- tor-project - lists.torproject.org

Anti-censorship team meeting notes, 2024-05-30
by meskio 31 May '24

31 May '24

Hey everyone! Here are our meeting logs: http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2024/tor-meeting.2024-05-30-16.00.html And our meeting pad: Anti-censorship -------------------------------- Next meeting: Thursday, June 6 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: 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 sponsors, we are working on: * All needs review tickets: * https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/anti-censorship/-/merge_requests?s… * Sponsor 96 <-- meskio, shell, onyinyang, cohosh * https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/milestones/24 * Sponsor 150 <-- meskio working on it * https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/anti-censorship/-/issues/?label_na… == Announcements == * == Discussion == * Add nginx rate limiting to address "TTP-03-001 WP1: Snowflake broker vulnerability" * https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… * It will be applied once we move the broker https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… * shelikhoo will apply the changes into the nginx of the new broker, it will take effect as soon as we migrate to it * Is the broker migration ready to apply yet? https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… * dcf can change the VM memory configuration, then someone needs to contact TPA to ask them to change a DNS record * Example of asking for a DNS change: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/team/-/issues/40716 * Caveat: we will have to use the same Let's Encrypt account as the old broker, because of CAA records: * https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/team/-/issues/41462 * https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… * https://gitlab.torproject.org/dcf/autocert-account-id == Actions == == Interesting links == * == Reading group == * We will discuss "Communication Breakdown: Modularizing Application Tunneling for Signaling Around Censorship" on May 30 * https://petsymposium.org/popets/2024/popets-2024-0027.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? == Updates == Name: This week: - What you worked on this week. Next week: - What you are planning to work on next week. Help with: - Something you need help with. cecylia (cohosh): 2024-05-30 Last week: - tor meeting - s152 final and monthly reports - commented on mv3 migration issue This week: - take a look at snowflake web and webext translations and best practices - get around to backlog of MR reviews - make changes to Lox encrypted bridge table - https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/lox/-/merge_requests/147 - follow up on reported SQS errors - update wasm-bindgen fork to fix some bugs and hopefully upstream changes Needs help with: dcf: 2024-05-30 Last week: Next week: - review snowflake unreliable+unordered data channels rev2 https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… - open issue to have snowflake-client log whenever KCPInErrors is nonzero https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… - parent: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… - open issue to disable /debug endpoint on snowflake broker - move snowflake-02 to new VM Help with: - tell me when to restart the brokers for https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… meskio: 2023-05-30 Last week: - back from tormeeting and catching up - plan rdsys deployment to replace BridgeDB (tpa/team#41613) - look at onbasca issues failing to test bridges (onbasca#171) - map existing monit alerts into prometheus blackbox exporter (not pushed yet) Next week: - use safeprom in rdsys (rdsys#203) - add prometheus metrics to replace bridgedb metrics in rdsys (rdsys#188) Shelikhoo: 2024-05-30 Last Week: - [Merge Request Waiting] Add Container Image Mirroring from Tor Gitlab to Docker Hub(https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/… - [Merge Request Waiting] Snowflake Performance Improvement rev2 (https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow…) - Chrome Manifest V3 transition research - Vantage point maintaince - merge request processing - Merge request reviews Next Week/TODO: - Merge request reviews onyinyang: 2023-05-30 Last week(s): - continued key rotation implementation - Fixed bug in blockage_migration protocol Next week: - Work on outstanding milestone issues: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/lox/-/milestones/1#tab-is… - prepare for end to end testing of the Lox system with browser integration Later: - begin implementing some preliminary user feedback mechanism to identify bridge blocking based on Vecna's work - improve metrics collection/think about how to show Lox is working/valuable - sketch out Lox blog post/usage notes for forum (long term things were discussed at the meeting!): https://pad.riseup.net/p/tor-ac-community-azaleas-room-keep - brainstorming grouping strategies for Lox buckets (of bridges) and gathering context on how types of bridges are distributed/use in practice Question: What makes a bridge usable for a given user, and how can we encode that to best ensure we're getting the most appropriate resources to people? 1. Are there some obvious grouping strategies that we can already consider? e.g., by PT, by bandwidth (lower bandwidth bridges sacrificed to open-invitation buckets?), by locale (to be matched with a requesting user's geoip or something?) 2. Does it make sense to group 3 bridges/bucket, so trusted users have access to 3 bridges (and untrusted users have access to 1)? More? Less? theodorsm: 2023-05-16 Last weeks: - Pion dtls have merged my PR for hooking of client hellos, server hellos and certificate request (https://github.com/pion/dtls/pull/631) - Quick test with my mimicking library (https://github.com/theodorsm/covert-dtls) with snowflake: promising results - Writing for my thesis Next weeks: - Add hook to pion/webrtc so it can be used in snowflake. - Further test and validate mimicked client hello with snowflake. - Add randomized fingerprint - Writing my thesis - Might explore some stateful attacks/fingerprints Help with: Facilitator Queue: shelikhoo onyinyang 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.

1 0

Tor Browser Weekly Meeting Rescheduled to 2024-05-28
by Richard Pospesel 27 May '24

27 May '24

Hey everyone, The 27th is an official TPI holiday, so we'll reschedule the weekly browser meeting to tomorrow (Tuesday, 28th of May) at 1500 UTC in #tor-meeting. Have a good holiday o/ best, -richard

1 0

Applications meeting 2024-05-20 cancelled
by Richard Pospesel 19 May '24

19 May '24

Our weekly meeting tomorrow (2024-05-20) is cancelled. We will continue as normal the following week. best, -richard

1 0

Anti-censorship team meeting notes, 2024-05-16
by onyinyang 16 May '24

16 May '24

Hey everyone! Here are our meeting logs: http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2024/tor-meeting.2024-05-16-16.00.html And our meeting pad: Anti-censorship work meeting pad -------------------------------- Anti-censorship -------------------------------- Next meeting: Thursday, May 30 16:00 UTC Facilitator: meskio ^^^(See Facilitator Queue at tail) Weekly meetings, every Thursday at 16:00 UTC, in #tor-meeting at OFTC (channel is logged while meetings are in progress) This week's Facilitator: onyinyang == Goal of this meeting == Weekly check-in about the status of anti-censorship work at Tor. Coordinate collaboration between people/teams on anti-censorship at the Tor Project and Tor community. == Links to Useful documents == * Our anti-censorship roadmap: * Roadmap:https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/anti-censorship/-/boards * The anti-censorship team's wiki page: * https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/team/-/wikis/home * Past meeting notes can be found at: * https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-project/ * Tickets that need reviews: from sponsors, we are working on: * All needs review tickets: * https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/anti-censorship/-/merge_requests?s… * Sponsor 96 <-- meskio, shell, onyinyang, cohosh * https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/milestones/24 * Sponsor 150 <-- meskio working on it * https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/anti-censorship/-/issues/?label_na… == Announcements == * No meeting May 23, we are at the tormeeting == Discussion == - 0.4.7.x bridges removal (2024-05-16: 500 bridges running EOL): https://metrics.torproject.org/rs.html#search/type:bridge%20version:0.4.7%20 == Actions == == Interesting links == * https://t.me/s/tor_bridges https://t.me/s/vanilla_bridges * Telegram channels handing out bridges, found at https://ntc.party/t/7701/4 * https://github.com/jmwample/ptrs * By Jack Wampler, abstraction for building pluggable transports in Rust, obfs4 implementation, and "lyrebird" multi-transport binary. * https://github.com/theodorsm/covert-dtls * covertDTLS is a library inspired by uTLS for offering fingerprint-resistance features to pion/dtls. * https://opencollective.com/censorship-circumvention/projects/snowflake-dail… * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3QVkw7Beqc * onyinyang gave a presentation on snowflake for TechSoup's Securing the Future panel discussion (along with FPF, Quiet and EFF) == Reading group == * We will discuss "Communication Breakdown: Modularizing Application Tunneling for Signaling Around Censorship" on May 30 * https://petsymposium.org/popets/2024/popets-2024-0027.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? == Updates == Name: This week: - What you worked on this week. Next week: - What you are planning to work on next week. Help with: - Something you need help with. cecylia (cohosh): 2024-05-09 Last week: - Updated dependencies for various projects - Shadow simulations - https://github.com/cohosh/ptnettools - Lox-wasm integration test fixups - Opened an issue about Lox blockage migration This week: - upload new snowflake-webext version 0.8.2 to both Firefox and Chrome web stores - make changes to Lox encrypted bridge table - https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/lox/-/merge_requests/147 - follow up on reported SQS errors - update wasm-bindgen fork to fix some bugs and hopefully upstream changes - create a Lox test environment and instructions for the browser team - https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser/-/issues/42503 Needs help with: dcf: 2024-05-16 Last week: - snowflake azure cdn bookkeeping https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/team/-/wikis/Snowflake-co… - archived snowflake-webextension-0.8.2 https://archive.org/details/snowflake-webextension-0.8.2 Next week: - review snowflake unreliable+unordered data channels rev2 https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… - open issue to have snowflake-client log whenever KCPInErrors is nonzero https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… - parent: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… - open issue to disable /debug endpoint on snowflake broker - move snowflake-02 to new VM Help with: meskio: 2023-05-16 Last week: - add journaling to rdsys persistency so data don't get lost if an unexpected restart (rdsys#201) - make errors explicit on distributor assignments in rdsys (rdsys#200) - deploy rdsys backend with persistency on bridge assignments - investigate problems with renovate (rdsys#202) Next week: - tormeeting Shelikhoo: 2024-05-16 Last Week: - [Merge Request Waiting] Add Container Image Mirroring from Tor Gitlab to Docker Hub(https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/… - [Merge Request] Snowflake Performance Improvement rev2 (https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow…) - Merge request reviews Next Week/TODO: - In person tor event! - Merge request reviews onyinyang: 2023-05-16 Last week(s): - Hyper upgrade and tokio upgrade - prepared and presented for techsoup panel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3QVkw7Beqc - key rotation implementation This week: - key rotation implementation - begin implementing some preliminary user feedback mechanism to identify bridge blocking based on Vecna's work Next week: - FOMO and sadness :( - improve metrics collection/think about how to show Lox is working/valuable - sketch out Lox blog post/usage notes for forum (long term things were discussed at the meeting!): https://pad.riseup.net/p/tor-ac-community-azaleas-room-keep - brainstorming grouping strategies for Lox buckets (of bridges) and gathering context on how types of bridges are distributed/use in practice Question: What makes a bridge usable for a given user, and how can we encode that to best ensure we're getting the most appropriate resources to people? 1. Are there some obvious grouping strategies that we can already consider? e.g., by PT, by bandwidth (lower bandwidth bridges sacrificed to open-invitation buckets?), by locale (to be matched with a requesting user's geoip or something?) 2. Does it make sense to group 3 bridges/bucket, so trusted users have access to 3 bridges (and untrusted users have access to 1)? More? Less? theodorsm: 2023-05-16 Last weeks: - Pion dtls have merged my PR for hooking of client hellos, server hellos and certificate request (https://github.com/pion/dtls/pull/631) - Quick test with my mimicking library (https://github.com/theodorsm/covert-dtls) with snowflake: promising results - Writing for my thesis Next weeks: - Add hook to pion/webrtc so it can be used in snowflake. - Further test and validate mimicked client hello with snowflake. - Add randomized fingerprint - Writing my thesis - Might explore some stateful attacks/fingerprints Help with: Facilitator Queue: onyinyang meskio shelikhoo 1. First available staff in the Facilitator Queue will be the facilitator for the meeting 2. After facilitating the meeting, the facilitator will be moved to the tail of the queue -- --- onyinyang GPG Fingerprint 3CC3 F8CC E9D0 A92F A108 38EF 156A 6435 430C 2036

1 0

Interview week – UX meetings cancelled
by Duncan Russell 13 May '24

13 May '24

Hi everyone, Since it’s interview week for both the Product Designer and User Research Coordinator positions we’re hiring for, and our schedules are pretty full, we’ll be skipping the UX Team meeting today. Similarly, the UX Team may not be able to attend other meetings and 1:1s like normal, as we’re prioritizing time slots that work for our candidates. Thanks for your patience! Duncan

1 0

Anti-censorship team meeting notes, 2024-05-09
by Shelikhoo 09 May '24

09 May '24

Hey everyone! Here are our meeting logs: http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2024/tor-meeting.2024-05-09-16.00.html And our meeting pad: Anti-censorship work meeting pad -------------------------------- Anti-censorship -------------------------------- Next meeting: Thursday, May 16 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 sponsors, we are working on: * All needs review tickets: * https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/anti-censorship/-/merge_requests?s… * Sponsor 96 <-- meskio, shell, onyinyang, cohosh * https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/milestones/24 * Sponsor 150 <-- meskio working on it * https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/anti-censorship/-/issues/?label_na… == Announcements == * No meeting May 23, we are at the tormeeting == Discussion == * should we start assigning/distributing webtunnel bridges in the settings pool? * https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/web/community/-/issues/348#note_3026653 * we agree it makes sense to start collecting bridges in the settings pool * meskio will configure rdsys to so after deploying the persistency for bridges in rdsys * Reports that our CDN 77 front domains are blocked in Russia? * https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser/-/blob/tor-brows… * we'll keep an eye to see if there is some confirmation of the block and start looking for alternatives == Actions == == Interesting links == * https://petsymposium.org/popets/2024/popets-2024-0027.php * Communication Breakdown: Modularizing Application Tunneling for Signaling Around Censorship * "The Raceboat framework simplifies using signaling channels for low-bandwidth and/or latency-tolerant tasks like bridge distribution and authentication. ... We also have a suite of non-decomposed channels that have been wrapped to support the Raceboat channel APIs. These include wrappers around several higher-bandwidth direct channels (Obfs, Snowflake, and Balboa)..." * (NB the demonstration application is using Obfs and Snowflake as a rendezvous channel, not providing a rendezvous channel for them.) * https://github.com/tst-race/raceboat-pets2024 (currently empty) == Reading group == * We will discuss "Communication Breakdown: Modularizing Application Tunneling for Signaling Around Censorship" on May 30 * https://petsymposium.org/popets/2024/popets-2024-0027.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? == Updates == Name: This week: - What you worked on this week. Next week: - What you are planning to work on next week. Help with: - Something you need help with. cecylia (cohosh): 2024-05-09 Last week: - Updated dependencies for various projects - Shadow simulations - https://github.com/cohosh/ptnettools - Lox-wasm integration test fixups - Opened an issue about Lox blockage migration This week: - upload new snowflake-webext version 0.8.2 to both Firefox and Chrome web stores - make changes to Lox encrypted bridge table - https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/lox/-/merge_requests/147 - follow up on reported SQS errors - update wasm-bindgen fork to fix some bugs and hopefully upstream changes - create a Lox test environment and instructions for the browser team - https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser/-/issues/42503 Needs help with: dcf: 2024-05-09 Last week: - allocated new VPS for snowflake broker https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… - archived snowflake-webext 0.8.1 https://archive.org/details/snowflake-webextension-0.8.1 - posted questions about periodic(?) changes in the estimated number of users of the snowflake-01 bridge https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… Next week: - open issue to have snowflake-client log whenever KCPInErrors is nonzero https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… - parent: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… - open issue to disable /debug endpoint on snowflake broker - move snowflake-02 to new VM Help with: meskio: 2023-05-09 Last week: - test email distributor in rdsys (rdsys#186) - extract safelog and prometheus ronded metrics from snowflake into ptutil (snowflake#40354) - look into renovate errors in rdsys, but still not clue (rdsys!305) - update and merge the bridge distribution documentation in rdsys (rdsys!295) Next week: - improve privacy on rdsys metrics reusing snowflake techniques (rdsys#203) - produce the same metrics of BridgeDB in rdsys (rdsys#188) Shelikhoo: 2024-05-09 Last Week: - [Merge Request Waiting] Add Container Image Mirroring from Tor Gitlab to Docker Hub(https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/… - [Merge Request Merged] Fix ipv6 connectivity with restricted address support(https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transpo… - [Issue] Design a new Constructor Design for Snowflake (https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow…) - [Dev] Snowflake Performance Improvement - Upgrade snowflake broker machine from Debian 10 https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… - Merge request reviews - Merge request reviews Next Week/TODO: - Revise Snowflake Performance Improvement MR(cont.) - Merge request reviews onyinyang: 2023-05-02 Last week(s): - Responding to pre-existing MR reviews and other notifications/questions in gitlab This week: - attempt hyper upgrade and tokio upgrade Probably next week and beyond: - preparing for upcoming panel (maybe) - implement some preliminary user feedback mechanism to identify bridge blocking based on Vecna's work - improve metrics collection/think about how to show Lox is working/valuable - sketch out Lox blog post/usage notes for forum (long term things were discussed at the meeting!): https://pad.riseup.net/p/tor-ac-community-azaleas-room-keep - brainstorming grouping strategies for Lox buckets (of bridges) and gathering context on how types of bridges are distributed/use in practice Question: What makes a bridge usable for a given user, and how can we encode that to best ensure we're getting the most appropriate resources to people? 1. Are there some obvious grouping strategies that we can already consider? e.g., by PT, by bandwidth (lower bandwidth bridges sacrificed to open-invitation buckets?), by locale (to be matched with a requesting user's geoip or something?) 2. Does it make sense to group 3 bridges/bucket, so trusted users have access to 3 bridges (and untrusted users have access to 1)? More? Less? theodorsm: 2023-04-25 Last weeks: - Extended Pion dtls library to support hooking of client hellos, server hellos and certificate request (PR: https://github.com/pion/dtls/pull/631) Fingerprint generation of firefox and chrome + mimicking using the client hello hook have been moved to its own repo: https://github.com/theodorsm/covertDTLS - Analyzed the snowflake captures done in "Snowflake Anonymous Network Traffic Identification" paper: no handshakes found, so not relevant for me - Verified the consistency of the fingerprint generation Next weeks: - Add hook to pion/webrtc so it can be used in snowflake. - Test and validate mimicked client hello with snowflake. - Add randomized fingerprint Help with: Facilitator Queue: onyinyang meskio shelikhoo 1. First available staff in the Facilitator Queue will be the facilitator for the meeting 2. After facilitating the meeting, the facilitator will be moved to the tail of the queue

1 0

cohosh's monthly status report, April 2024
by Cecylia Bocovich 06 May '24

06 May '24

1 0

ebanam's monthly status report and user support report for April 2024
by ebanam 06 May '24

06 May '24

Hello all, Thanks to the outreach work[0], this month we saw another uptick in support requests from Chinese speaking users. This has also helped us receive some very useful feedback from these users. I worked on some small documentation updates in the Tor Browser User Manual[1] and the Support Portal[2] and added a section in the manual about how to check the Tor Browser version one has installed on their system[3]. I am also involved in testing the latest Tor Browser Alphas in preparation of all the documentation updates due to the upcoming Tor Browser 13.5 stable release. We have noticed a significant drop in user requests via email from Russian speaking countries last month and are investigating the potential reasons for that. Following is a thorough breakdown of tickets our user support team handled in April: # Frontdesk (email support channel) * 495(↓) RT tickets created * 711(↑) RT tickets resolved (Note: The number of 'resolved' ticket is higher than usual because last month I closed a lot of tickets that we had already responded to and solved but got reopened and move out of the 'resolved' queue when users share their positive feedback.) Tickets by numbers: 1. 313(↑) RT tickets: private bridge requests from Chinese speaking users. 2. 85(↓) RT tickets: circumventing censorship in Russian speaking countries. 3. 8 RT tickets: Reports of websites blocking Tor connections. 4. 7 RT tickets: Help with downloading (website / official mirror / GetTor), installing and updating Tor Browser for Desktop. 5. 5(↑) RT tickets: circumventing censorship with Tor in Farsi. 6. 4(↓) RT tickets: private bridge and help with circumventing censorship requests from regions where Tor is not blocked. The issues were mostly resolved by troubleshooting and analysing Tor logs and the issues ranged from - firewall, VPN & antivirus interrupting the connection to having an incorrect system clock. Highlighting some other topics we received questions and feedback: 7. Issue with installing the Snowflake web extension.[4] 8. Question about whether Tor Browser can be installed on AndroidTV. 9. Report of certain onion site being offline. Encouraged the person to contact the onion site operator directly. 10. Help with setting snowflake standalone proxy. 11. Help with setting onion service. 12. Question about whther Tor Browser can be installed on ChromeOS. 13. Question about how to modify torrc to exit from a specific country. We discourage users to do this. 14. Help with installing little-t-tor.[5] 15. 2 RT tickets: Question about the Private Browsing Mode(PBM) in Tor Browser - "why do I have to login every time to sites when I restart the browser?" and "why does websites don't remember my preferences when I relaunch the browser?". # Telegram, WhatsApp and Signal Support channel * 589(↓) tickets resolved Breakdown: * 563(↓) tickets on Telegram * 23(↓) tickets on WhatsApp * 3(↑) ticket on Signal Tickets by numbers: 1. 372(↑) tickets: circumventing censorship in Russian speaking countries. 2. 54(↓) tickets: circumventing censorship with Tor in Farsi. 3. 46(↓) tickets: private bridge requests from Chinese speaking users. 4. 8 tickets: Help with installing Tor Browser on macOS. 5. 5 tickets: Issues installing the snowflake web extension.[4][6] 6. 3 tickets: Instructions to use bridges with little-t-tor. Highlighting some other topics we received questions about: 7. 3 tickets: Issues loading the CAPTCHA when trying to get bridges from BridgeDB. The issue is resolved. 8. Question about the Private Browsin Mode(PBM) in Tor Browser - "why does Tor Browser on Android doesn't store my browsing history?" 9. Help with installing Tor Browser on Windows. 10. Report of website blocking Tor connections. # Highlights from the Tor Forum 1. New Tor Browser Alpha Release: Tor Browser 13.5a7. Please help us test the new alpha![7] 2. Latest versions of Tor Browser not working on older versions of operating systems.[8] 3. Should I change/add fonts to Tor Browser?[9] 4."Firefox ESR Root Certificate's Strange Rollback"[10] Thanks! e. 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. [0]: https://github.com/torproject/tor4zh/ [1]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/web/manual/-/commits/main?author=ebanam [2]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/web/support/-/commits/main?author=ebanam [3]: https://support.torproject.org/tbb/check-torbrowser-version/ [4]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… [5]: https://support.torproject.org/little-t-tor/install-little-t-tor/ [6]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… [7]: https://forum.torproject.org/t/new-alpha-release-tor-browser-13-5a7/12519 [8]: https://forum.torproject.org/t/tor-browser-v12-0-4-not-working-older-system… [9]: https://forum.torproject.org/t/tor-browser-having-weird-font-while-other-br… [10]: https://forum.torproject.org/t/firefox-esr-root-certificates-strange-rollba…

1 0

Nina’s Monthly Status Report: April 2024
by Nina 06 May '24

06 May '24

Hi! This is Nina and my April’24 report! In April, I resolved 424 tickets: On Telegram (@TorProjectSupportBot) - 346 On RT (frontdesk@tpo) - 73 On WhatsApp (+447421000612) - 6 and on Signal (+17787431312) - 0. There is a drop in email requests from Russian-speaking users, which will be investigated further. During that month I helped Russian-speaking users to bypass censorship, shared bridges with them, helped with troubleshooting, tested new bridges and collected user feedback. MacOS and iOS This month I got more of the usual iOS and macOS related issues. The major issues were: 1. Some of our official website mirrors were blocked in Russia, and macOS users are unable to get Tor Browser from our bot due to the issue with macOS not trusting programs obtained from Telegram[1]. 2. Tor Browserpluggable transports(PTs)do not work on older versions of macOS.[2]Go 1.20 requires macOS 10.13 or higher and 1.21 requires macOS 10.15. User needs to upgrade their OS to use PTs. 3. There were many questions on what app to install on iOS and where to get that, so I added a new template in Russian on that topic. Russian translation reviewand Tor Browser User Manual improvements In April I worked on the reviewof the Russian translation of the Tor Browser User Manual and filed several issues:[3][4][5]. I also work on improving the user experience with the Telegram user support channel (https://t.me/ <https://t.me/@TorProjectSupportBot>@TorProjectSupportBot <https://t.me/@TorProjectSupportBot>), testing the best welcome-message [6]. [1] https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser-build/-/issues/4… [2] https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser/-/issues/42507 [3] https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/web/manual/-/issues/163 [4] https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/web/manual/-/issues/162 [5] https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/web/manual/-/issues/164 [6] https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/community/support/-/issues/40149

1 0

Rhatto's Monthly Status Report, April 2024
by rhatto 03 May '24

03 May '24

Hi all :) This is my monthly status report for April 2024 with the main relevant activities I have done during the period. ## 0. Research ## 1. Development * Onionspray Log Parser, a log file parser for proxy-based onionsites: * Released version 2.0.0: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/onion-services/onionspray-log-parser/-/bl… * Onion Launchpad, a landing page for onionsites: * Released version 1.0.0 with enhancements such as a privacy policy and improvements in the optional metrics aggregation: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/onion-services/onion-launchpad/-/mileston… * Onionprobe, an Onion Service monitoring suite: * Released version 1.2.0 with many fixes and enhancements: https://forum.torproject.org/t/onionprobe-release-1-2-0/12442 * Oniongroove, an upcoming Onion Services manager: * Worked on the prototype: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/onion-services/oniongroove/-/issues/3 * Right now this prototype works only as a simple rewriting proxy for existing websites, but it's being helpful to test Arti and other tools. ## 2. Support * Ongoing sponsored work with deployment, maintenance and monitoring of Onion Services. * Did some other support related to setting up Onion Services. ## 3. Organization Time spent (from the total available for Tor-related work): | Category | Percentage |---------------|------------ | Research | 3 | Development | 49 | Support | 23 | Organization | 25 |---------------|------------ | Total | 100 -- Silvio Rhatto pronouns he/him

1 0