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minutes from the sysadmin meeting
by Antoine Beaupré 06 Dec '22

06 Dec '22

Here's your monthly microdose of sysadmin news, happy holidays for people that have them... # Roll call: who's there and emergencies the usual fires. anarcat, kez, lavamind present. # Dashboard review Normal per-user check-in: * https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/boards?scope=all&utf8=%E2%9C%93&… * https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/boards?scope=all&utf8=%E2%9C%93&… * https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/boards?scope=all&utf8=%E2%9C%93&… General dashboards: * https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/team/-/boards/117 * https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/web/-/boards * https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/tpa/-/boards # 2023 roadmap discussion Discuss and adopt TPA-RFC-42: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/team/-/wikis/policy/tpa-rfc-42-roadma… https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/team/-/issues/40924 Revised proposal: * do the bookworm upgrades, this includes: * puppet server 7 * puppet agent 7 * plan would be: * Q1-Q2: deploy new machines with bookworm * Q1-Q4: upgrade existing machines to bookworm * email services improvements (TPA-RFC-44 2nd generation) * upgrade Schleuder and Mailman * self-hosting Discourse? * complete the cymru migration (e.g. execute TPA-RFC-40) * retire gitolite/gitweb (e.g. execute TPA-RFC-36) * retire SVN (e.g. execute TPA-RFC-11) * monitoring system overhaul (TPA-RFC-33) * deploy a Puppet CI Meeting on wednesday for the web stuff. Proposal adopted. Worries about our capacity at hosting email, some of the concerns are shared inside the team, but there doesn't seem to be many other options for the scale we're working at. # Holidays confirmation Confirmed people's dates of availability for the holidays. # Next meeting January 9th. # Metrics of the month * hosts in Puppet: 94, LDAP: 94, Prometheus exporters: 163 * number of Apache servers monitored: 31, hits per second: 744 * number of self-hosted nameservers: 6, mail servers: 9 * pending upgrades: 0, reboots: 4 * average load: 0.83, memory available: 4.46 TiB/5.74 TiB, running processes: 745 * disk free/total: 33.12 TiB/92.27 TiB * bytes sent: 404.70 MB/s, received: 230.86 MB/s * planned bullseye upgrades completion date: 2022-11-16, AKA "suspicious completion time in the past, data may be incomplete" * [GitLab tickets][]: 183 tickets including... * open: 0 * icebox: 152 * backlog: 14 * next: 9 * doing: 5 * needs information: 3 * (closed: 2954) [Gitlab tickets]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/team/-/boards Upgrade prediction graph lives at https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/team/-/wikis/howto/upgrades/bullseye/ Now also available as the main Grafana dashboard. Head to <https://grafana.torproject.org/>, change the time period to 30 days, and wait a while for results to render. # Number of the month Three hundred thousand. The number of subscribers to the Tor newsletter (!). -- Antoine Beaupré torproject.org system administration

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HackerNCoder's Monthly Status Report for November 2022
by HackerNCoder 06 Dec '22

06 Dec '22

Hello all! I'm HackerNCoder, and I will be contracting for the Tor Project until May. I am working on anti-censorship, monitoring blocks and getting data about how those blocks work so we can better respond, focused on Iran. Here is my status report for November 2022: Half of my time was spent on onboarding and getting to know what I would be doing. In the other half I worked on two scripts[1] and looked at the OONI api, and worked on a script to monitor new censorship. HackerNCoder [1] https.//gitlab.torproject.org/hackerncoder/torblocks

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Joydeep's Monthly Status Report for November 2022
by Joydeep Sen Gupta 06 Dec '22

06 Dec '22

Hello everyone! Here are my updates from November. Continuing my work with helping users in Iran amidst the heavy censorship[1], I was able to respond to a little over 200 user support requests from Iran. We have established a user feedback loop with the users and constantly monitoring any new developments. In light of the recent changes to the circumvention map of Connection Assist[2] for users in China and Hong Kong, I have been working to get feedback from users in this region. Although I haven't got a ton of user feedback, the most of the users I have interacted with have confirmed of better connectivity confirming the surge in users we have seen on Metrics[3]. In preparation[4] for the next major Tor Browser stable release (Tor Browser 12), I did a alpha testers call during the Tor localization hangout[5] and along with Nina (@nina13) review of all the internal support documentation we maintain. Now, a quick overview of our user support channels: Timeline: 01 - 30 November 2022 # Frontdesk tickets created: 899 tickets resolved: 933 Most frequent tickets by numbers: 1. 70 RT Tickets - Private Bridge requests from China[6] 2. 31 RT Tickets - Circumventing Censorship with Tor in Iran. 3. 30 RT Tickets - How to use a Tor Bridge in Russia[7] 4. 5 RT Tickets - Tor Browser for Android 11.5.9 crashing on launch[8] # Telegram and Signal Support channel (cdr.link) tickets resolved: 536 The other most frequent ticket we received have been about: 1. 198 tickets: Circumventing censorship in Iran. 2. 157 tickets: Circumventing censorship in Russia 3. 17 tickets - Using unlisted obfs4 bridges in China # Tor Forum Most popular topics in the Support category (in terms of no. of views): 1. "Snowflake proxies for Iran"[9] 2. "Cannot visit Reddit through Tor Browser since most recent update?"[10] 3. "Is there a list of blocked websites?"[11] 4. "Cannot Connect Tor Browser"[12] 5. "Big drop in Snowflake traffic"[13] Thanks, -- Joydeep [1]: https://forum.torproject.net/t/iran-circumventing-censorship-with-tor/4590 [2]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/team/-/issues/99 [3]: https://metrics.torproject.org/userstats-bridge-country.html?start=2022-09-… [4]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/community/support/-/issues/40096 [5]: https://community.torproject.org/localization/hangouts/ [6]: https://support.torproject.org/censorship/connecting-from-china/ [7]: https://forum.torproject.net/t/tor-blocked-in-russia-how-to-circumvent-cens… [8]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser/-/issues/41481 [9]: https://forum.torproject.net/t/snowflake-proxies-for-iran/5373/ [10]: https://forum.torproject.net/t/cannot-visit-reddit-through-tor-browser-sinc… [11]: https://forum.torproject.net/t/is-there-a-list-of-blocked-websites/5527/ [12]: https://forum.torproject.net/t/cannot-connect-tor-browser/5588/ [13]: https://forum.torproject.net/t/big-drop-in-snowflake-traffic/5640/

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Nina's Monthly status report for November'22
by Nina 05 Dec '22

05 Dec '22

Hi! This is my status report for November 2022. This month, I successfully resolved 608 tickets. On Telegram (@TorProjectSupportBot) - 506 On RT (frontdesk@tpo) - 102 We still get a lot of requests from Iran; however, in November, I resolved more requests from Russian users. Also, I continue to support Turkmenistan users in accessing the uncensored Internet. Most users' requests are related to connecting to Tor using pluggable transports and troubleshooting. We also got many questions related to the snowflake and running snowflake proxies/installing the snowflake extension. Some requests were related to the issues with the 11.5.9 version of Tor Browser for Android. I also collect users' feedback from different regions to understand what software they use to connect to Tor and what ways of censorship circumvention work better. Anticipating the new 12 version of Tor Browser, @championquizzer and I started to review and refresh the existing support templates/articles and check what needs to be updated. I also found and submitted minor issues and ideas with the @gettor_bot [1] and @getbridgesbot [2]. I helped with Russian translation for a campaign to prepare users for a possible internet shutdown in Kazakhstan related to the presidential elections in the country [3]. [1] https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/gettor-project/OnionSprou… [2] https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/rdsys/-/issues/137 [3] https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/onion-services/onion-support/-/issues/155…

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Rhatto's Monthly Status Report, November 2022
by rhatto 05 Dec '22

05 Dec '22

Hi all :) This is my monthly status report for November 2022 with the main activities I have done during the period. ## 0. The Onion Plan 2022.Q4 release! Since the [Onion Plan session][] at the 2022 Tor Meeting, I started doing a research on existing and new proposals for Onion Services, like human-friendly names, HTTPS certificates and tooling. The research is far from complete, but now it's finally ready for release: * https://tpo.pages.torproject.net/onion-services/onionplan/ * https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/onion-services/onionplan/ I would like to thank Raya for doing the Outreach sections as well as all the people contributing with the discussion! Hopefully this work will continue in 2023 and help setting a roadmap for improving Onion Services usability :) ## 1. Onion Launchpad security analysis I also did a thorough analysis on censorship and security considerations for Onion Launchpad -- an Onion Services landing page --, including an upcoming and optional privacy-preserving page hit metric collection feature: * https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/onion-services/onion-launchpad/-/issues/3… * https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/onion-services/onion-launchpad/-/issues/65 * https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/onion-services/onion-launchpad/-/issues/66 ## 2. Sponsor 123 And, as usual, I've done the regular Sponsor 123 deployments, monitoring, maintenance and development. [Onion Plan session]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/team/-/wikis/202209MeetingOnionPlan -- Silvio Rhatto pronouns he/him

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Marco's Monthly Status Report | November 2022
by msim 05 Dec '22

05 Dec '22

Hi o/ Here's my monthly status report for November 2022. Well, by monthly what I mean to say is since mid November :) - I had to take a short month and a half break since the start of October due to some other commitments, but I've been back since the 14th of November. At the start of my return, my first goal was to migrate my work to get WebRTC building under MinGW to the latest alpha[0]. Then, in some spare time between builds, I started browsing some old tickets and decided to bug 25916, for which I created a merge request for[1], however after discussion it was decided that it would be better to expand the scope of this issue to include all environment variables that could influence sandboxing. After migrating the WebRTC build-related code to the latest alpha, I started getting WebRTC to work. Previously, I used WebRTC samples/tests available online (from both Mozilla and the WebRTC GitHub pages), combined with some debugging tools to assess what was failing. During my short break, however, I was toying around with firefox and learning to test WebRTC with inbuilt tests. And so, to progress on getting WebRTC to work, I will now be using the inbuilt tests and fixing whatever's wrong with those to progress. So far, this has proved incredibly more efficient than my previous approach and has revealed that a handful of tests that were failing were purely related to preferences that we set as defaults. Some metrics as far as WebRTC tests (currently under Linux x86_64 only) go: At the beginning, there were 84779/84833 tests passing (54 failing tests). Currently, there are 91331/91356 tests passing (25 failing, but considerably more being triggered) For December, the main priority is to get all tests passing on linux and at least make decent progress on getting tests passing on Windows. This involves setting up a development environment on windows instead of just a testing environment, as I can't run mach tests without building on the same machine (unless anyone knows how to :) ) All the best! Marco [0]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser/-/merge_requests… [1]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser/-/merge_requests…

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Cecylia's monthly status report, November 2022
by Cecylia Bocovich 02 Dec '22

02 Dec '22

Hi everyone, This is my status report for contract work done in November 2022. # Conjure development I've made some progress on deploying a Tor PT for Conjure[0] in alpha versions of Tor Browser[1], such as: * allowing client args to passed in as SOCKS args https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/conj… * helping the client recover and retry if the phantom connection fails due to high station load https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/conj… * setting up safe log scrubbing at the bridge https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/conj… * setting up a domain front for client registrations https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/conj… There's a little more work to do in getting the domain front set up, but the tor browser integration is ready to submit for review. Test builds are available at https://people.torproject.org/~cohosh/conjure-torbrowser/ # Bridge reputation system This month I started work on integrating a reputation-based bridge distribution system into our ecosystem. The month started with an analysis of the system and integration details of Lox[2], and work on a test integration is underway[3][4][5]. # Snowflake web extension We've had a lot of volunteer contributions to the web extension this month. I reviewed and merged these requests. I also worked on the following: * Finished fixing up localization (thanks emmapeel!) https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… [0] https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/conj… [1] https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/conj… [2] https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/team/-/issues/105 [3] https://gitlab.torproject.org/cohosh/lox-wasm [4] https://gitlab.torproject.org/cohosh/lox-distributor [5] https://gitlab.torproject.org/cohosh/lox-server

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Tor Browser 12.0a5 Released
by Richard Pospesel 01 Dec '22

01 Dec '22

Hi Everyone, Just sent out an announcement email for Tor Browser 12.0a5. This should be the last alpha before 12.0, so we'd really appreciate it if you all took some time to download the update and try out some of the major changes outlined in the blog post: - https://blog.torproject.org/new-alpha-release-tor-browser-120a5/ If you run into any issues with the alpha please open an issue in the tor-browser gitlab ( https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser ) or ping us on IRC. Stay tuned next week for stable. Huge thanks to the applications team for all the great work this year. The changelog between 11.5 and 12.0 is truly going to be something to behold. best, -Richard

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Anti-censorship team meeting notes, 2022-12-01
by meskio 01 Dec '22

01 Dec '22

Hey everyone! Here are our meeting logs: http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2022/tor-meeting.2022-12-01-15.58.html And our meeting pad: Anti-censorship work meeting pad -------------------------------- Next meeting: Thursday Dec 08 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 tickets: https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/issues?scope=all&utf8=%E2%9C%93&… * Sponsor 96 * https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/milestones/24 == Announcements == * == Discussion == * Tor Browser multi-locale * TB 12.0 bundles all locales in the installer, this affect gettor * the release will happen early next week * Reported as offline in metrics, some bridges are online and running https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/team/-/issues/112 * they miss the 'running' flag, something is happening in the bridge authority * (Re)license webtunnel as MIT license: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/webt… * we all agree MIT is a good license of this project * webtunnel is waiting for review from the application team to be included in TB alpha * https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser-build/-/merge_re… * we'll need small changes in the UI so users can request webtunnel bridges or use the default ones == Actions == == Interesting links == * == Reading group == * We will discuss "Measuring DoT/DoH Blocking Using OONI Probe: a Preliminary Study" on Dec 1 * https://www.ndss-symposium.org/ndss-paper/auto-draft-123/ * https://www.ndss-symposium.org/wp-content/uploads/dnspriv21-02-paper.pdf * 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 2022-11-24 Last week: - wrote a fix to make go fmt CI more verbose (snowflake!122) This week: - continue work on conjure client - more work on reputation-based bridge dist - fixup snowflake!108 Needs help with: dcf: 2022-12-01 Last week: Next week: - disable non-WireGuard SSH access to snowflake-02 https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… - migrate goptlib to gitlab https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/team/-/issues/86#note_282… - try Conjure PT development version https://forum.torproject.net/t/tor-dev-introducing-a-conjure-pt-for-tor/4429 - document recent performance optimizations in Snowflake bridge installation guide - make the number of KCP state machines a command-line option https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… Help with: - review of remaining snowflake-server performance improvements - https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… - https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… meskio: 2022-12-01 Last week: - investigate gettor freeze (rdssy#129) - add support for multi-locale Tor Browser in gettor (rdsys#136) - check the number of migrated bridges to the new obfs4 - upload a new version of snowlfake proxy docker image - document the use of ephemeral ports on the docker image (docker-snowflake-proxy!7) - review uTLS fix (snowflake!124) Next week: - add localization support to rdsys Shelikhoo: 2022-12-01 Last Week: - [Merge Request Awaiting] Add SOCKS5 forward proxy support to snowflake (snowflake!64) - [Discussion & Deployment] Rollout of Distributed Snowflake Support - [Coding & Deployment] Proposal: Centralized Probe Result Collector (anti-censorship/team#54) - [Research] HTTPT Planning https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/http… - [Merge Request] Get Webtunnel to build together with tor browser (Continue) - [Merge Request] fix "utls RoundTripper does not work when it is supposed to use HTTP/1" Next Week: - [Research] WebTunnel planning (Continue) - [Coding] More Reliable Raw Log Upload For log collector Itchy Onion: 2022-11-24 Last week: - continue working on snowflake in RACE; it passes one of the integration tests, but fails the second one with heavier load - worked on "Abbreviate `ice` list in bridge lines" (interruptted by RACE test results) This week: - continue working on snowflake in RACE; trying to cut down the number of times snowflake peers establish connection bc it's expensive (right now multiple connections are needed for messages between the same hosts) - review some MRs -- meskio | https://meskio.net/ -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- My contact info: https://meskio.net/crypto.txt -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Nos vamos a Croatan.

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PieroV's Monthly Status Report, November 2022
by Pier Angelo Vendrame 01 Dec '22

01 Dec '22

Hi everyone! Here is my status report for November 2022. At the beginning of the month, I attended the Reproducible Build 2022 Summit in Venice [0]. I discovered a lot of new stuff there, and hopefully, we might apply some to Tor Browser, too. Then, for the rest of the month, I mostly worked on refinements to Tor Browser 12.0 series. One of the most important features I have worked on is improving the experience with the multi-lingual builds. For example, I have implemented a notification to explain to the user why Tor Browser chose that language, with a button to go directly to the language preferences [1]. I have also fixed a few bugs introduced by the tor-launcher refactor [2][3]. I also managed to get yet another patch upstreamed to Firefox [4]. I had another important task, too: reviewing the profile files with our custom Firefox configuration [5]. I removed some old settings, added new ones, and tried to add missing links to our bug tracker for the ones that we already had. I hope this will help us with future documentation and review work. Finally, I helped to prepare some releases and to verify the reproducibility of the ones we released. We should be very close to 12.0 becoming stable: we are very excited about it, and we would love to get any feedback. So, please, consider downloading [6] the fifth alpha of 12.0 (we are publishing it later today) and giving it a test ride 😄️. Thank you very much, Pier [0] https://reproducible-builds.org/events/venice2022/ [1] https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser/-/issues/41378 [2] https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser/-/issues/41436 [3] https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser/-/issues/41429 [4] https://phabricator.services.mozilla.com/D161264 [5] https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser/-/issues/40783 [6] https://www.torproject.org/download/alpha/

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