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Anti-censorship team meeting notes, 2024-03-21
by meskio 21 Mar '24

21 Mar '24

Hey everyone! Here are our meeting logs: https://paste.debian.net/1311523/ (meetbot was not around) And our meeting pad: Anti-censorship -------------------------------- Next meeting: Thursday, March 28 16:00 UTC Facilitator: onyingyang 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 == * use snowflake's RoundedCounter in rdsys * https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… * duplicate the code? extract it to it's own library? import snowflake? * lets extract it to it's own library * meskio will open an issue to discuss the naming for it * Inconsistent release policy for containers between DockerHub and Gitlab * the latest in Dockerhub is the most recent stable release * the latest in Gitlab is the most recent commit on main(bleeding edge / nightly) * let's rename gitlab's latest to nightly and use latest for the latest stable image == Actions == == Interesting links == * == Reading group == * We will discuss "" on * * Questions to ask and goals to have: * What aspects of the paper are questionable? * Are there immediate actions we can take based on this work? * Are there long-term actions we can take based on this work? * Is there future work that we want to call out in hopes that others will pick it up? == Updates == Name: This week: - What you worked on this week. Next week: - What you are planning to work on next week. Help with: - Something you need help with. cecylia (cohosh): 2024-03-21 Last week: - released snowflake v2.9.2 - https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… - modified webext source prep to work with mozilla's new requirements - https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… - released version 0.7.5 of webextension - https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… - upgraded tor on conjure bridge - deployed snowflake sqs fixes - https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… - debugged some sqs errors - https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… - https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… This week: - open MR to change front domain for OONI tests (waiting on Go 1.21 support) - work on reproducing some reported SQS errors and open a public issue for it - compile a list of next-steps for lox - update wasm-bindgen fork to fix some bugs and hopefully upstream changes - tor-browser-build updates for lox wasm + bindings generation Needs help with: dcf: 2024-03-21 Last week: - reviewed a snowflake-webext README fix https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… - merged some missing commits from meek gitolite into gitlab https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/meek… Next week: - review draft MR for unreliable data channels 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: 2023-03-21 Last week: - captcha moat in rdsys (rdsys#182) - prometheus metrics for moat in rdsys (rdsys#124) - deploy rdsys and bridgestrap testing bridges every hour (bridgestrap#39) - fix and publish obfs4-bridge docker image for armv7 (docker-obfs4-proxy#18) - fix bugs introduced by me in bridgestrap (bridgestrap#41) Next week: - persistency for resources in rdsys (rdsys#56) Shelikhoo: 2024-03-21 Last Week: - [Merge Request] Add WebTunnel Client Support Integration to lyrebird (https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/lyre…) - [Merge Request WIP] Add Container Image Mirroring from Tor Gitlab to Docker Hub(https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/… - Prepare for 3-min presentation - Prepare for the discussion session - Merge request reviews(a lots of them!) Next Week/TODO: - [Research] Inspect Snowflake Situation In China - [Merge Request] Add WebTunnel Client Support Integration to lyrebird (https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/lyre…) - [Merge Request WIP] Add Container Image Mirroring from Tor Gitlab to Docker Hub(https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/… - Prepare for 3-min presentation - Prepare for the discussion session onyinyang: 2023-03-14 Last week(s): - continued prep for HACS/DRL meeting - Sync-test rebase This week: - continue prep for HACS/DRL meeting - Attend HACS, then RWC, then DRL meeting (later things) - improve metrics collection/think about how to show Lox is working/valuable - sketch out Lox blog post/usage notes for forum - attempt hyper upgrade again (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: 2023-03-14 Last weeks: - Created a setup for extracting fingerprints from DLTS handshakes and analyzed the previous webrtc/dtls data sets from https://github.com/kyle-macmillan/snowflake_fingerprintability. Found more fingerprints than presented in the original paper, but the fingerprints are not present in newer snowflake versions. - Contacted Sean DuBois at Pion, he is very supporting of the project and happy to merge features related to anti-censorsip - Started on a setup for collecting DTLS handshakes to be used for mimicking - Exploring and planning features for anti-fingerprinting techniques to implement in the Pion lib. Next weeks: - Creating a setup for generating DTLS handshakes of web-browsers with selenium/playwright. This will hopefully generate common handshakes/fingerprints Help with: -- meskio | https://meskio.net/ -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- My contact info: https://meskio.net/crypto.txt -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Nos vamos a Croatan.

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Tails report for February 2024
by bokonon 19 Mar '24

19 Mar '24

*Tails report for February 2024* <https://tails.net/news/report_2024_02/> Highlights Despite the bonus day this year, February flew by pretty quickly! Here's what we were up to: * We ended February more resilient and collaborative than when we started. We have new tooling to make it easier to work on shared documents, and use XMPP more effectively. We also worked to strengthen our front-end services and set up the back-end infrastructre to build redundancies into our services. * In 2021 and 2022, our usability tests with human rights defenders in Mexico and Brazil <https://tails.net/news/improving_in_latam/index.en.html> prompted several improvements in the installation instructions for Tails. Fixing 16 of the identified usability issues were remaining, and we fixed them all this month. These tests, experiences, and improvements will greatly shape our future trainings. * We finished updating our website for Tails 6.0. Check out the rewritten recommendation on secure deletion <https://tails.net/doc/encryption_and_privacy/secure_deletion/index.en.html>. Releases 📢 Tails 6.0 is out <https://tails.net/news/version_6.0/index.en.html>! Tails 6.0 is the first version of Tails based on Debian 12 ("bookworm"), and is the sexiest, slickest, and sleekest Tails yet. It brings: * several important security updates: more robust error detection for the Persistent Storage, protections against malicious USB devices, and Diceware word lists in Catalan, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish * some more usability features: new light modes—dark, night, and a combination of both; easier screenshoting and screencasting; and easier Gmail configuration in Thunderbird * and, updated version of most of the applications in Tails To know more, check out the Tails 6.0 release notes <https://tails.net/news/version_6.0/index.en.html> and the changelog <https://gitlab.tails.boum.org/tails/tails/-/blob/master/debian/changelog>. Thank you to everyone who helped us out by testing the release candidate <https://tails.net/news/test_6.0-rc1/>. Metrics Tails was started more than 806,714 times this month. That's a daily average of over 27,817 boots.

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Anti-censorship team meeting notes, 2024-03-14
by Shelikhoo 14 Mar '24

14 Mar '24

Hey everyone! Here are our meeting logs: http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2024/tor-meeting.2024-03-14-15.57.html And our meeting pad: Anti-censorship work meeting pad -------------------------------- Anti-censorship -------------------------------- Next meeting: Thursday, March 21 16:00 UTC Facilitator: meskio 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 == - Elections in Russia (March 14 - 17) == Discussion == Last week: * should we deprecate docker-snowflake-proxy? * There is now a snowflake Dockerfile for the proxy in the main snowflake repo * https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… * do we need to do something to integrate it in our release process? * yes, we will deprecated * shelikhoo will move that forward in this issue: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… * Fastly domain fronting updates * https://github.com/net4people/bbs/issues/309 * https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/team/-/issues/135 New: * PTs removed from ios onionbrowser because of RAM constraints * https://github.com/guardianproject/orbot/issues/1106 * snowflake-webextension still (2024-03-12) being rejected from Mozilla add-ons? https://paste.mozilla.org/Vh9jKk5g * Error: Command failed: git submodule update --init -- translation * fatal: not a git repository (or any of the parent directories): .git * https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… == Actions == == Interesting links == * https://github.com/getlantern/broflake Lantern's new Snowflake-like, uses QUIC, WASM, WebTransport == Reading group == * We will discuss "" on * * Questions to ask and goals to have: * What aspects of the paper are questionable? * Are there immediate actions we can take based on this work? * Are there long-term actions we can take based on this work? * Is there future work that we want to call out in hopes that others will pick it up? == Updates == Name: This week: - What you worked on this week. Next week: - What you are planning to work on next week. Help with: - Something you need help with. cecylia (cohosh): 2024-03-14 Last week: - reviewed Lox MRs - refactored Lox's bridge_replace function - https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/lox/-/merge_requests/143 - improved error types for lox-library::proto::*::request functions - https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/lox/-/merge_requests/144 - removed fixed length fields from Lox's BridgeLine struct - https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/lox/-/merge_requests/147 - responded to mozilla addon store rejection This week: - open MR to change front domain for OONI tests - deploy snowflake sqs fix - followup on web extension rejection from mozilla - compile a list of next-steps for lox - update wasm-bindgen fork to fix some bugs and hopefully upstream changes - tor-browser-build updates for lox wasm + bindings generation - Conjure bridge maintenance Needs help with: dcf: 2024-03-14 Last week: - azure CDN bookkeeping https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/team/-/wikis/Snowflake-co… - answered a question about Snowflake proxies https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… Next week: - review draft MR for unreliable data channels 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: 2023-03-14 Last week: - make obfs4-bridge docker image work in armv7 (docker-obfs4-bridge#18) - publish bridgestrap collector metrics every hour (bridgestrap#39) - export bridge tests results on assignments.log (rdsys!280) - document new assignments.log format on the metrics website (metrics/website!71) - fix moat not distributing bridges config problem (rdsys#190) Next week: - captcha moat in rdsys Shelikhoo: 2024-03-14 Last Week: - [Merge Request Done] Remove translation for Tor Project URL https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/rdsys/-/merge_requests/278 - Write WebTunnel Blog Post Draft - Prepare for 3-min presentation - Merge request reviews(a lots of them!) Next Week/TODO: - [Research] Inspect Snowflake Situation In China - Prepare for 3-min presentation onyinyang: 2023-03-14 Last week(s): - continued prep for HACS/DRL meeting - Sync-test rebase This week: - continue prep for HACS/DRL meeting - Attend HACS, then RWC, then DRL meeting (later things) - improve metrics collection/think about how to show Lox is working/valuable - sketch out Lox blog post/usage notes for forum - attempt hyper upgrade again (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: 2023-03-14 Last weeks: - Created a setup for extracting fingerprints from DLTS handshakes and analyzed the previous webrtc/dtls data sets from https://github.com/kyle-macmillan/snowflake_fingerprintability. Found more fingerprints than presented in the original paper, but the fingerprints are not present in newer snowflake versions. - Contacted Sean DuBois at Pion, he is very supporting of the project and happy to merge features related to anti-censorsip - Started on a setup for collecting DTLS handshakes to be used for mimicking - Exploring and planning features for anti-fingerprinting techniques to implement in the Pion lib. Next weeks: - Creating a setup for generating DTLS handshakes of web-browsers with selenium/playwright. This will hopefully generate common handshakes/fingerprints Help with:

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Anti-censorship team meeting notes, 2024-05-07
by onyinyang 08 Mar '24

08 Mar '24

Hey everyone! Here are our meeting logs: http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2024/tor-meeting.2024-03-07-15.58.html And our meeting pad: Anti-censorship work meeting pad -------------------------------- Anti-censorship -------------------------------- Next meeting: Thursday, March 14 16:00 UTC Facilitator: shelikhoo 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 == - Ireland Constitution Amendment Referendum: March 8th == Discussion == From last week: * Unclear whether AWS will allow public disclosure of credentials * https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… * we are waiting for their response which is dependent on rotating credentials (at least) * cohosh will do this and try to move the conversation further afterwards New: * should we deprecate docker-snowflake-proxy? * There is now a snowflake Dockerfile for the proxy in the main snowflake repo * https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… * do we need to do something to integrate it in our release process? * yes, we will deprecated * shelikhoo will move that forward in this issue: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… * Fastly domain fronting updates * https://github.com/net4people/bbs/issues/309 * https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/team/-/issues/135 == Actions == == Interesting links == * https://opencollective.com/censorship-circumvention/projects/snowflake-dail… == Reading group == * We will discuss "" on * * Questions to ask and goals to have: * What aspects of the paper are questionable? * Are there immediate actions we can take based on this work? * Are there long-term actions we can take based on this work? * Is there future work that we want to call out in hopes that others will pick it up? == Updates == Name: This week: - What you worked on this week. Next week: - What you are planning to work on next week. Help with: - Something you need help with. cecylia (cohosh): 2024-03-07 Last week: - various tasks to recover from fastly issue - https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/team/-/issues/135 - https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser/-/merge_requests… - https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser-build/-/merge_re… - https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser/-/issues/42436 - coordinated with a new meek bridge operator - reviewed SQS queue reuse MR - https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… - fixed snowflake shadow integration tests - https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… - https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… This week: - open MR to change front domain for OONI tests - continue following up on AWS support case - review lox synchronization fix - compile a list of next-steps for lox - update wasm-bindgen fork to fix some bugs and hopefully upstream changes - tor-browser-build updates for lox wasm + bindings generation - Conjure bridge maintenance Needs help with: dcf: 2024-03-07 Last week: - reported a slow SQS rendezvous https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… Next week: - review draft MR for unreliable data channels 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: 2023-03-07 Last week: - deal with big collector metrics in bridgestrap (bridgestrap#41) - obfs4-bridge now has a sable UID/GID in docker (docker-obfs4-proxy#17) - export test result on the assignments.log (rdsys#177) - test bridges in bridgestrap every 3h (bridgestrap#39) - review HTTPS rdsys distributor (rdsys!260) - review client poll metrics by rendezvous method by country (snowflake!258) Next week: - distributor persistance in rdsys (rdsys#56) Shelikhoo: 2024-03-07 Last Week: - [Merge Request Done]HTTPS distributors in rdsys: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/rdsys/-/merge_requests/260 - [Merge Request] Remove translation for Tor Project URL https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/rdsys/-/merge_requests/278 - Inspect Snowflake Situation In China and create ticket for that https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… - Create Issue for "Merging webtunnel + lyrebird" https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/lyre… - Write WebTunnel Blog Post Draft - Merge request reviews Next Week/TODO: - [Research] Inspect Snowflake Situation In China - Prepare for 3-min presentation onyinyang: 2023-03-07 Last week(s): - continued prep for HACS/DRL meeting - finished base64 invitation encoding This week: - continue prep for HACS/DRL meeting - improve metrics collection/think about how to show Lox is working/valuable - sketch out Lox blog post/usage notes for forum - attempt hyper upgrade again (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: 2023-01-11 Last weeks: - Currently in the start phase of writing my master thesis (to be finished late june 2024) in communication technology on reducing distinguishability of DTLS. The goal is to implement a validated DTLS anti-fingerprinting library similar to uTLS (useful for Snowflake). Next weeks: - Talk with Sean DuBois about contributing to adding anti-fingerprinting capabilities to the pion library Help with: - Find recent data set of captured DTLS traffic -- --- onyinyang GPG Fingerprint 3CC3 F8CC E9D0 A92F A108 38EF 156A 6435 430C 2036

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Job Opportunity - System Administrator
by Patricia Robinson 07 Mar '24

07 Mar '24

Hi Everyone! We have a new job opening for a System Administrator! https://www.torproject.org/about/jobs/system-administrator/ If you are or know someone who would be a good fit and wants to join our team, please apply/share. Have a great weekend and thanks for helping us spread the word! :) Cheers, Patricia Robinson

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ebanam's monthly status report and user support report for February 2024
by ebanam 06 Mar '24

06 Mar '24

Hello all, Last month, I worked on some small documentation updates to the Tor Browser User Manual[0], Support Portal[1] and the support documentation that we maintain on our user support channels. With some exciting new updates to Tor Browser Alpha, I was involved with some testing apart from the usual user support work around any Tor Browser releases. We saw a slight uptick in support requests from Chinese and Farsi speaking users - involving instructions and help with using pluggable transports that works best for them and general troubleshooting. The current Snowflake domain fronting issue with Fastly will be reported on the next user support report (April 2024). Following is a thorough breakdown of tickets our user support team handled in February: # Frontdesk (email support channel) * 427(↓) RT tickets created * 461(↑) RT tickets resolved Tickets by numbers: 1. 218(↑) RT tickets: private bridge requests from Chinese speaking users. 2. 105(↓) RT tickets: circumventing censorship in Russian speaking countries. 3. 13 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. 4. 7(↑) RT tickets: circumventing censorship with Tor in Farsi. 5. 3 RT tickets: Help with installing Tor Browser on Android. 6. 2 RT tickets: Help with GPG signature verification while installing Tor Browser[2]. 7. 3 RT tickets: Reports of website blocking Tor users. Highlighting some other topics we received questions and feedback: 8. Google showing up in foreign language[3]. 9. Help with installing Tor on Fedora and PopOS (Linux) 10. Question about the "New Identity"[4] feature in Tor Browser - what it does and how it can be used. 11. ExoneraTor suffering from possible denial of service[5]. 12. Question about where to find Tor Browser's source code. 13. Modifying Tor circuit to exit from a specific country (the country had no exits running and, in general, we highly discourage users to modify their Tor circuit) # Telegram, WhatsApp and Signal Support channel * 508(-) tickets resolved Breakdown: * 485(-) tickets on Telegram * 17(↑) tickets on WhatsApp * 6(↓) tickets on Signal Tickets by numbers: 1. 315(↓) tickets: circumventing censorship in Russian speaking countries. 2. 50(↑) tickets: circumventing censorship with Tor in Farsi. 3. 26(↑) tickets: private bridge requests from Chinese speaking users. 4. 4 tickets: help with installation and troubleshooting of Tor Browser on Windows. 5. 4 tickets: Questions about which Tor app to install on iOS (Onion Browser and Orbot). Highlighting some other topics we received questions about: 6. 2 tickets: Help with GPG signature verification while installing Tor Browser. 7. 2 tickets: Reports of onion services (not maintained by us) being offline. We asked the users to kindly contact the concerned onion service maintainers. 8. 2 tickets: Help with using pluggable transports with little-t-tor. 9. Help and instructions to install Tor Browser for Android. # Highlights from the Tor Forum 1. New Tor Browser Alpha Release: Tor Browser 13.5a5[6]. Please help us test Connection Assist on Android! 2. Installing Tor Browser on Linux[7] 3. Building and installing lyrebird to use pluggable transports with Tor on Alpine[8] 4. Modifying Tor circuit to exit from a particular country[9]. Please check metrics before modifying torrc for similar configurations. 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://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/web/manual/-/merge_requests/89 [1]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/web/support/-/merge_requests/198 [2]: https://support.torproject.org/tbb/how-to-verify-signature/ [3]: https://support.torproject.org/tbb/tbb-43/ [4]: https://tb-manual.torproject.org/managing-identities/ [5]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/team/-/issues/41507 [6]: https://forum.torproject.org/t/new-alpha-release-tor-browser-13-5a5/11724 [7]: https://forum.torproject.org/t/linux-i-cant-find-start-tor-browser-desktop/… [8]: https://forum.torproject.org/t/where-to-find-source-of-obfs4proxy-files-to-… [9]: https://forum.torproject.org/t/i-cant-use-indian-exit-node-are-there-techni…

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cohosh's monthly status report, February 2024
by Cecylia Bocovich 05 Mar '24

05 Mar '24

Hi! This is my status report for contract work done in February 2024. # Snowflake development - Updated version of Snowflake in Tor Browser to deploy SQS rendezvous https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser-build/-/issues/4… - Added integration tests with Shadow https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… - Caught up on the state of Manifest v3 for Firefox and Chrome https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… - Released a new version of the Snowflake addon https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… - Worked on some followups to the SQS rendezvous deployment https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… # Domain fronting - Set up an account with CDN77

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Rhatto's Monthly Status Report, February 2024
by rhatto 04 Mar '24

04 Mar '24

Hi all :) This is my monthly status report for February 2024 with the main relevant activities I have done during the period. ## 0. Research * No research activities in this month. ## 1. Development * Onionspray: * Discovered and fixed a security issue: https://tpo.pages.torproject.net/onion-services/onionspray/security/advisor… * Did the 1.6.0 release: https://tpo.pages.torproject.net/onion-services/onionspray/changelog/ * Onion Services Ecosystem Portal: * Unified many Onion Services documentations in a single place (temporary address): https://tpo.pages.torproject.net/onion-services/portal/ * It's probably going to be hosted inside the Tor Community Portal, as being planned at https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/onion-services/portal/-/issues/1 ## 2. Support * Ongoing sponsored work with deployment, maintenance and monitoring of Onion Services. * Did some support related to setting up Onion Services. ## 3. Organization Time spent (from the total available for Tor-related work): | Category | Percentage |---------------|------------ | Research | 0 | Development | 30 | Support | 30 | Organization | 40 |---------------|------------ | Total | 100 -- Silvio Rhatto pronouns he/him I sent this message during my active hours, which might be different from yours. I'm fine if you take your time to answer, and usually takes some time for me to answer.

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Nina’s Monthly Status Report: February 2024
by Nina 04 Mar '24

04 Mar '24

Hi! Below is my February’24 report! In February, I resolved 514 tickets: On Telegram (@TorProjectSupportBot) - 374 On RT (frontdesk@tpo) - 120 On WhatsApp (+447421000612) - 16 and on Signal (+17787431312) - 4. During February I have been doing regular user support activity: 1. Helped Russian-speaking users to bypass censorship: shared bridges and assisted with using them and troubleshooting; 2. Collected users feedback; 3. Helped to solve issues like: * Orbot does not work. * antivirus software blocks tor. * wrong system time on the user's PC. 4. Continued following the issue with bridge requests from unusual locations, where Tor connections aren't blocked. I also helped with localisation activity on WebLate, checking, fixing and approving the Russian translation. Also this month I conducted a training on how to use Tor Browser. In February, I reviewed and updated existing user support templates in Russian[2]. With the help of our users I reported thisissue with @gettor_bot on Telegram[1]. [1] https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/gettor-project/OnionSprou… [2] https://forum.torproject.org/t/tor-blocked-in-russia-how-to-circumvent-cens…

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PieroV's Monthly Status Report, February 2024
by Pier Angelo Vendrame 01 Mar '24

01 Mar '24

Hi everyone! Here is my status report for February 2024. As anticipated in my previous report, I have been working on implementing the possibility of setting Mullvad Browser as the default browser on Windows for most of this month. It involved several steps. The first one was to start customizing MOZ_APP_DISPLAYNAME in our browsers to allow installing one build from each channel (stable, alpha, nightly) without conflicts [0]. As a wanted side effect, alpha and nightly app bundles for macOS now contain the channel in their name. The original issue about this [1] was opened in 2018 😄️. The second step was to adapt Firefox's default browser agent. It's a companion exe that helps in various tasks. We disabled it because it isn't compatible with MinGW. Luckily, the compatibility problems affect only some features we are not interested in, so we could disable them and create a reduced agent that is enough for our needs. The final step was to extend the installer to register all the various file associations. I hoped to deal with this step later because it was very involved (lots of Windows registry), but it turned out to be necessary. We're implementing these changes in Mullvad Browser. Only the macOS changes apply also to Tor Browser. This month, I also took some time to start a different approach to the big rebases we do for our browsers. Traditionally, we stay on Mozilla ESR's channel, and once per year, we skip all the Firefox versions between the two ESRs. I wondered if we could instead spread this work during the year and make more rebases that are smaller and, therefore, potentially easier to review. I've started from Firefox 115 and arrived at Firefox 120. So far, it seems to me that the differences are indeed easier to recognize and explain. Other tasks I did include the usual monthly rebase and fixing more fingerprinting issues. I also turned off the OS spoofing in HTTP User-Agent in Mullvad Browser [2] and helped a volunteer who's trying to reproduce our builds in F-Droid [3]. Finally, I opened an issue about what we'll need from Arti for Tor Browser [4]. Best, Pier [0] https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser/-/issues/42398 [1] https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser-build/-/issues/4… [2] https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/mullvad-browser/-/issues/234 [3] https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser/-/issues/27539 [4] https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/core/arti/-/issues/1303

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