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OONI Monthly Report: April 2023
by Maria Xynou 12 Jul '23

12 Jul '23

Hello, This email shares OONI's monthly report for April 2023. *# OONI Monthly Report: April 2023* Throughout April 2023, the OONI team worked on the following sprints: * Sprint 88 (27th March - 9 April 2023) * Sprint 89 (10th - 23 April 2023) Our work can be tracked through the various OONI GitHub repositories: https://github.com/ooni Highlights are shared in this report below. *## New partnerships* We are excited to have formed 2 new partnerships! Specifically, OONI established partnerships with the following digital rights organizations: * Roskomsvoboda (Russia): https://ooni.org/partners/roskomsvoboda/ * Miaan Group (Iran): https://ooni.org/partners/miaan/ The goal of the partnerships is to collaborate on the study of internet censorship (in Russia and Iran), and we published dedicated partner pages (provided above) to highlight their important work. *## Published report on the blocking of Telegram in Brazil* We published a new report documenting the blocking of Telegram in Brazil. The report is available here: https://ooni.org/post/2023-brazil-telegram/ OONI data shows that some ISPs in Brazil immediately complied with the federal judge’s decision to suspend Telegram, as the blocking of Telegram started on 26th April 2023 (same day as the judge's decision). However, the block was not implemented by all ISPs in Brazil, nor was it implemented in the same way. OONI data shows that some ISPs blocked access to all tested Telegram endpoints, while others only blocked some of them. This suggests lack of coordination between providers, and that each ISP implemented the block autonomously. Our Brazilian partner, Coding Rights, published a translated version of the report: https://codingrights.org/library-item/brasil-dados-da-ooni-sobre-o-bloqueio… *## Published report on throttling of news media in Kazakhstan* We published a new research report documenting the throttling of news media websites in Kazakhstan. This report documents how OONI data can be used to investigate and document cases of throttling. The report is available here: https://ooni.org/post/2023-throttling-kz-elections/ In our report, we analyze the ongoing throttling of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) Kazakhstan’s service websites in Kazakh and Russian ( www.azattyq.org and rus.azattyq.org) which started on 27th September 2022. We also document the temporary throttling of Current Time TV during Kazakhstan's 2022 presidential election. OONI data shows the ongoing throttling of RFE/RL Kazakhstan’s service websites on most tested Kazakh providers, while Current Time TV was mainly throttled on AS9198 (JSC Kazakhtelecom). Our report received the following press coverage: https://www.rferl.org/a/kazakhstan-rferl-internet-throttling-ooni/32383892.… https://rus.azattyq.org/a/kazakhstan-throttling-azattyq-currenttime/3238407… https://www.azattyq.org/a/32383510.html https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I10nuJBKdUc *## OONI Probe Mobile* Throughout April 2023, we worked on OONI Probe Mobile bug fixing and release engineering. Specifically, we worked on the following bug fixes: * Resolved a crash occurring on custom website list test results ( https://github.com/ooni/probe-android/pull/569) * Fixed a bug related to starting the background service ( https://github.com/ooni/probe-android/pull/567) * Made progress on improving pagination-based scrolling in the test result screen (https://github.com/ooni/probe-android/pull/511, https://github.com/ooni/probe-ios/pull/485) We also worked on the following release engineering: * Released OONI Probe version 3.8.0 and 3.8.1 ( https://github.com/ooni/probe-android/pull/560, https://github.com/ooni/probe-android/pull/568) * Released beta versions for the Android platform, following the X.Y.Z-beta.A versioning pattern ( https://github.com/ooni/probe-android/pull/566) * Worked towards a deployment plan for beta versions on Android. *## OONI Probe CLI* In April 2023, we: * Started working towards optimizing how we manage the Mozilla certificate pool (https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/2444) * Continued investigating issues with our integration of tor ( https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/2406#issuecomment-1479365235) * Introduced the optional type to more robustly handle cases where a specific value is not given (https://github.com/ooni/probe-cli/pull/1131) *## OONI Run* As part of our work on improving OONI Run (https://run.ooni.io/) we understood that the OONI Run v2 and the richer testing input designs should be mutually compatible to reduce the overall complexity. We therefore started sketching out a prototype check-in API implementation that allows these two designs to interoperate (https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/2445) This is further discussed below (section on richer testing input). We also started updating the frontend application in preparation for upcoming UI changes. This work included migrating the codebase to TypeScript (https://github.com/ooni/run/pull/128) and adding basic end-to-end tests (https://github.com/ooni/run/pull/129) *## Expanding OONI’s testing model to support richer testing input* In April 2023, we continued working towards a design document ( https://github.com/ooni/ooni.org/issues/1292) for richer testing inputs and we wrote a prototype (https://github.com/ooni/probe-cli/pull/1130) implementing some of the ideas in the design document. We realized that the name “input” is often associated with the string we pass to experiments. We therefore considered introducing the concept of “target” to describe a piece of richer input, and we started working on a glossary defining terms used in the probe implementation. We also recognized that richer input and OONI Run v2 depend on each other ( https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/2445) The future check-in v2 API serving the richer input to the probes could also serve OONI Run v2 descriptors. This realization means that we need to ensure that the richer input design and the OONI Run v2 design are mutually compatible. We implemented an experimental version of the check-in API to support richer testing input (https://github.com/ooni/backend/pull/658) *## Creating a methodology for measuring throttling* As part of our research on the throttling of news media websites in Kazakhstan (https://ooni.org/post/2023-throttling-kz-elections/) we applied our methods for measuring and evaluating cases of throttling. The report that we produced documents how OONI data can be analyzed to investigate cases of throttling. Specifically, our report documents how we analyzed TLS handshake data from the OONI Probe Web Connectivity measurements (collected from Kazakhstan). To perform this analysis, we used the OONI data analysis tool (https://github.com/ooni/data) *## OONI backend* We extracted API specs into a JSON file ( https://github.com/ooni/backend/pull/655) we ran experiments around STUN reachability, and we started moving issues from the old API and pipeline repositories on GitHub to the backend repository. We also deployed and configured Vector on our monitoring host to centralize the log management and implement log analysis. We detected a sudden drop in incoming measurements from the Android probe due to a bug in version 3.8.0, and we created internal dashboards for investigation. We also investigated an issue that incorrectly flagged Signal measurements as failed. *## OONI Explorer* In April 2023, we implemented an API entry point to fetch the measurement metadata and body by measurement_uid. This will allow OONI Explorer users to access every measurement even when two different measurements share the same report ID and URL (https://github.com/ooni/backend/pull/656) Along with the backend changes, we also added a new measurement page that requests the measurement based on the measurement_uid and redirects from the legacy page that requires the report ID and URL ( https://github.com/ooni/explorer/pull/850) *## Creating a Social Media Censorship Alert System* In April 2023, we made progress on the event detector developed for the new Social Media Censorship Alert System. As part of our work on social media blocking detection, we switched to using the Pandas library and worked on bug fixes and blocking detection improvements. This work is documented through the following pull request: https://github.com/ooni/backend/pull/651 *## Automating censorship detection and characterization based on OONI measurements* In April 2023, we made progress on automating the detection and characterization of censorship based on OONI measurements. Specifically, we carried out the following activities: * Continued developing analysis of DNS measurements to determine when DNS level blocking is happening; * Built a basic set of UI components for displaying DNS-related analysis and merged it into the ooni/data tool (https://github.com/ooni/data/pull/25 ); * Added support for running the analysis using dask to improve the performance and make it easier to scale across multiple machines ( https://github.com/ooni/data/pull/27) * Added support for storing the probe-generated analysis to make it easier to compare the new analysis engine with the current probe-based one ( https://github.com/ooni/data/pull/27/commits/eb460a42734fb73f6bb573edd051e0… ); * Added support for parsing middlebox test results and storing features related to them in database tables ( https://github.com/ooni/data/pull/27/commits/b8421096bd1d41b823e1a95ec51f3e… ); * Added support for processing Telegram measurements ( https://github.com/ooni/data/pull/28) * Added extraction and storing of additional probe-engine related measurement file keys ( https://github.com/ooni/data/pull/27/commits/f0f65917acb2b0c33208e50673cd6c… ). *## Community use of OONI data### Sinar Project’s report on censorship monitoring during Malaysia’s 2022 elections* Leading up to and during Malaysia’s 2022 elections, Sinar Project coordinated an OONI measurement campaign to monitor potential censorship events ( https://sinarproject.org/digital-rights/measuring-and-detecting-network-int… ). Based on the analysis of OONI data collected during Malaysia’s 2022 elections, Sinar Project published a report, documenting their findings. Their report is available here: https://imap.sinarproject.org/news/15th-malaysian-general-elections-interne… *### Article about using OONI Probe in Turkmenistan* Progres, an online non-profit journal, published an article about OONI in Turkmen. This article describes OONI Probe, explaining how people in Turkmenistan could use the tool to document internet censorship. The article is available here: https://progres.online/sowatly/name-ucin-web-sahypalar-acylmayar/ *## Community activities### OONI workshop at the Digital Rights and Inclusion Forum (DRIF) 2023 in Kenya* OONI’s Elizaveta traveled to Nairobi, Kenya, to participate in the Digital Rights and Inclusion Forum (DRIF) 2023 organized by Paradigm Initiative. Information about the event is available here: https://drif.paradigmhq.org/ On 13th April 2023, Elizaveta facilitated an OONI workshop (“Tracking internet censorship: how to coordinate, document and investigate network interference in your country”) as part of the event. Information about the workshop is available here: https://drif.paradigmhq.org/stec_event/open-observatory-of-network-interfer… *### OONI MAT demo for Freedom House researchers* On 17th April 2023, OONI’s Maria provided a live demo of the Measurement Aggregation Toolkit (MAT) for Freedom House researchers. Through this session, Maria shared how researchers can use the MAT ( https://explorer.ooni.org/chart/mat) to track (and visualize) internet censorship around the world based on real-time OONI data, and use the platform to answer a variety of research questions. The goal of this session was to enable Freedom House researchers to make use of OONI data, increasing the use of OONI data as part of the annual Freedom on the Net reports (https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-net) *### Presentation of Iran research to the EU High Level Group on Internet Governance* On 26th April 2023, OONI’s Maria joined IODA and ISOC to present the findings from our technical multi-stakeholder research report on censorship events in Iran ( https://ooni.org/post/2022-iran-technical-multistakeholder-report/) to EU Member States at the morning session (open stakeholder session) of the High Level Group on Internet Governance (HLIG). As part of this presentation, Maria shared OONI censorship findings involving the blocking of encrypted DNS, instant messaging and social media platforms, app stores, browser extension repositories, and circumvention tools in Iran. *### OONI hackathon at Internet Without Borders conference in Berlin* Between 28th-30th April 2023, the Internet Without Borders conference was held in Berlin (https://internetborders.net/blog/2023/05/01/berlin-report/) As part of this event, Ain Ghazal (OONI research fellow) facilitated an OONI hackathon that involved developing a VPN measurement research methodology for Russia and the occupied territories of Ukraine. *### OONI Community Meeting* On 25th April 2023, we hosted the monthly OONI Community Meeting on our Slack channel (https://slack.ooni.org/) during which we discussed the following topics: 1. Updates from the OONI team. 2. Community feedback for improving OONI tools (such as OONI Probe feature requests). 3. Using OONI Probe to measure internet connectivity shutdowns. 4. Recording automated testing as a signal for identifying internet outages. *## Measurement coverage* In April 2023, 53,140,981 OONI Probe measurements were collected from 3,003 networks in 166 countries around the world. This information can also be found through our measurement stats on OONI Explorer (see chart on “monthly coverage worldwide”): https://explorer.ooni.org/ ~ OONI team.

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ebanam's monthly status report for June 2023
by ebanam 11 Jul '23

11 Jul '23

Hello everyone, Here are my updates from the month of June. I resolved 773 tickets across our user support channels on email, Telegram, WhatsApp and Signal. With Tor Browser 12.5 release, I also worked to update all relevant user-facing documentation on our Tor Browser user manual, the support portal and along with @nina updated and reviewed documentation that we maintain on our user support channels. Following is a thorough breakdown of tickets our user support team handled in June: Timeframe: 01 - 30 June 2023 # Frontdesk (email) * 463 (↓) RT tickets created * 877 (↑) RT tickets resolved (resolved some tickets that were queued to the backlog) Most frequent tickets by numbers: 1. 112 (↓) RT tickets: private bridge requests from China. 2. 64 (↓) RT tickets: circumventing censorship in Russian speaking countries. 3. 6 (↓) RT tickets: circumventing censorship with Tor in Iran. 4. 3 RT tickets: anti-virus false positive with Tor Browser 12.5[0] # Telegram, WhatsApp and Signal Support channel * 580 (↓) tickets resolved Breakdown: * 559 (↓) tickets on Telegram * 17 (↓) tickets on WhatsApp * 4 (↓) tickets on Signal The most frequent tickets on cdr.link have been about: 1. 314 (↓) tickets: Circumventing censorship in Russian speaking countries. 2. 50 (↑) tickets: Circumventing censorship in Iran. 3. 29 (↑) tickets: Circumventing censorship in China. 4. 3 [+1 on RT] tickets: Onion Browser now requires Orbot on iOS + Orbot dependency is breaking Onion Browser[1] Thanks! e. Note: (↑), (↓) and (-) are indicative 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://forum.torproject.org/t/new-release-tor-browser-12-5/8105/3 [1]: https://github.com/guardianproject/orbot-apple/issues/67

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Anti-censorship team meeting notes, 2023-07-06
by Shelikhoo 06 Jul '23

06 Jul '23

Hey everyone! Here are our meeting logs: http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2023/tor-meeting.2023-07-06-15.58.html And our meeting pad: Anti-censorship work meeting pad -------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ THIS IS A PUBLIC PAD ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Anti-censorship -------------------------------- Next meeting: Thursday, July 27 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 139 <-- hackerncoder, irl, joydeep, meskio, emmapeel working on it * https://pad.riseup.net/p/sponsor139-meeting-pad == Announcements == * rdsys is ignoring the running flag now :) * To hide your bridge's ORPort: ORPort 127.0.0.1:auto AssumeReachable 1 * No meeting July 13 or 20 == Discussion == * do we want to activate renovate bot in snowflake? * conjure and rdsys have being using it for a while * https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… * meskio will enable it * do we want to use the triage bot to warn on stalled issues? * https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/triage-ops/-/blob/main/common/02-stal… * so issues are reminded if they get stalled for too long * meskio will enable it for snowflake and rdsys to try it out * Conjure call for testers: are we done here? can we wrap up? (--gus) https://forum.torproject.org/t/call-for-testers-help-the-tor-project-to-tes… * we can close the call for testers after 28 days * there was a lot of good feedback * now we need to work on reliability and testing it from vantage points * should we cancel this meeting during PETS?? * let's cancel July 13 and 20 meetings * WebTunnel soft release update * https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/community/team/-/issues/94 * https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-relays/2023-June/021224.html * the user support team will start asking folks to test webtunnel == 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): last updated 2023-06-29 Last weeks: - fixed certificate error in Snowflake and Conjure - https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… - https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/conj… - released snowflake v2.6.0 - https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… - bumped version of Snowflake in Tor Browser - https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser-build/-/issues/4… - fixed a crash in Conjure on Android - https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/conj… - code lint improvements in lox - https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/lox-rs/-/merge_requests/12 - started deployment of lox distributor - https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/lox-rs/-/issues/19 - found and fixed a bug in the parsing of resource diffs from rdsys - https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/lox-rs/-/issues/22 This week: - tidy up and share shadow simulations guide for PTs - Lox tor browser integration - conjure maintenance Needs help with: dcf: 2023-06-29 Last week: - tried an encapsulation.ReadData performance improvement 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 Help with: meskio: 2023-06-29 Last week: - Distribute webtunnel bridges in the HTTPS distributor without enabling IPv6 flag (bridgedb!56) - review what projects are missing license (team#110) - update rdsys grafana dashboard - update rdsys alerts in prometheus (tpa/prometheus-alerts!32) - release and deploy a new version of rdsys - make rdsys take into account the bandwidth ratio (rdsys!135) - triage down why gettor is not updating to TB 12.5 to a bug on TB release (rdsys#166) - update wiki links to gitlab.tpo instead of .onion (rdsys#127) - add a generic metric with resources by their testing status to rdsys (rdsys!134) - ignore the running flag in rdsys (rdsys!134) - build snowflake 2.6.0 docker image Next week: - test i18n support in rdsys (rdsys#11) - finish the migration to git.tpo (team#86) Shelikhoo: 2023-07-06 Last Week: - [Merge Request Awaiting] Add SOCKS5 forward proxy support to snowflake (snowflake!64) (stalled) - [Research] HTTPT Planning https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/http… - logcollector alert system - ongoing - Prepare for presenting keynote at FOCI Next Week/TODO: - logcollector alert system <- immediate todo - [Research] WebTunnel planning (Continue) - Try to find a place to host another vantage point - Snowflake Performance Analysis onyinyang: 2023-06-29 Last week: - Finished changing vectors to maps - Started looking into db for Lox structures - Started working on Lox presentation for PETS This week: - fix up indexing of hashmaps for Lox bridgetable - Working on Lox presentation for PETS (to include some details about Tor integration) - Decide between databases to back the Lox structures (poloDB, redb, surrealdb seem like reasonable candidates) If time: - work on syncing Lox with rdsys given https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/rdsys/-/issues/168 - start thinking about metrics to add (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? Itchy Onion: 2023-06-08 Last week: - fixed snowflake pipeline due to outdated Debian image - continue working on rdsys#56 implementation. Still need to do the following: - finish up computing bridge distribution in Kraken - does it have to be deterministic? - does the disproportion have to be strictly followed - finish writing tests - refactor code because some functions are getting extremely long - what to do with stencil package? This week: - review MRs - continue working on rdsys#56 implementation. Still need to do the following: - fixed a problem with vanilla bridges not being added properly to the database - still working on tests - adding a migaration patch (https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/rdsys/-/issues/56#note_29…)

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Nina’s Monthly Status Report, June 2023
by Nina 05 Jul '23

05 Jul '23

Hi! This is my June 2023 report! In June, I resolved 523 tickets: On Telegram (@TorProjectSupportBot) - 435 On RT (frontdesk@tpo) - 84 Additionally, I also resolved 7 tickets on WhatsApp (+447421000612) and Signal (+17787431312). In June, my main focus was on preparations to test the new pluggable transports Conjure and WebTunnel, now available in Tor Browser Alpha. - Conjure testing: - I made a forum post translation (English into Russian) on how to test conjure [1]. - Wrote a shorter version to use asa template on CDR Link and RT. - Collected user feedback on their interaction with Conjure. - WebTunnel release preparations In June, I created and translated short text about WebTunnel testing - to use as a template on CDR.link and RT. This month we had several tickets on the changes in the way Onion Browser(iOS)works. Now it requires Orbot to be installed on the device. At the end of June the user support teamupdated all the internal user support templates. Other than that, my main focus remains the same: - Censorship circumvention - I help Russian-speaking users by sharing bridges and troubleshootingTor powered apps. - User feedback collection - I gather information on how different censorship circumvention methods work. [1] https://forum.torproject.org/t/call-for-testers-help-the-tor-project-to-tes…

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cohosh's monthly status report, June 2023
by Cecylia Bocovich 04 Jul '23

04 Jul '23

Hi! This is my status report for contract work done in June 2023. # Reputation-based bridge distribution - Finished a reproducible build of the lox client library and javascript bindings, pending toolchain bump for tor-browser-build https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser-build/-/merge_re… - Fixed some code quality lints in the lox repo https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/lox-rs/-/merge_requests/12 - Fixed a resource parsing bug in the rdsys backend api implementation for rust https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/lox-rs/-/issues/22 - Support onyinyang's work by reviewing MRs - Started process of deploying the lox distributor https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/lox-rs/-/issues/19 # Conjure PT - Routine repository maintenance - Fix certificate error on older versions of Android https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/conj… - Fix crash caused by an unset inner connection https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/conj… # Snowflake Webextension - Minor code quality improvement to remove unnecessary try-catch block https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow…

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Rhatto's Monthly Status Report, June 2023
by rhatto 03 Jul '23

03 Jul '23

Hi all :) This is my monthly status report for June 2023 with the main activities I have done during the period. ## 0. Research ### The Onion Plan * The Onion Plan had an overall documentation restructure: * Now it has a better folder scheme. * With cleaner and shorter URLs. * And the old URLs are still supported through redirects. * Check it out at https://tpo.pages.torproject.net/onion-services/onionplan/ * ACME for Onions: * The https://acmeforonions.org project was evaluated. * Initial assessment is published at https://tpo.pages.torproject.net/onion-services/onionplan/appendixes/acme/ * And a roadmap exercise example is available at https://tpo.pages.torproject.net/onion-services/onionplan/roadmaps/certific… * Some tests were done and documented: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/onion-services/onionplan/-/issues/21 * Sauteed Onions: * There were some progresses related to the https://www.sauteed-onions.org project. * A merge request was created to discuss a roadmap proposal: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/onion-services/onionplan/-/merge_requests… * The merge request is linked with a ticket for the overall planning: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/onion-services/onionplan/-/issues/16 * Another ticket was created, to handle the implementation at Tor Browser: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser/-/issues/41853 * And Sauteed Onions is being tested in one of TPO domains: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/onion-services/onion-support/-/issues/66 * Other updates and improvements: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/onion-services/onionplan/activity ### Quality Assurance for Tor Browser * Started organizing for the next round of Q&A. * Went back to some reported issues to research on how they can be addressed. ## 1. Development ### Onionprobe * I'm collecting feedback on what should go into the next release of Onionprobe, an Onion Services testing tool. * The next milestone is planned for the end of August: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/onion-services/onionprobe/-/milestones/1 * The exact issues to be tackled are yet to be defined. * There are many issues that can be triaged for this release: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/onion-services/onionprobe/-/issues * And the release planning is being done in this ticket: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/onion-services/onionprobe/-/issues/79 * Please let me know if you want some specific fixes or features to be included in this upcoming release, so we can take them into consideration :) ### 2. Support * Did the usual sponsored work with deployment, maintenance and monitoring of Onion Services (was also done during May 2023, but I forgot to include in the previous report). ### 3. Organization Time spent (from the total available for Tor-related work): | Category | Percentage |---------------|------------ | Research | 32 | Development | 0 | Support | 17 | Organization | 51 |---------------|------------ | Total | 100 -- Silvio Rhatto pronouns he/him

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PieroV's Monthly Status Report, June 2023
by Pier Angelo Vendrame 03 Jul '23

03 Jul '23

Hi everyone! Here is my status report for June 2023. During the first half of the month, I continued working on the Tor Browser rebase onto Firefox 115. First, I fixed some runtime errors, which involved a quick refactor of some old code from legacy XPCOM components to JS modules. Then, I rebased the various 13.0 branches (Tor Browser, Base Browser, and Mullvad Browser) onto Firefox 115 beta 5. They were approved and merged [0][1][2], but I rebased everything once again onto the first actual release of Firefox 115 [3], which Mozilla will publish tomorrow. I also reviewed the Android parts, which Dan worked on [4][5]. In addition to that, I helped with a couple of minor fixes for the 12.5 stable release [6][7]. Then, in the second half of June, I worked on refactoring the legacy of Torbutton [8]: - Move everything to modules instead of JS run on Firefox's chrome. - Refactor and modernize the code in general to avoid XPCOM unless needed. - Improve the integration with the rest of our patch set. - Remove any direct usage of the control port. It also involved the creation of a new backend for the circuit display. I hope it will also make the Arti integration easier when the time comes. - Survey the functionalities we developers know less about and create documentation to be sure we do not break them in the process (e.g., [9]). I have a branch with many of these changes ready, but I want to improve others more. However, I am waiting to get [3] merged before opening MRs for them. I am happy with how the major yearly rebase has gone so far. We will try to have 13.0a1 (the first alpha of 13.0) already based on 115, even though we still have to do some work on Android. We still have not audited all Mozilla's changes between 102 and 115. However, we have almost three months until the 13.0 release (scheduled around the end of September/beginning of October, when 102 ESR goes EOL). Best, Pier [0] https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser/-/merge_requests… [1] https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser/-/merge_requests… [2] https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/mullvad-browser/-/merge_requ… [3] https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser/-/merge_requests… [4] https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/firefox-android/-/merge_requ… [5] https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/firefox-android/-/merge_requ… [6] https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser/-/merge_requests… [7] https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser/-/issues/41815 [8] https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser/-/issues/40938 [9] https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/team/-/wikis/Enviroment-vari…

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Anti-censorship team meeting notes, 2023-06-29
by meskio 29 Jun '23

29 Jun '23

Hey everyone! Here are our meeting logs: http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2023/tor-meeting.2023-06-22-15.57.html And our meeting pad: Anti-censorship -------------------------------- Next meeting: Thursday, July 6 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 139 <-- hackerncoder, irl, joydeep, meskio, emmapeel working on it * https://pad.riseup.net/p/sponsor139-meeting-pad == Announcements == * rdsys is ignoring the running flag now :) * To hide your bridge's ORPort: ORPort 127.0.0.1:auto AssumeReachable 1 * No meeting July 13 or 20 == Discussion == * do we want to activate renovate bot in snowflake? * conjure and rdsys have being using it for a while * https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… * meskio will enable it * do we want to use the triage bot to warn on stalled issues? * https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/triage-ops/-/blob/main/common/02-stal… * so issues are reminded if they get stalled for too long * meskio will enable it for snowflake and rdsys to try it out * Conjure call for testers: are we done here? can we wrap up? (--gus) https://forum.torproject.org/t/call-for-testers-help-the-tor-project-to-tes… * we can close the call for testers after 28 days * there was a lot of good feedback * now we need to work on reliability and testing it from vantage points * should we cancel this meeting during PETS?? * let's cancel July 13 and 20 meetings * WebTunnel soft release update * https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/community/team/-/issues/94 * https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-relays/2023-June/021224.html * the user support eam will start asking folks to test webtunnel == 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): last updated 2023-06-29 Last weeks: - fixed certificate error in Snowflake and Conjure - https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… - https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/conj… - released snowflake v2.6.0 - https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… - bumped version of Snowflake in Tor Browser - https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser-build/-/issues/4… - fixed a crash in Conjure on Android - https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/conj… - code lint improvements in lox - https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/lox-rs/-/merge_requests/12 - started deployment of lox distributor - https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/lox-rs/-/issues/19 - found and fixed a bug in the parsing of resource diffs from rdsys - https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/lox-rs/-/issues/22 This week: - tidy up and share shadow simulations guide for PTs - Lox tor browser integration - conjure maintenance Needs help with: dcf: 2023-06-29 Last week: - tried an encapsulation.ReadData performance improvement 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 Help with: meskio: 2023-06-29 Last week: - Distribute webtunnel bridges in the HTTPS distributor without enabling IPv6 flag (bridgedb!56) - review what projects are missing license (team#110) - update rdsys grafana dashboard - update rdsys alerts in prometheus (tpa/prometheus-alerts!32) - release and deploy a new version of rdsys - make rdsys take into account the bandwidth ratio (rdsys!135) - triage down why gettor is not updating to TB 12.5 to a bug on TB release (rdsys#166) - update wiki links to gitlab.tpo instead of .onion (rdsys#127) - add a generic metric with resources by their testing status to rdsys (rdsys!134) - ignore the running flag in rdsys (rdsys!134) - build snowflake 2.6.0 docker image Next week: - test i18n support in rdsys (rdsys#11) - finish the migration to git.tpo (team#86) Shelikhoo: 2023-06-29 Last Week: - [Merge Request Awaiting] Add SOCKS5 forward proxy support to snowflake (snowflake!64) (stalled) - [Research] HTTPT Planning https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/http… - Presentation "Call for webtunnel bridges" @ Relay Operator Meetup - Email "(Announcement) WebTunnel, a new pluggable transport for bridges, now available for deployment" to relay operator mailing list. Thanks ggus! - logcollector alert system - ongoing Next Week/TODO: - logcollector alert system <- immediate todo - [Research] WebTunnel planning (Continue) - Try to find a place to host another vantage point - Snowflake Performance Analysis onyinyang: 2023-06-29 Last week: - Finished changing vectors to maps - Started looking into db for Lox structures - Started working on Lox presentation for PETS This week: - fix up indexing of hashmaps for Lox bridgetable - Working on Lox presentation for PETS (to include some details about Tor integration) - Decide between databases to back the Lox structures (poloDB, redb, surrealdb seem like reasonable candidates) If time: - work on syncing Lox with rdsys given https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/rdsys/-/issues/168 - start thinking about metrics to add (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? Itchy Onion: 2023-06-08 Last week: - fixed snowflake pipeline due to outdated Debian image - continue working on rdsys#56 implementation. Still need to do the following: - finish up computing bridge distribution in Kraken - does it have to be deterministic? - does the disproportion have to be strictly followed - finish writing tests - refactor code because some functions are getting extremely long - what to do with stencil package? This week: - review MRs - continue working on rdsys#56 implementation. Still need to do the following: - fixed a problem with vanilla bridges not being added properly to the database - still working on tests - adding a migaration patch (https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/rdsys/-/issues/56#note_29…) hackerncoder: 2023-04-20 last week: - (py-)ooni-exporter torsf (snowflake) - (py-)ooni-exporter web_connectivity Next week: - work on "bridgetester"? - how does Iran block bridges? -- meskio | https://meskio.net/ -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- My contact info: https://meskio.net/crypto.txt -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Nos vamos a Croatan.

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Anti-censorship team meeting notes, 2023-06-22
by Shelikhoo 22 Jun '23

22 Jun '23

Hey everyone! Here are our meeting logs: http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2023/tor-meeting.2023-06-22-15.57.html And our meeting pad: Anti-censorship work meeting pad -------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ THIS IS A PUBLIC PAD ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Anti-censorship -------------------------------- Next meeting: Thursday, June 29 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 139 <-- hackerncoder, irl, joydeep, meskio, emmapeel working on it * https://pad.riseup.net/p/sponsor139-meeting-pad == Announcements == == Discussion == Last week: (June 15th) * Documents for bridge operators about how to run a webtunnel bridge (Updated Jun 15) * https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/webt… * we'll encourage bridge operators to run webtunnel bridges in the next Relay operators meetup (June 24th) * we'll have the documentation of how to run a webtunnel bridge in the README for now and move it in the future to the community portal * shell will prepare a presentation for the relay operators meeting * Conjure user feedback: https://forum.torproject.net/t/call-for-testers-help-the-tor-project-to-tes… * Need help: https://forum.torproject.net/t/call-for-testers-help-the-tor-project-to-tes… This week: (June 22nd) * support non-public ORPort bridges by ignoring the running flag in rdsys * https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/rdsys/-/merge_requests/134 * https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/rdsys/-/issues/154 == 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): last updated 2023-06-15 Last week: - mostly finished reproducible builds of lox client and js bindings - https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser-build/-/merge_re… - debugged and wrote a patch for the cert error on older versions of android - https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… - more work on shadow simulations for snowflake This week: - tidy up and share shadow simulations guide for PTs - Lox tor browser integration - conjure maintenance Needs help with: dcf: 2023-06-22 Last week: - snowflake CDN bookkeeping https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/team/-/wikis/Snowflake-co… - merged the IP_BIND_PORT_NO_ADDRESS patch in snowflake-server https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow…, thanks itchyonion - talked about AV blocking some snowflake proxy connections, apparently triggered by the client_ip parameter 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 Help with: meskio: 2023-06-22 Last week: - work on i18n support in rdsys (rdsys#11) - remove salmon code from rdsys (rdsys!132) - ignore running flag in bridges (rdsys!134) - test a bridge without ORPort reachable and AssumeReachable and see it appearing in the bridge descriptors (rdsis#154) - update S3 existence file only if needed so archive torrent doesn't change (rdsys!133) Next week: - test i18n support in rdsys (rdsys#11) - clean up my issue queue Shelikhoo: 2023-06-22 Last Week: - [Merge Request Awaiting] Add SOCKS5 forward proxy support to snowflake (snowflake!64) (stalled) - [Research] HTTPT Planning https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/http… - webtunnel document for proxy operator(Done!) - Presentation "Call for webtunnel bridges" @ Relay Operator Meetup Next Week/TODO: - logcollector alert system <- immediate todo - [Research] WebTunnel planning (Continue) - Try to find a place to host another vantage point - Snowflake Performance Analysis onyinyang: 2023-06-22 Last week: - First changing the vectors in the bridge_table to maps with lookup by bridge fingerprint This week: - Continuing with changing the vectors to maps and looking into a more reasonable way of storing Lox library data structures: - https://gitlab.torproject.org/onyinyang/lox/-/issues/2 - https://gitlab.torproject.org/onyinyang/lox/-/issues/3 - Working on Lox presentation for PETS (to include some details about Tor integration) If time: - start thinking about metrics to add (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? Itchy Onion: 2023-06-08 Last week: - fixed snowflake pipeline due to outdated Debian image - continue working on rdsys#56 implementation. Still need to do the following: - finish up computing bridge distribution in Kraken - does it have to be deterministic? - does the disproportion have to be strictly followed - finish writing tests - refactor code because some functions are getting extremely long - what to do with stencil package? This week: - review MRs - continue working on rdsys#56 implementation. Still need to do the following: - fixed a problem with vanilla bridges not being added properly to the database - still working on tests - adding a migaration patch (https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/rdsys/-/issues/56#note_29…) hackerncoder: 2023-04-20 last week: - (py-)ooni-exporter torsf (snowflake) - (py-)ooni-exporter web_connectivity Next week: - work on "bridgetester"? - how does Iran block bridges?

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GSoC'23 Project : eRPC (An efficient Relay Partition Checker) (Project Introduction and 3 Weeks Project Report)
by Rishad Baniya 21 Jun '23

21 Jun '23

Hello everyone, I hope you are doing well. My name's Rishad Baniya, a GSoC'23 selected mentee for the project "eRPC (An efficient Relay Partition Checker)", which aims to be a flexible application that checks for relay partitioning. It aims to be very configurable relay partition checker in things such as selecting the relays, controlling the application during runtime, pausing the scanner on demand and resuming it on demand .etc I should've sent this email the day I started working on the project i.e 3 weeks ago, but I totally got distracted from this part, i'm really sorry for that. Currently, I'm writing this email to introduce myself and the project that I'm working on. Project Repo : https://gitlab.torproject.org/rishadbaniya/erpc I've attached a brief report trying to explain how the project structure is and how it's going on currently. It would be great to hear your views on how a partition checking tool should behave, how scanning should be done and what kind of configurable options it should provide. With Regards, Rishad Baniya

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