch back to some of these: As time allows: - Continue work on rdsys#196 - Continue Investigating rdsys#248 i.e., why dysfunctional webtunnel bridges are being distributed - Troubleshooting conjure not connecting in China - waiting for more information from conjure authors/maintainers - Lox still seems to be filling up the disk on the rdsys-test server despite changes made to delete old entries, look into what's going wrong Blog post for conjure: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/conj… - 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 - 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: 2026-05-28 Last weeks: - Researching possible DTLS block in Russia - https://github.com/net4people/bbs/issues/603#issuecomment-4451730751 - Implementing DTLS 1.3 in pion Next weeks: - Implementing DTLS 1.3 in pion Help with: - Facilitator Queue: cohosh 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

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minutes from the sysadmin
by Antoine Beaupré 04 Aug '26

04 Aug '26

# Roll call: who's there and emergencies We have a few outstanding issues we're keeping an eye on: - gitlab artifacts partition filling up by lelutin - gitlab CI issues monitored by lavamind - jenkins runners migration to new servers by zen and groente # Express check-in We did our usual quick check-in for blocked tasks and how everyone is doing. # Roadmap discussion anarcat brought back a discussion about priorities and roadmap. As a reminder, we establish [yearly roadmaps][] and we have an active [2026 roadmap][] although many things came up that made it hard to follow. [2026 roadmap]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/tpa/-/work_items/2 [yearly roadmaps]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/team/-/wikis/roadmap The goal of the conversation is to see what we'll work on until the end of the year and get a glimpse of priorities for 2027. This was previously [discussed in March][], at our last formal meeting. [discussed in March]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/team/-/wikis/meeting/2026-03-10 We also discussed this informally during a check-in in June, where we wanted to do: - groente: mail *and* idm - lavamind: download and support sites in 2026, and openvox (2027?) - zen: prometheus / puppet 2026, firewall / backups 2027? - anarcat: matrix and websites merge - gab: minio Here are per-person priorities. ## lavamind - yec coming quickly, hoping for another push on donate-neo: tech debt to catchup, rate limiting improvements, before october 2026 - some website migrations to marble in 2026? need to check with the web team - would love to move GitLab artifacts to object storage ## lelutin - minio retirement in 2026 - joining zen in the puppet / tails merge for 2027 ## anarcat - matrix process in 2027 - we should prioritize prometheus, firewall and backups in 2026/2027 - websites merge seems to be a priority for the tails team ## groente - AI / security pre-emption? better incident response? - LDAP cleanup in 2026? - start of an idm in 2027? hard to predict, collaboration is slow - email not blocked on IDM - documents is much harder ## zen - tails merge roadmap need a review. things came up (e.g. migrating the whole jenkins setup, twice) and we didn't know how much time we could free up to work on the merge, so we have delays - priorities are finishing prometheus and puppet in 2026 - 2027: firewall is a huge rework and backups are important # Next meeting Next month, we hope to resume our monthly cadence. # Metrics of the month * host count: 142, LDAP 141 (!), Puppet 141 (!) * number of Apache servers monitored: 33, hits per second: 625 * number of self-hosted nameservers: 6, mail servers: 12 * pending upgrades: 1, reboots: 98 * average load: 1.78, memory available: 4.4 TB/8.4 TB, running processes: 300 * disk free/total: 111.7 TB/254.4 TB * bytes sent: 533.6 MB/s, received: 348.2 MB/s * [GitLab tickets][]: 286 tickets including... * Needs Triage: 1 * Not Scheduled: 178 * Backlog: 73 * Next: 21 * Doing: 13 * (closed: 4614) * [~Needs Information][]: 5 open, 137 closed * [~Needs Review][]: 6 open, 213 closed * [~Technical Debt][]: 11 open, 39 closed [Gitlab tickets]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/team/-/boards [~Needs Information]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/tpa/-/issues/?state=opened&label_n… [~Needs Review]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/tpa/-/issues/?state=opened&label_n… [~Technical Debt]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/tpa/-/issues/?state=opened&label_n… We have completed all major Debian upgrades and are not currently tracking upgrades, at last! -- Antoine Beaupré torproject.org system administration

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Smart Options for Students Facing Academic Pressure
by jollylara39＠gmail.com 04 Aug '26

04 Aug '26

Academic pressure seems to be a really common challenge for a lot of students, especially those trying to juggle college, work responsibilities, and personal needs all at once. When tight deadlines, several assignments, midterms, and even online classes stack up at the same time, it can feel like everything is due immediately, and honestly that can get overwhelming fast. I think the first step is, well improving time management, like making a study routine that actually feels realistic , and turning big tasks into smaller milestones. Also, reaching out to professors, being part of a study group, or even getting tutoring support can really shift things when a topic feels unusually hard, or just not clicking. Some students then consider more formal academic support and search for help such as “pay someone to do my online class” when they feel they just can’t keep pace with the workload. But it’s still important that every student really understands their school’s academic integrity rules, and chooses guidance that fits those standards. Otherwise it can turn into problems later, even if the short term pressure feels impossible. If you’re looking into what academic support services are available, you can find more information by going to https://myassignmenthelp.com/take-my-online-class.html. Of course, everyone experiences academic pressure in their own way, so there isn’t a single method that fixes it for everyone. What strategies have helped you stay on track with your workload? And have you ever ended up in a situation where deadlines piled up, if so what ended up being the most effective way you handled it?

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