Hi,
Tails report for February 2023 <https://tails.boum.org/news/report_2023_02/>
Highlights
*
@bokonon <https://gitlab.tails.boum.org/bokonon>joined our team, as
our Fundraising Lead. bokonon will help us develop and grow our
fundraising initiatives, to support the work we do to accomplish
ourmission <https://tails.boum.org/contribute/mission/>.
*
We prepared usability tests planned in Ecuador in March.
Releases
Wereleased Tails 5.10 on February 16
<https://tails.boum.org/news/version_5.10/index.en.html>.
As part of our focus on polishing user experience, Tails now asks for
confirmation when starting without unlocking the Persistent Storage.
Because we humans sometimes forget stuff. It's OK :)
Tails 5.10 fixed a few problems introduced in Tails 5.8 in December, and
some more:
*
Fixed another case of Persistent Storage not activating. (#19432
<https://gitlab.tails.boum.org/tails/tails/-/issues/19432>)
*
Avoid opening the Persistent Storage settings each time after login.
(#19410 <https://gitlab.tails.boum.org/tails/tails/-/issues/19410>)
*
Solve a possible privilege escalation through a symlink attack.
Metrics
Tails has been started more than 652 918 times this month. This makes
23 318 boots a day on average.
Hey everyone!
Here are our meeting logs:
http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2023/tor-meeting.2023-03-09-15.58.html
And our meeting pad:
Anti-censorship
--------------------------------
Next meeting: Thursday, March 16 16:00 UTC
Weekly meetings, every Thursday at 16:00 UTC, in #tor-meeting at OFTC
(channel is logged while meetings are in progress)
== 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 28
* must-do tickets: https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/milestones/10
* possible-do tickets: https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/issues?scope=all&utf8=%E2%9C%93&…
* Sponsor 96
* https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/milestones/24
* Sponsor 139 <-- hackerncoder, irl, joydeep, meskio, emmapeel working on it
* https://pad.riseup.net/p/sponsor139-meeting-pad
== Announcements ==
== Discussion ==
* No news yet about the inclusion of snowflake-02 in Orbot, after asking at S96 meeting.
* the are asking meskio by email privately, but he didn't answer being in vacation, will do today
* What is the procedure for creating a new repository under https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship ? Do I need to ask someone to create a repository or can I just do it?
* dcf wants to move other repositories there:
* https://gitlab.torproject.org/dcf/extor-static-cookie
* https://gitweb.torproject.org/pluggable-transports/goptlib.git
* It should be possible to just create new repos.
* dcf will try it, and report back if there's trouble.
* Resynchronization with Upsteamed Remove HelloVerify countermeasure (https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow…)
* Syncing with upstream will require dropping one version of golang from CI, are we okay with that?
* https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… "The only problem I'm having with this is that it no longer builds with go1.15 due to the x/crypto dependency update. Is it possible to keep the old version or perhaps rebase these changes off of the versions of pion/dtls and pion/webrtc that we currently have pinned rather than the master branches?"
* go1.15 is the version in current Debian stable (bullseye), go1.19 is available in backports. go1.19 will be the version in the next stable (bookworm) coming in a few months.
== Actions ==
* move the ampcache snowflake fallback forward
== Interesting links ==
*
== Reading group ==
This paper is about detecting Tor-in-obfs4 when you only have a traffic sample; e.g., you only get to look at every 100th packet that passes through a router that handles both obfs4 and non-obfs4 flows. Traffic sampling means you cannot use features like "look at the first n packets of a flow" or "compare the timing of two consecutive packets". Instead, you can only look at aggregate statistical features and have to be memory-efficient.
The system collects 12 statistics (Table III in the appendix) and stores them in a data structure called a nest count Bloom filter (NCBF), which essentially is just a composition of 12 counting Bloom filters (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counting_Bloom_filter). The statistics are things like "number of non-empty upstream packets" (C₂) and "number of downstream packets with payload length between 62 and 465" (C₁₁). From these 12 statistics, they derive 14 features (mostly ratios of statistics) and feed them to a random forest classifier.
For evaluation they use a 15-minute sample of backbone traffic provided by a third party, MAWI (https://mawi.wide.ad.jp/mawi/ditl/ditl2019-G/201904090000.html) and insert their own self-collected obfs4 traffic into it. They say the detection has few false negatives (finds almost all obfs4 bridges), but too many false positives to be usable directly for blocking decisions; they mention the need for "secondary testing" of suspected bridges.
* We will discuss "Detecting Tor Bridge from Sampled Traffic in Backbone Networks" on March 9
* https://www.ndss-symposium.org/wp-content/uploads/madweb2021_23011_paper.pdf
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kL7YCRer3To&list=PLfUWWM-POgQvGOVAk1HjP3uFK…
* 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): last updated 2023-03-02
Last week:
- Lox tor browser integration work in progress
- https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/team/-/issues/116
- Finished getting the wasm client integrated as a Tor Browser module
This week:
- continue Lox tor browser integration
- find a better way to generate and call wasm client in tor-browser-build
- make team repos for Lox pieces
- expand client-side support for more Lox features
- continue work on conjure client-side recovery
Needs help with:
dcf: 2023-03-09
Last week:
- drafted snowflake-01 bridge update for February 2023 https://opencollective.com/censorship-circumvention/projects/snowflake-dail…
- attended 2023-03-04 relay operators meetup and answered questions about snowflake https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-relays/2023-March/021080.html
- documented further sporadic blocking of cdn.sstatic.net in some networks in Iran https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/team/-/issues/115#note_28…
- made a graph of users in Russia since Tor Browser 12.0.3 and the Hello Verify mitigation; curiously it increased users in snowflake-02 but not snowflake-01 https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow…
- noticed that conntrack changes did not persist after a reboot on the snowflake bridges, and started an experiment to measure the effect https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow…
Next week:
- migrate goptlib to gitlab https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/team/-/issues/86#note_282… (for real)
Help with:
meskio: 2023-03-09
Last week:
- catch up (or fail to) after vacation
- deploy and break bridgedb (bridgedb#40064)
- test bridges without ORPort public (rdsys#154)
- review nil pointer fix in webtunnel (webtunnel!5)
- coordinate the update of pion libraries and snowflake in debian, including the HelloVerify patch
Next week:
- rdsys fixes to use onbasca (rdsys#153)
Shelikhoo: 2023-03-09
Last Week:
- [Merge Request Awaiting] Add SOCKS5 forward proxy support to snowflake (snowflake!64)
- [Research] HTTPT Planning https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/http…
- WebTunnel @ TorBrowser mobile(https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser-build/-/m…
- Upstreaming Remove HelloVerify countermeasure (https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow…)
- Fix return nil error on unrecognized request http upgrade failure (https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/webt…)
- Research on dynamic bridge DOL in china(https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/connectivity-measur…
- meta: fill the "donate" link on addons.mozilla.org (https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow…)
- consider propagating 2FA everywhere, maybe at the April Tor Meeting (https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/team/-/issues/41083#note_2884138)
- Review Proxy: add an option to bind to a specific address (https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow…)
- Resynchronization with Upsteamed Remove HelloVerify countermeasure (https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow…)
Next Week:
- [Research] WebTunnel planning (Continue)
- Try to find a place to host another vantage point
- Fix return nil error on unrecognized request http upgrade failure (https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/webt…)
- Resynchronization with Upsteamed Remove HelloVerify countermeasure (https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow…)
onyinyang: 2023-03-09
Last week:
- Working on distributor backend for Lox server (integration with rdsys)
- enabling Lox server to communicate with rdsys through rdsys-backend-api
This week:
- Continuing work on Lox server integration with rdsys
- Reconfigure Lox Bridgeline to fit with Tor's bridge info
- Figure out the proper multithreading in Rust to add bridges to Lox's bridgedb
- (later) Consider a reasonable approach for bridge groupings for Lox buckets
Itchy Onion: 2023-03-08
Last week:
- Finished most of issue #40252 (Standalone proxy outbound address) (!136)
- Worked on issue #40252 (NAT probetest for standalone proxy)
- Started looking at #40231 (Client sometimes send offer with no ICE candidates)
This week:
- Add warning message if the user provided IP address is not used by proxy to establish WebRTC connection (issue #40252 !136). In my testing, sometimes the IP obtained from Pion's selectedCandidatePair is not accurate. I chatted with Pion dev and think there might a bug in Pion. But from my testing it only happens on the first peerconnecion so not a huge problem for us.
- Closed issue #40252 (NAT probetest for standalone proxy)
- Working on #40231 (Client sometimes send offer with no ICE candidates). My current understanding is that this shouldn't happen. There was a similar issue but is fixed and merged: https://github.com/pion/webrtc/issues/1143. Doing more research on it.
hackerncoder: 2023-03-09
last week:
Next week:
- getting ooni-exporter to work with torsf (snowflake)
- ooni-exporter web_connectivity
- work on "bridgetester"?
- how does iran block bridges
cece: 2022-12-22
This week:
- working on creating a dummy WhatsApp bot
Next week:
- My bot is not yet working as expected s? still trying to figure that out
Help with:
- resources
--
meskio | https://meskio.net/
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
My contact info: https://meskio.net/crypto.txt
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Nos vamos a Croatan.
Hello everyone!
Here are my updates from February. In total, I resolved 626 tickets
across our email, telegram, whatsapp and signal user support channels.
I am happy and excited to share that we launched[1] our user support
channel on WhatsApp last month! I helped with the planning, pre-release
testing and updating[2] some of our support documentation in relation to
this.
Continuing my work with users in places where Tor is censored, I was
able to gather some valuable feedback from users. Owing to some of this
feedback, I along with Nina (@nina13), added information about bridge-moji[3] as a
means to verify whether the intended bridge lines have been entered
by the user successfully.
Also made a very small documentation update to our manual[4] with the
latest Tor Browser 12.0.3 release.
Now, a look at our user support channels:
Timeline: 01 - 28 February 2023
# Frontdesk
tickets created: 684
tickets resolved: 625
Most frequent tickets by numbers:
1. 289 RT Tickets - Private Bridge requests from China
2. 49 RT Tickets - How to use a Tor Bridge in Russia
3. 18 RT Tickets - Circumventing censorship with Tor in Iran
# Telegram, WhatsApp and Signal Support channel (cdr.link)
tickets resolved: 588
The most frequent tickets we received have been about:
1. 142 tickets: Circumventing censorship in Russia
2. 90 tickets: Circumventing censorship in Turkmenistan
3. 84 tickets: Circumventing censorship in Iran
4. 31 tickets - Circumventing censorship in China
# Tor Forum
Most popular topics in the Support category (in terms of number of
views):
1. "Guard is failing a very large amount of circuits"[5]
2. "SSH over Tor including unto Onion Service"[6]
3. "Tor Browser Android >> Cannot install Add-ons if language any other
than English"[7]
4. "Why is the telegram account publishing bridges in the open!?"[8]
5. "Relay or Bridge? What are the Network needs for the moment"[9]
Thanks,
-- Joydeep
[1]: https://blog.torproject.org/meeting-you-where-you-are-we-added-whatsapp-use…
[2]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/web/support/-/issues/321
[3]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/community/support/-/issues/40107
[4]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/web/manual/-/issues/139
[5]: https://forum.torproject.net/t/guard-is-failing-a-very-large-amount-of-circ…
[6]: https://forum.torproject.net/t/ssh-over-tor-including-unto-onion-service/67…
[7]: https://forum.torproject.net/t/tor-browser-android-cannot-install-add-ons-i…
[8]: https://forum.torproject.net/t/why-is-the-telegram-account-publishing-bridg…
[9]: https://forum.torproject.net/t/relay-or-bridge-what-are-the-network-needs-f…
Hi! This is my report for February 2023.
In that month, I resolved 554 tickets:
On Telegram (@TorProjectSupportBot) - 352
On RT (frontdesk@tpo) - 172
On WhatsApp (+447421000612) and on Signal (+17787431312) it was 20
tickets in common.
The majority of the user requests I dealt with were about bypassing
internet censorship in different countries and troubleshooting around it
- like using Tor Browser with bridges and VPN simultaneously or finding
working bridges.
During February I edited our templates for cdr.link and RT
(frontdesk@tpo) to make them more detailed and meet the users' needs and
to add information about bridge-moji.
At the very end of the month after some preparation and testing, we
added WhatsApp (+447421000612) to our support channels to reach as
maximum users as possible with the communication tools they are
comfortable with [1].
I also took part in a small-scale educational project as a translator
and content creator.
>From time to time with the help of our users I spotted some
miscellaneous problems with our services like bridges.torproject.org and
our Telegram bot @getbridgesbot.
[1]
https://blog.torproject.org/meeting-you-where-you-are-we-added-whatsapp-use…
Hi all :)
This is my monthly status report for February 2023 with the main activities I
have done during the period.
## 0. Research
* Joined Network Team's Onion Service Working Group, which is aimed at
improving the current technology.
I'm joining as someone who's more at the operational side of things and
that's interested in a range of usability topics, from enhanced
deployment/monitoring tools to certificates and service discovery.
## 1. Development
* Internal security policy work for the Onion Support Group and the Community
Team.
Such work might in the future be another step towards the broader security
policies work at Tor, which is detailed at
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/team/-/issues/41
## 2. Support
* Ongoing Sponsor 123 deployments, monitoring and maintenance.
* Custom support for Onion Service deployment.
This is being an interesting experiment about setting up an Onion Service for
an organization without dedicated IT staff, requiring a setup with minimum
maintenance effort.
## 3. Organization
* Detailed planning on my workload allocation and activity scenarios, split
between research, development and support.
This is helping me to figure out how my time can be split between different
teams, initiatives, sponsors etc and also reduce the number of
daily/weekly/monthly context changes.
--
Silvio Rhatto
pronouns he/him