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Notes from June 28 2018 Vegas team meeting
by Karsten Loesing 02 Jul '18

02 Jul '18

Notes for June 28 2018 meeting: Roger: 1) Should we collect and then maintain a list of who else in the world has Tor related funding? That way we can coordinate better at helping amplify their impact, and also remember to invite them to dev meetings, etc. [Answer: yes good idea in theory, but we'd need a responsible person to keep track of the list. We'll think on it.] Georg: 1) Our first Tor Browser alpha based on Firefox 60 ESR is out. The process was painful but the result seems to stick. \o/ 2) Got back to OTF regarding our bug bounty program Arturo: 1) Made some progress on coming up with a scheme for OONI measurement IDs. See: https://github.com/TheTorProject/ooni-pipeline/blob/master/docs/ooni-uuid.md 2) Investigating blocking of Tor in venezuela Shari: 1) We've been doing screenings for fundraising director candidates. 2) Lots of travel approvals for the Mexico City meeting. We need to come up with a more efficient way to do this! Contracts with the hotel have (finally!) been signed. 3) Worked on, and working on, more job descriptions and reading resumes. 4) Lots of little stuff in preparation for transitioning Isa; also getting caught up on a bunch of stuff. 5) FYI, I'll be doing this: https://shuttleworthfoundation.org/thinking/2018/06/26/thinking-Steward-Sha…; it wraps up in July Steph: 1) newsletter sending today or tomorrow (thanks, hiro!) 2) spoke on a panel with Trevor Timm (FPF) and David Greene (EFF) last week in Pittsburgh, people were very engaged 3) helped with 8.0a9 post and sharing 4) getting help from Tom and Arthur and others on a !(Tor + $Browser) post 5) connected with a comms person at mozilla who will check in with me about collaboration opportunities this fall 6) meeting today with gman999 and folks at NYU tandon about doing a talk 7) connected with access now and have been trying to get info about bridges out to folks in venezuela. thanks to antonela for helping with translations! 8) responded to inquiry about tor tab in brave Mike: 1) Nothing for the group, though curious how the patch count trend is going with Tor Browser, and other aspects of the Mozilla relationship. [GeKo: I could look the patch trend up. I think I posted metrics on a trac ticket for previous years, let me find it] Alison 1) still playing catch up after lots of travel 2) LFI is in week 4 and things are humming along. 3) HOPE talk organizing (we just got our timeslot confirmed this week) 4) finished community team roadmap 5) reading through support.torproject.org for soft launch 6) went to the ALA annual conference earlier in the week 7) Tor meetup in India was a success, trying to coordinate with those folks for what they need going forward 8) beginning planning for Kenya trip 9) Gus finished the week in Colombia (six trainings!) 10) Colin worked on the fallback directory mirror list 11) Tommy/Jaruga/Colin worked on user manual updates 12) Make sure to look at Cy's user issues report from May and let us know what you find useful: https://ethercalc.org/may_2018 Nick: 1) Busy with coding 2) All seems well. isabela: 1) back from Colombia where we (me, gus and antonela) did 6 trainings in 3 cities with over a dozen organizations (human rights defenders, social movements, women's groups, students etc). 2) working on sponsor9 phase 2 plan 3) dealing with many small things such as: expenses reports; catching up with emails; organizing sponsors reports and other stuff

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Network team meeting notes, 25 June 2018
by Nick Mathewson 01 Jul '18

01 Jul '18

Whoops! Sorry for the delay. Our chat logs are at : http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2018/tor-meeting.2018-06-25-17.00.html And our pad contents are below: = Network team meeting pad, 25 Jun 2018 = Welcome to our meeting! Mondays at 1700 UTC on #tor-meeting on OFTC. (This channel is logged while meetings are in progress.) Want to participate? Awesome! Here's what to do: 1. If you have updates, enter them below, under your name. 2. If you see anything you want to talk about in your updates, put them in boldface! 3. Show up to the IRC meeting and say hi! Note the meeting location: #tor-meeting on OFTC! (See https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-project/2017-September/001459.ht… for background.) == Previous notes == 23 April: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-project/2018-April/001747.html 30 April: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-project/2018-April/001750.html 7 May: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-project/2018-May/001760.html 14 May: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-project/2018-May/001769.html 21 May: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-project/2018-May/001806.html 11 June: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-project/2018-June/001828.html 18 June: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-project/2018-June/001835.html == Stuff to do every week = * Let's check and update the roadmap. What's done, and what's coming up? url to roadmap: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Ufrun1khEo5Cwd6OwngERn829wU3W3eskdr… * Check reviewer assignments at https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Ufrun1khEo5Cwd6OwngERn829wU3W3eskdr… * Also, let's check for things we need update on our spreadsheet! Are there important documents we should link to? Things we should archive? * Check rotations at https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/teams/NetworkTeam/TeamRot… * Community guides, it's time to hand off to the next guide! * Let's look at proposed tickets! == Announcements == * Remember to "/me status: foo" at least once daily. * Remember that our current code reviews should be done by end-of-week. * Make sure you are in touch with everybody with whom you are doing work for the next release! * The git master branch is now 0.3.5! == Discussion == Any volunteers for handling backports to stable? Any volunteers for leading 0.3.5 triage process? (Labeling tickts, asking people to label tickets, etc)? How can we help Ooni integrate and test Tor? https://github.com/measurement-kit/measurement-kit/issues/86 (teor added a comment about tor_api.h) [I think that ticket may be stale: simone knows about tor_api.h and has been working with it, IIUC. -nm] How can we help Ooni integrate and test pluggable transports? https://github.com/measurement-kit/measurement-kit/issues/1426 Ooni tests reachability to the default Tor Browser bridge IPs and ports, but how can they embed the protocols? [This is trickier. At least four ISPs in two countries have blocked most of the January 2018 list of fallbacks. Do we want to do a fallback rebuild in the next few weeks? When is our next stable Tor release? Update Steps: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/doc/UpdatingFallbackDirectory… Master ticket: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/24786 Step 1: Ask Relay Operators to Opt-In: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/24804 [I am fine with doing this on whatever schedule you like. -nm] [I have talked with teor, and will handle the rebuild if/when desired. -phoul] Roger's thoughts: "if it's easy to make a new list, let's try it" "if they block the new list, we've learned something" "oh i wonder how tor behaves when half its fallbackdir list is blocked. like, do we have to throw out the existing ones, in order to give people a list that isn't half blocked in india andvenezuela? that would be sad" [Clients need >30% of the list to be unblocked to bootstrap reliably. Currently 97% of the list is blocked at one of the ISPs. So if we can get 50 new or rotated fallbacks, let's update the list. We have 13 new or changed fallbacks on #24805. We could get up to 35 rotated fallbacks from large operators in the existing whitelist. (If we aim for 200 fallbacks rather than 150, we can bump to 200 * 5% = 10 per operator and get 15 extra fallbacks from large operators.) Let's see if we can get ~40 more relays opted-in by emailing tor-relays and large operators? -teor] Or should we write blog posts / tweets / etc. about bridges? (Or both?) [Both seems good. -nm] What are next steps on SimonHF's "trace" proposal? https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2018-June/013205.html == Updates == Nick: * Last week: * Split roughly half of src/common into src/libs (#26481) per refactoring plan (https://pad.riseup.net/p/cJUbdx0c7IzM-keep) My goal is to have src/common completely gone in 0.3.5, replaced by a set of libraries. * Review and merge various stuff * Solved #25386 (rust linking), except not really. :/ * Worked on open appveyor issues * Wrote a utility to handle changing moving include files and automatically fixing up whatever uses them. * Made "src" the top of our include path. Now one includes "or/or.h" rather than or.h. * Wrote a utility to make sure that modules aren't including other modules when they shouldn't. * This week: * Get 26479 and 26480 (appveyor failures) fixed so I can release 0.3.4.3-alpha. * Release 0.3.4.3-alpha. * Prepare for an 0.3.3.6 release * Continue refacatoring src/common * Make the dependencies in src/libs acyclic. * Plan an order of operations for splitting src/or. * Open tickets about remaining cases of #25386 (sanitizers, rustdoc). * Document src/lib. * Make requested post-merge cleanup changes in src/lib structure. Dgoulet: * Offline this Monday for a holiday! isis (offline): last week: - still very sick - travelled to england for a wedding and was even more sick there, took wednesday through friday off mostly - worked on the PQ KEX spec and worked out lowering the number of error correcting codes #24990 - reviewed #25386 #24249 #26196 - some maintenance on the bridge authority, started looking into getting a new server racked this week: - offline monday to travel back from europe - taking tuesday through thursday off to attend the zcash meetings and conference in montréal - probably 50% around tuesday through friday to do work and be online - maybe taking friday off because i'm not sure how useful i can be after that much travel and i'm also still sick komlo (offline): last week: - Sumitted some ideas for #24249 (Create automated mechanism for C/Rust types to stay in sync); would appreciate others thoughts here this week: - I have a few public talks coming up so will focus on getting those done and then will be back to more tor things. haxxpop (offline): last week: - nothing this week: - Read dgoulet's review on client auth and revise the PR according to the comments teor (offline): last week: - tried to work out why 0.3.3 breaks on cygwin (#26460) and SunOS (#26469) - read (some of) The Unicode Standard, and made the UTF-8 spec in prop#285 more precise (#26457) - Worked with juga to spec MaxAdvertisedBandwidth (#8494) - Other small bwauth suggestions and feedback - General ticket herding - Started a final experimental PrivCount data collection - Final report, contract admin, transition planning, etc. this week: - Move an experimental PrivCount node - Finish and analyse the final experimental PrivCount data collection - Final report, contract admin, transition planning, etc. - Do some more work on PrivCount in Tor, if I get time asn: Last weeks: - Went travelling. Was fun. - Revised #25552. - Pushed torspec branch to #26379. - Pinged my contact about DV certs for onions. This week: - Catch up with backlog - Do reviews. - Finalize #25552. - Start planning for 035 work and deliverables. ahf Last week: Sponsor 8: - Worked on better process handling for #25502 - looked into what is needed to do what I think is needed on all our platforms including Windows. - Looked at mio/miow from the Rust people. - Tried to write a small IOCP backend for libevent that fakes "readiness" in the same way that Mio does it. Misc: - Coverity duty: Lots of issues found. A lot of them are fixed in #26467, but two "classes" of bugs remain unfixed. Would like some help to figure out what the issue is there. - CI duty: Thanks to Nick and Taylor for diving into the Rust issue! - Wrote a very minimal Sandbox for MacOS (#26374) in https://github.com/ahf/tor/tree/wip-macos-sandbox. - Got introduced to the build process of Tor Browser. - Investigated Sandbox options for Windows. This week: Sponsor 8: - Continue with development of process handling code for #25502 Misc: - Finish off two remaining classes of Coverity issues for #26467. - Review: #17873, #24104, #24546. - Rotation roles: Community Hero. catalyst: last week (2018-W25): - fought with flaky internet connection - with Nick, tried to fix a lot of issues related to tests in the crypto crate that were causing CI to fail - made some progress on the big patches doc, with Nick this week (2018-W26): - CI rotation - more work on big patches doc - more Rust build fixes - code reviews - does someone more familiar with trunnel want to swap reviews on #3569 (refactor SOCKS parsing)? [Nick will] Mike: last week: - Updated and rebased #26214 - Tried to sign up for PETS, failed (banned by paypal, even over nontor) - Signed up for account for sending sponsor2 report - Began enumerating work items for said report - Still clearing the decks from vacation, etc (travel went longer than expected) this week: - Figure out sponsor2 report; decide how much more to try to get done before submitting it - Figure out PETS booking + research blog post topics - For real set up vanguard perf experiments dmr this week: - atagar and I would like to move #26197 forward (automatic mirroring to3 stem repo on github)

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Tor Browser team meeting notes, 26 June 2018
by Georg Koppen 27 Jun '18

27 Jun '18

Hi! Even though the meeting yesterday was a bit bumpy due to OFTC issues here come the usual notes and link to the chat log. For the latter see: http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2018/tor-meeting.2018-06-26-17.59.log… The notes from the pad are: Tuesday, June 26, 2018 Discussion: -alpha release -next meetings (brade: July 2; discuss future meetings at that meeting or via email) (GeKo: I can't make it on Monday, sent a mail to tbb-dev for further planning (https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tbb-dev/2018-June/000867.html)) - sysrqb: do we have a process for including new bridges in TB? (GeKo: yes, https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/doc/TorBrowser/Hacking#Adding…) - sysrqb: rustconf - 16-17 August, in Portland, OR, USA - should any of us go? (i'm thinking about going) (GeKo: sounds good to me!) pospeselr: Last Week: - finished #23247 (onion lock) - posted patch for #26039 (extension-overrides.js) - posted patches for #26355 (no install/update on Vista or lower) - discovered and investigated #26456 (HTTP onions tabs inherit certificate info from previous HTTPS pages) - #859782 (run without /proc) now fixed in FF62 - discovered an issue with pdfjs while working on #26039, disableRange option now seems to break pdfjs altogether, will file a bug in a hot sec This Week: - post fixups for #26039 - figure out and fix #26456 - file bug for pdfjs issue and investigate - backport patch #859782 to ESR60 TorBrowser sukhe: Last Week: - #9145 (enable hardware acceleration); under review - #26251 (build Snowflake for macOS); under review - #26319 (update mach build package); under review - #26186 (remove intl.locale.matchOS); merged This Week: - #26216 (MAR generation broken) - #12968 (Specify HEASLR in MinGW-w64) mcs and brade: Last week: - Continued with #22074 (Review Firefox Developer Docs and Undocumented bugs since FF52esr). GeKo: Did you already file bugs for the things you found in the Dev Docs? mcs: No, we will do that. - Worked on — but did not find the root cause of — #26381 (about:tor page does not load on first start in localized Windows bundle) (Arthur says: could you post your "headless" branch of tor-launcher? I'm curious if it fixes 26506 symptom) mcs: We will clean it up and post it. Arthur: thanks! :) - Helped with bug triage, code reviews, and testing of esr60 fixes and backports. This week: - Help with the Tor Browser 8.0a9 release, especially updater testing. - Continue on #26381 (about:tor page does not load on first start in localized Windows bundle) - Assist with #26506 (NoScript not working on TBB/ESR60 on Windows) - Look at #26477 (Meek is broken in ESR60-based Tor Browser) - Continue on #22074 (Review Firefox Developer Docs and Undocumented bugs since FF52esr). Note: We will have reduced hours next week due to the U.S. July 4th holiday. boklm: Last week: - helped build/publish the new releases - reviewed some patches: - #26362: Use old MAR format when generating the MAR files for the first esr60-based alpha - #23561: Fix NSIS builds for Windows 64 - #26424: Disable using UNC paths via preference - #26221: Backport patch for bug 1444532 to Tor Browser stable (7.5) - made some patches for: - #26428: temporary fix to avoid https-e submodule error - #26440: move vaulted vars to a separate directory - #26461: Generating incrementals fails if the release/signed or alpha/signed directory doesn't exist - #26450: disable dependency on firefox-langpacks in testbuild - #26489: dmg2mar script is broken due to added whitespace in "Tor Browser" - #26496: Set MAR_OLD_FORMAT=1 in dmg2mar - #26380: Remove tor browser sandbox from the download page - started working on a patch for #26323 (Build 32bit Linux bundles on 64bit systems) - booked flights for mexico meeting This week: - continue with 8.0a9 release - doing some reviews - fill upstream binutils ticket for #26148 - continue work on some ansible roles for testsuite VMs setup (#26149) PSA: I plan to be on vacation from 7/14-7/22 GeKo: Last Week -release preparations (including hotfixing a bunch of release blockers for the alpha over the weekend) -release signing -patches written for seatbelt profiles removes (#26438), unbreaking our Linux32 alpha builds (#26462) -reviews: #23247, #26428, #26440, #20628, #26451, #26039, #26461, #26186, #26430 This Week -help with the alpha release -bug triage after alpha release taking release fallout into account -more network code audit -work on tracking down the rust related reproducibility issue we found (#26475) -more reviews -getting up to speed again with the tor browser for android state and focusing on getting it moved forward towards the alpha release -prepare meeting with Cliqz folks PSA: I plan to be on vacation from 7/8-7/16 (inclusive) sysrqb: last week: - Rebased TBA patches onto 60.1.0, more testing (#26401) - Finished first-round proxy-safety audit (#21863) - Windows/OSX/Linux Sandbox investigation - Recovery from all-hands - Some thinking about Tor+IPv6 because mobile networks are adopting it faster than others - Created some more tickets from auditing #26401 This week - Setting up local proxy-bypass test environment for Android - Setting #26401 in needs-review, really this time - More sandboxing investigation, and hopefully writing an email - I'm making notes https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/doc/TorBrowser/Sandbox igt0: Last week: - Investigated the Gecko Mozilla Update Service, the comment #9 describes my finds (#26242) - Commented out the ticket #26318 (Consider different installation methods) about a proposal how we can validate de app. - Started updating UpdateService to support F-Droid (I will open a ticket about it this week). This week: - Send patch to make UpdateService support F-Droid - Make UpdateService to use the app directory(sandboxed) instead of an external storage. arthuredelstein: Last week: - Investigated #26322 (Circuit display - UI bug - Long v3 name) - Wrote a patch for #26430 (New torbutton icons) - Patch for #26321 (Remove some menu items from torbutton and move to Fil/hamburger menu - Reviewed #26058 (Revert #18743 - "Sign in to Sync" icon not hidden) - Wrote patch for #20629 (More locales for Tor Browser) - Patch for 26451 (HTTPS-E update) - Opened and patched #26500 (Torbutton relay icon in the wrong place) - Opened and investigated #26506 (NoScript not working on TBB/ESR60 on Windows) - Investigated https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/26128#comment:13 (extension startup race affects noscript control) This week: - Keep looking at #26506, #26128 comment 13 issues - More UX issues in 8.0a we need to fix (some of which I will file today) - Optimistic SOCKS. HTTP/2 if there is time - Help verify build as needed tjr - mingw-clang (Jacek) goes swimmingly! We have a successful build in TaskCluster, and Jacek is cleaning up patches and getting them reviewed. - Unsure of how far along he is in his contract though - I have yet to dig into https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1470772 but plan to tomorrow - Are esr60-based builds going to have a Windows x86 release? Are esr60-clang-based builds? (GeKo: it sems 32bit Windows builds still seem useful, we keep them for now) - Answer: Yes. - I am working on fuzzyfox - I replied to tor-qa about alpha 9 on Windows. sisbell: Last week: -Got builds working in my environment: tor-browser desktop, rbm, Fennec This week: - Working on getting mobile tor browser build working Georg

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Recent Tor bridge user counts are potentially misleading
by David Fifield 26 Jun '18

26 Jun '18

Thanks for your article, https://www.accessnow.org/venezuela-blocks-tor/. I'm writing in response to this statement: "traffic on the Tor network ... increased ... even more sharply this month via Tor bridges — likely in response to a new wave of online censorship from the Maduro government." I don't think the sharp increase in bridge users can be attributed to anything happening in Venezuela. A similar pattern is observed in many countries at the same time, not just in Venezuela. To choose a few examples: Chile https://metrics.torproject.org/userstats-bridge-country.html?start=2018-04-… Indonesia https://metrics.torproject.org/userstats-bridge-country.html?start=2018-04-… Morocco https://metrics.torproject.org/userstats-bridge-country.html?start=2018-04-… The same trend is visible in the aggregate of all countries: https://metrics.torproject.org/userstats-bridge-country.html?start=2018-04-… If you scroll down on the metrics page, you'll see that the phenomenon has been noted, but the cause is unknown: > 2018-04-15 to present Doubling of bridge users over about 45 days. Relay users unaffected. So while a decrease in Tor users in the past few days is likely attributable to censorship by the Venezuelan government, the increase in bridge users in the months preceding probably has some other, more global cause, not necessarily related to censorship.

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services report - may 2018
by silvia [hiro] 26 Jun '18

26 Jun '18

Hi all, Here is the late report for the month of may about what has happened in services. Have been working on testing and tuning the support portal. It is now live at https://support.torproject.orga few things are under WIP at the moment but soon it will have some very nice features. Like allow for links to be translated, so that we will have better seo. Investigated and tested the support portal search application [1]. Started migrating newsletter to Lektor and styleguide. This is now ready to be launched. Created an elasticsearch testbed in docker-compose to analyse raw log data via kibana. This is supposed to be used as a prototype for more complex projects. Currently it is configured to download onionperf tpf files and import them so that they can be accessed as indexed data via kibana [3]. Lektor package has been submitted so it might be approved and available through the backports soon. Continued consolidating the test services infrastructure where things like onionperf and oniongit run. In the long term, the objective is to manage everything through saltstack [4], a configuration management software similar to ansible. This will be a long term effort. Updated oniongit dns. It should be much faster now! Sent a small merge request to ooni to parse fallback dirs list to csv [5] [1] https://search.onionlab.eu [2] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/22026 [3] https://0xacab.org/spaghetti/metrics-search [4] https://saltstack.com/ [5] https://github.com/OpenObservatory/ooni-resources/pull/14

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May 2018 report for the metrics team
by Karsten Loesing 25 Jun '18

25 Jun '18

Hello Tor, hello world! Below you'll find the highlights of Tor metrics team work done in May 2018. On behalf of the Tor metrics team, Karsten Completed the draft document with graph specifications to now include all graphs on Tor Metrics. Resolved a series of smaller inconsistencies in statistics on Tor Metrics, including: number of bytes spent on directory requests [1], bandwidth histories [2], and onion services [3]. [1] https://bugs.torproject.org/26002 [2] https://bugs.torproject.org/26015 [3] https://bugs.torproject.org/26022 Extended per-graph CSV files on Tor Metrics to support ad-hoc generation of CSV files without parameters to cover more data than what's displayed in a graph [4]. [4] https://bugs.torproject.org/25383 Improved explanations of metrics and flags on Relay Search [5, 6, 7] [5] https://bugs.torproject.org/25881 [6] https://bugs.torproject.org/25854 [7] https://bugs.torproject.org/26079 Put out new releases of CollecTor and metrics-lib [8] as well as Onionoo, ExoneraTor, and metrics-web [9] to switch from Gson to Jackson as JSON library. [8] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2018-May/013191.html [9] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2018-May/013204.html Extended CollecTor's index.json file to include contributed data in preparation of serving metrics-related research data from the wider Tor community on Tor Metrics.

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[TSoP] stem.client - status report #3
by Dave Rolek 25 Jun '18

25 Jun '18

Hi everyone! This is my third status report for the stem.client TSoP project [1]. You may see my previous reports on the tor-project ml. [2][3] This report comes a bit late - sorry about that! # Updates Last week I was feeling ill, so I didn't tackle things quite as big (long periods of concentration were hard to achieve) nor get quite as much done. ## stem.client I pushed things forward a bit on code review [4][5][6], including branching some discussion/findings out into separate tickets [7][8][9]. Still waiting on some architecture discussion [10]. ## stem, general I did a few small fixes: * document the --quiet testing flag [11] * improve reliability of an integration test [12] * address some linter findings [13] I also spent some time working on the tox configuration, although that's not push-ready, so I don't have a reference for that. ## tor protocol, general Per previous suggestion from Roger, I've been glancing through the tor-design paper [14][15][16] and updates [17][18][19] while reading the specification, and that's been helping solidify my understanding. I neglected to mention in my last update that I brought up handling of padding bytes [20] at the network-team meeting that week. There's been a bit of discussion thereon with atagar in the context of stem.client. # What's next ## stem.client Per my previous plan, I'll be tackling some not-so-architecture-dependent changes. Hoping to get some feedback on the architecture soon, and start implementing some of those changes! ## stem, general I still have a few 'dev' tickets I'd like to work on. As mentioned above, I've done some work on improving the tox configuration, so I plan to wrap that up. ## tor-spec As aforementioned, I'll push forward on the padding bytes ticket [20] into a spec change. # Other Tor things On the side, I've spent time chatting with a lot of people about tor in the past few weeks, and it's really cool to see how many people are interested in it! This has spanned a wide range of professions from journalists, to artists, to musicians, to librarians, to software developers, to students, and more (I can't even remember all of it - lots of informal discussions). The Tor Browser manual's graphic showing a connection to a website [21] has been pretty helpful for ad-hoc descriptions. And when I haven't had paper to draw on, I've used various small objects to cover up parts of the graphic to contrast Tor with a VPN, and people have been able to make the mental leap! One person already came with some pre-existing knowledge of Tor, and so with him I asked him to explain what he thought Tor was / how it worked prior to any other input / visual aid (didactic strategy of having others teach you), and he did a pretty good job! I helped set a few things straight, but it was cool to know that he'll likely be able to explain Tor confidently now to anyone else. :) # Closing As with before, I've been active and reachable over IRC, where my nick is dmr. Please don't hesitate to reach out to me via IRC or email! Thanks, Dave [1] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2018-April/013090.html [2] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-project/2018-May/001811.html [3] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-project/2018-June/001830.html [4] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/26227#comment:7 [5] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/26227#comment:9 [6] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/26227#comment:13 [7] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/26420 [8] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/26431 [9] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/26432 [10] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/26226 [11] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/26421 [12] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/26225 [13] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/26483 [14] https://www.torproject.org/docs/documentation.html.en#DesignDoc [15] https://svn.torproject.org/svn/projects/design-paper/tor-design.pdf [16] https://svn.torproject.org/svn/projects/design-paper/tor-design.html [17] https://blog.torproject.org/blog/top-changes-tor-2004-design-paper-part-1 [18] https://blog.torproject.org/blog/top-changes-tor-2004-design-paper-part-2 [19] https://blog.torproject.org/blog/top-changes-tor-2004-design-paper-part-3 [20] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/26228 [21] https://tb-manual.torproject.org/en-US/media/how-tor-works.png

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[TSoP 2018] Bandwidth scanner update - report #3
by juga 24 Jun '18

24 Jun '18

Hi, since report #2, these are the tasks i have worked on: Tor directory protocol: ------------------------ - started to work on specification for archiving bandwidth files [0] Bandwidth List format specification: -------------------------------------- - possible text to add regarding limiting measured bandwidth to MaxAdvertisedBandwidth [1] - fix Bandwidth file Timestamp is the latest scanner result, not the file creation time [2] little-t-tor -------------- - add test to check that descriptor is only updated on bandwidth changes when uptime is less than a day [3] - started to work on what makes some relays to advertise zero bandwidth-observed [4] Simple Bandwidth Scanner (sbws): --------------------------------- - keep previous bandwidth files and rename them to the date when they are generated [5] - run sbws with different python versions to find which ones fail with python lru_cache [6] - fix bandwidth file's earliest bandwidth [7] - fix node_id in bandwidth file to start with "$" [8] - find a bug when running sbws with python 3.4.2 [9] - find a bug when running sbws with python 3.4.5 [10] - fix a bug when there is not enough RAM [11] - suggest moving plotting scripts to other repo [12] - review limiting measured bandwidth to the advertised bandwidth [13] - review new Relay class [14] - discuss possible solutions when stem controller fails [15] - review integration test for RelayPrioritizer [16] [0] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/21378 [1] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/8494 [2] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/26155 [3] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/24104 [4] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/24104 [5] https://github.com/pastly/simple-bw-scanner/issues/179 [6] https://github.com/pastly/simple-bw-scanner/issues/198, https://github.com/pastly/simple-bw-scanner/issues/193 [7] https://github.com/pastly/simple-bw-scanner/pull/187 [8] https://github.com/pastly/simple-bw-scanner/pull/188 [9] https://github.com/pastly/simple-bw-scanner/issues/194 [10] https://github.com/pastly/simple-bw-scanner/issues/203 [11] https://github.com/pastly/simple-bw-scanner/issues/195, https://github.com/pastly/simple-bw-scanner/pull/196 [12] https://github.com/pastly/simple-bw-scanner/issues/201 [13] https://github.com/pastly/simple-bw-scanner/pull/191 [14] https://github.com/pastly/simple-bw-scanner/issues/180 [15] https://github.com/pastly/simple-bw-scanner/issues/192 [16] https://github.com/pastly/simple-bw-scanner/pull/206

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Tor blocked in Venezuela
by Maria Xynou 23 Jun '18

23 Jun '18

Hello, As of last night (or last morning, Venezuela-time), we've been receiving reports from locals in Venezuela that Tor is being blocked. State-owned CANTV is reportedly blocking access to Tor and obfs4. They've been running OONI Probe tests that seem to confirm this, though it remains unclear if other ISPs in Venezuela are blocking access to Tor (and Tor bridges) as well. This follows weeks of increased censorship, particularly targeting media websites (like lapatilla.com and elpitazo.com) What strategies would be relevant here? This may also be something worth thinking about for other countries where Tor is blocked as well (such as Egypt). Best, Maria. -- Maria Xynou Research and Partnerships Coordinator Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) https://ooni.torproject.org/ PGP Key Fingerprint: 2DC8 AFB6 CA11 B552 1081 FBDE 2131 B3BE 70CA 417E

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[TSoP 2018] Ahmia status update ~ report #3
by Stelios Barberakis 23 Jun '18

23 Jun '18

Hello all, This is a status report for the development of ahmia.fi as part of tor summer of privacy. The things that have been *completed* the past two weeks are: * a migration script to automate copying Elasticsearch data from the old indices to the new ones according to the new scheme * a filter by time drop down menu, for the results page * set up the production environment on my workstation, the correct way... * some minor todos BR, Stelios -- PGP key: http://keyserver.ubuntu.com/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0xBF6EA91B7CBE3998

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