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Anti-censorship team monthly report: December 2020
by Cecylia Bocovich 14 Jan '21

14 Jan '21

Hi everyone, Here's our monthly report on anti-censorship work: Snowflake --------- * Improved throughput bottlenecks in Snowflake. https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… * Updated webrtc version in Snowflake. https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… Rdsys ----- * Implemented an initial set of prometheus metrics. https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/rdsys/-/issues/14 * Refactored the way rdsys interacts with bridgestrap, so rdsys no longer accumulates goroutines if bridgestrap does not respond. https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/rdsys/-/issues/30 * Spent some time experimenting with a persistence layer for rdsys. More work is necessary though. https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/rdsys/-/issues/5 Bridgestrap ----------- * Implemented more idiomatic prometheus metrics. https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/bridgestrap/-/issues/10 * Finished deploying bridgestrap. https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/bridgestrap/-/issues/5 * Realised that tor's dormant mode breaks bridgestrap and implemented a workaround. https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/bridgestrap/-/issues/12 obfs4proxy ---------- * Dealt with an unexpected failure in obfs4proxy. Microsoft rotated its Azure certificates, which were pinned in obfs4proxy, resulting in obfs4proxy rejecting connections to Azure. That broke both meek-azure and moat in Tor Browser. We updated obfs4proxy's pinned certificates and worked with the Tor Browser team to push out an emergency update. https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/meek… * obfs4proxy has an -unsafeLogging command line switch which didn't actually work. We wrote a patch that makes it work. https://gitlab.com/yawning/obfs4/-/merge_requests/1 Other ----- * Discussed building and integrating a new PT with the creators of Protozoa * Added rdsys as monitoring target to our monit configuration file. * Brainstormed a way to incorporate emma into OONI. https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/emma/-/issues/5

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UX team monthly meeting notes, Jan 12th
by Duncan Larsen-Russell 12 Jan '21

12 Jan '21

Hello! Thanks everyone who made it to the first UX team meeting of the year, and I’m looking forward to seeing you all again in February. Here are the minutes: http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2021/tor-meeting.2021-01-12-13.58.log… <http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2021/tor-meeting.2021-01-12-13.58.log…> Today’s meeting included the presentation of the Community Team Feedback Report for December 2020 by championquizzer, discussion about potential UX improvements to Tor Browser's download page following user feedback, progress on the upcoming Tor Browser usage survey, and finally a review of Tor’s open user research needs which we hope to update in the coming weeks. *** Open IRC meetings happen monthly usually every first Tuesday of the month 1400 UTC in #tor-meeting on OFTC. == User Experience Team Monthly Meeting == Open IRC meetings happen monthly on the first Tuesday of the month at 1400 UTC in #tor-meeting on OFTC. Next meeting will be held on Tuesday 9th February at 1400 UTC in #tor-meeting on OFTC. Here are the minutes for the meeting of January 12th: Log: http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2021/tor-meeting.2021-01-12-13.58.log… <http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2021/tor-meeting.2021-01-12-13.58.log…> Here are the minutes for the meeting of November 10th: Log: http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2020/tor-meeting.2020-11-10-13.58.log… <http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2020/tor-meeting.2020-11-10-13.58.log…> Here are the minutes for the meeting of October 13th: Log: http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2020/tor-meeting.2020-10-13-13.59.log… <http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2020/tor-meeting.2020-10-13-13.59.log…> Here are the minutes for the meeting of September 1st: Log: http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2020/tor-meeting.2020-09-01-13.59.log… <http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2020/tor-meeting.2020-09-01-13.59.log…> -------------------------- Tuesday January 12th 14:00 UTC -------------------------- == What projects are we working on? == S9 - Usability and Community Intervention on Support for Democracy and Human Rights https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/issues?scope=all&utf8=%E2%9C%93&… S30 - Empowering Communities in the Global South to Bypass Censorship https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/issues?scope=all&utf8=%E2%9C%93&… S58 - Tor Browser Security, Performance, & Usability Improvements https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/issues?scope=all&utf8=%E2%9C%93&… S84 - Onion Guides https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/issues?scope=all&utf8=%E2%9C%93&… == Announcements == * Onion Guide Fanzine Published: • https://community.torproject.org/outreach/kit/ <https://community.torproject.org/outreach/kit/>* Tor Browser 10.0.7 Release: • https://blog.torproject.org/new-release-tor-browser-1007 <https://blog.torproject.org/new-release-tor-browser-1007> == Agenda == 1. Community team User Feedback Report for December 2020: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-project/2021-January/003040.html <https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-project/2021-January/003040.html> 3. Tor Browser Usage Survey: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/ux/research/-/issues/11 <https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/ux/research/-/issues/11> 2. Tor's Open User Research needs: https://community.torproject.org/user-research/open/ <https://community.torproject.org/user-research/open/> == Open Call for User Research == - AXIS Feedback Collection - josernitos

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User Feedback Report - December 2020
by Joydeep Sen Gupta 11 Jan '21

11 Jan '21

Hello everyone! This is a report of some of the work done by the Community Team in the past month (December 2020) and general user feedback that we've received across our official support channels. --- Request Tracker --- Tickets Resolved in the past month: ~230 (December 2020) Here is a list of issues which got the most attention (at least 3 tickets on RT): # Tor Browser Breakdown with respect to operating system: Windows (10,8,7 ..all the way upto XP) - 31 MacOS - 21 GNU/Linux - 8 Android - 26 (Note: This includes tickets where the user mentioned the operating system or it was evident from the issue they were running into or enclosed screenshots.) 1. 24 tickets - Failure to launch Tor Browser. We created a "Six-point basic troubleshooting" article (a template) on the RT to help users. 2. 9 tickets - Tabs crashing on Tor Browser running on Apple Silicon (M1) chip on the latest Macbooks. We opened an umbrella ticket [1] covering this issue and also to collect user responses. This ticket also got a mention in Mozilla's bugzilla [2]. 3. 4 tickets - Cannot upload or download files on Tor Browser for Android. Issues with download was fixed with the latest release but issue with uploading files still persists. Here's a GitLab ticket [3]. 4. 4 tickets - Tor Browser for Android not working on older versions of Android (reports for 5.1, 6, 7 and 8). Gus and myself couldn't reproduce this issue on our older Android devices, i.e. running Android 5.1,6 and 7. Feedback - 5. "Can't set Tor Browser as default on Android because urls won't directly open in the browser. Either you have to have Tor Browser running in the background or launch (the browser) and manually paste the url in the url bar." # UI/UX and documentation 1. Lot of discussion around the new UI after the latest releases of Tor Browser for Android. 1.1 On Google Play Store, the responses have been mixed. Mostly negative (with 1-2 star ratings) but the 'top'(most 'liked') responses are positive responses with a 5 star rating. 1.2 On RT, there were 2 tickets related to this topic. Negative reviews. We updated the 'Tor Mobile' documentation [4] in mid-December and have not been receiving any UI related tickets on RT ever since. 2. Complaints about wiki pages on GitLab. "Cannot search for something specific. We miss trac." 3. Some complaints about 'Relay Operators' documentation. We have a ticket on our GitLab covering one aspect of this issue. [5] 4. Some complaints on "verifying Tor Browser signature" documentation. # Anti-censorship and metrics 1. In the aftermath of the Meek-Azure and Moat issue [6] we got 3 private bridge requests on RT and 2 on IRC. 2. In general, including RT and #tor, we got a total of 10 requests for bridges which have been mostly from China (six requests) and Iran (two requests). 3. Users unable to connect to some of the bridges and/or relay statistics not showing up on metrics. We have the following GitLab tickets to cover this issue. [7][8] We created/updated the following articles (templates) on the RT: 1. Six-point basic troubleshooting (to launch Tor Browser) 2. Fake Tor Browser apps on iOS 2. How to help us with Translations 3. Tor Browser Signing Key update 4. Tabs crashing on M1 Macbook # Tor Stack Exchange Unfortunately we haven't been officially providing support here but these are the statistics of what the discussion has been about (10 most active tags): 1.tor-browser-bundle- 1263 questions 2.configuration (questions about configuring Tor software)- 873 questions 3.hidden-services- 546 questions 4.anonymity- 482 questions 5.security- 459 questions 6.relays- 437 questions 7.tails- 315 questions 8.windows- 291 questions 9.exit relays- 279 questions 10.onion-routing- 224 questions If you have any suggestions, questions or want to discuss anything in detail please feel free to reach out to me and the Community Team! Thanks, Joydeep Links: [1]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser/-/issues/40262 [2]: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1682976#c3 [3]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser/-/issues/40283 [4]: https://tb-manual.torproject.org/mobile-tor/ [5]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/web/community/-/issues/72 [6]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/meek… [7]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/community/outreach/-/issues/40001 [8]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/community/support/-/issues/40005 -- Joydeep Sen Gupta GPG: C8C8 6A4B E247 2D2D C345 9046 5B57 1AA7 D685 E67D IRC: championquizzer

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Tails report for December 2020
by sajolida＠pimienta.org 08 Jan '21

08 Jan '21

Tails report for December, 2020 [1] IN MEMORIAM OF KARSTEN LOESING We join the Tor project in mourning Karsten Loesing [2]. Our sincere condolences to Karsten's family and colleagues. Those of us who were lucky enough to cross Karsten's path remember him as a very kind, thoughtful, and smart person. Rest in peace, Karsten. RELEASES * Tails 4.14 was released on December 15 [3]. * Tails 4.15 is scheduled for January 26 [4]. The following changes were introduced in Tails 4.15: * Add support for the Ledger hardware wallets in _Electrum_. (#15353 [5]) * Remove the _Unifont_ font. (!263 [6]) * Fix Additional Software by updating the APT key for deb.torproject.org. (#18042 [7]) * Fix changing the administration password stored in the Persistent Storage. (#18018 [8]) * Fix opening the Persistent Storage of another Tails USB stick in the _Files_ browser. (#18050 [9]) * Restore automatically a _GnuPG_ public keyring from its backup when it gets corrupt. (#17807 [10]) 🎉 NEW CORE DEVELOPER 🎂 Today, we celebrate the arrival in our Foundations Team [11] of a new member: boyska. His skills and experience in operating systems, software development, and collective projects will: * Accelerate development of new features, user experience improvements, and bug fixes. * Make our day-to-day maintenance work more sustainable. This work has no visible impact most of the time, except that Tails is still alive after more than a decade, and here to stay! * Decrease our reliance on a tiny number of key persons. This is one important step we're taking, among others, towards making Tails a healthier project. > I'm boyska, a fellow who always loved computers. When I realized the profound social implications of technology, I tried to make my part: that's how I got involved with free software, security and hacking in general. A post-it note in my brain remembers me that computing should be fun, not scary. Additionally, we would like to thank: * the thousands of people whose donation allowed us to fund this new position Please consider donating today [12] to fight surveillance and censorship. * the dozens of people who applied to this job offer [13] It's been truly heart-warming to see so many great applicants interested in working with us. Welcome, boyska! :) CODE * We implemented a mechanism for adding a "Don't Show Again" button to some notifications. We'll try it out in Tails 4.15 for the warning displayed when starting Tails in a virtual machine; then we'll iterate from there. * We finished porting our Python code to Python 3. Yeah! * We made plans for rewriting _Persistent Storage_ in Python, making it compatible with Wayland, and redesigning its UX from scratch. DOCUMENTATION AND WEBSITE * Started rewriting /doc/about/warning: * Samuel DiBella rewrote the section about contextual identities [14] (#17882 [15]) * We rewrote the sections about confirmation attacks and global adversaries [16] (#17869 [17]) * Added an FAQ about "Is it safe to use an older version of Tails? [18]" (#18001 [19]) * Improved our security [20] page and replaced "hole" by "vulnerability" everywhere on our website, as per our style guide. (#18032 [21]) USER EXPERIENCE * Started analyzing the search queries on our website, following a methodology by Susan Farrell [22]. (#11649 [23]) * Started preparing the redesign of the Persistent Storage that we'll work on in January. (#15572 [24]) * Investigated what it would take to stop distributing ISO images: * #18047 [25]: Users unintentionally install ISO to USB instead of the .img * #18054 [26]: Distribute USB images by default for all virtual machines * #18055 [27]: Stop distributing ISO images * Added some depth to the buttons on our website. (#15111 [28]) FUNDING GRANTS * Our proposal to the UXFund to work on a replacement for Tor Launcher was approved buy scaled down by 20%. DONATIONS * Received 57.8kEUR from 88 donations at CCT since the beginning of the campaign. It's 70% more donations, that's the important part, and 599% more money thanks to a 50kEUR donation from some crypto trading company, that's the big cherry on top of the cake! * Blogged about our achievements in 2020 [29]. SPONSORS * Renamed "partners" as "sponsors [30]" after DeepOnion listed Tails as their partner on their website. The word "partners" implies reciprocity and a deeper relationship, while the word "sponsor" doesn't and is more accurate, honest, and common. * Got invited to the Lifetime Raffle [31] of ProtonMail. OUTREACH PAST EVENTS * Tails and Tor were presented (among other tools) to journalism students at Sciences Po Rennes [32] (Rennes, France) as part of their digital safety lessons. TRANSLATIONS ALL THE WEBSITE * fr: 79% (5378) strings translated, 7% strings fuzzy * es: 48% (3273) strings translated, 6% strings fuzzy * it: 28% (1945) strings translated, 9% strings fuzzy * de: 27% (1829) strings translated, 14% strings fuzzy * fa: 20% (1359) strings translated, 12% strings fuzzy * pt: 18% (1266) strings translated, 9% strings fuzzy CORE PAGES OF THE WEBSITE [33] * es: 82% (1741) strings translated, 6% strings fuzzy * fr: 79% (1676) strings translated, 10% strings fuzzy * it: 54% (1151) strings translated, 20% strings fuzzy * de: 44% (935) strings translated, 24% strings fuzzy * pt: 38% (818) strings translated, 14% strings fuzzy * fa: 19% (407) strings translated, 15% strings fuzzy CORE PAGES OF THE WEBSITE FOR LANGUAGES NOT ACTIVATED ON THE WEBSITE YET * zh_TW: 21% (451) strings translated, 14% strings fuzzy * zh: 10% (218) strings translated, 8% strings fuzzy * tr: 7% (155) strings translated, 7% strings fuzzy * ca: 7% (153) strings translated, 8% strings fuzzy * ru: 7% (152) strings translated, 7% strings fuzzy * pl: 7% (150) strings translated, 6% strings fuzzy * ar: 7% (146) strings translated, 8% strings fuzzy * id: 5% (115) strings translated, 5% strings fuzzy * sr_Latn: 4% (93) strings translated, 4% strings fuzzy METRICS * Tails has been started more than 978 192 times this month. This makes 31 554 boots a day on average. How do we know this? [34] Links: ------ [1] file:///home/amnesia/Persistent/Tor%20Browser/master/news/report_2020_12.html [2] https://blog.torproject.org/in-memoriam-of-karsten-loesing [3] file:///home/amnesia/Persistent/Tor%20Browser/master/news/version_4.14.html [4] file:///home/amnesia/Persistent/Tor%20Browser/master/contribute/calendar.html [5] https://gitlab.tails.boum.org/tails/tails/-/issues/15353 [6] https://gitlab.tails.boum.org/tails/tails/-/merge_requests/263 [7] https://gitlab.tails.boum.org/tails/tails/-/issues/18042 [8] https://gitlab.tails.boum.org/tails/tails/-/issues/18018 [9] https://gitlab.tails.boum.org/tails/tails/-/issues/18050 [10] https://gitlab.tails.boum.org/tails/tails/-/issues/17807 [11] file:///home/amnesia/Persistent/Tor%20Browser/master/contribute/working_together/roles/foundations_team.html [12] file:///home/amnesia/Persistent/Tor%20Browser/master/donate.html [13] file:///home/amnesia/Persistent/Tor%20Browser/master/jobs/Linux_generalist.html [14] file:///home/amnesia/Persistent/Tor%20Browser/master/doc/about/warning.html#identities [15] https://gitlab.tails.boum.org/tails/tails/-/issues/17882 [16] file:///home/amnesia/Persistent/Tor%20Browser/master/doc/about/warning.html#correlation [17] https://gitlab.tails.boum.org/tails/tails/-/issues/17869 [18] file:///home/amnesia/Persistent/Tor%20Browser/master/support/faq.html#older-version [19] https://gitlab.tails.boum.org/tails/tails/-/issues/18001 [20] file:///home/amnesia/Persistent/Tor%20Browser/master/security.html [21] https://gitlab.tails.boum.org/tails/tails/-/issues/18032 [22] https://www.nngroup.com/articles/search-log-analysis/ [23] https://gitlab.tails.boum.org/tails/tails/-/issues/11649 [24] https://gitlab.tails.boum.org/tails/tails/-/issues/15572 [25] https://gitlab.tails.boum.org/tails/tails/-/issues/18047 [26] https://gitlab.tails.boum.org/tails/tails/-/issues/18054 [27] https://gitlab.tails.boum.org/tails/tails/-/issues/18055 [28] https://gitlab.tails.boum.org/tails/tails/-/issues/15111 [29] file:///home/amnesia/Persistent/Tor%20Browser/master/news/achievements_in_2020.html [30] file:///home/amnesia/Persistent/Tor%20Browser/master/sponsors.html [31] https://protonmail.com/blog/lifetime-account-auction-2020/ [32] http://www.sciencespo-rennes.fr/en/ [33] file:///home/amnesia/Persistent/Tor%20Browser/master/contribute/l10n_tricks/core_po_files.txt [34] file:///home/amnesia/Persistent/Tor%20Browser/master/support/faq.html#boot-statistics

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UX team meeting on January 12th
by Duncan Larsen-Russell 07 Jan '21

07 Jan '21

Hello & happy new year everyone! Our first User Experience team meeting of the year will be held on Tuesday 12th January at 1400 UTC in #tor-meeting.* During this meeting we'll discuss upcoming work for the UX team across key projects, in addition to hosting an open call for user research, during which we’ll outline ways in which community members can help contribute towards user research for Tor. If you'd like to get involved please feel free to add yourself to the pad: https://pad.riseup.net/p/1D8sK8Zy74b_0qclC97I-ux-team-monthly-2020-keep <https://pad.riseup.net/p/1D8sK8Zy74b_0qclC97I-ux-team-monthly-2020-keep> Remember, User Experience team meetings are an open space for discussion around ethical user research, user interface design, and user experience, meanwhile building privacy-enhancing products. See you soon! Duncan [*] https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/ux/team/-/wikis/home <https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/ux/team/-/wikis/home>

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Anti-censorship meeting notes, 07 January 2021
by Cecylia Bocovich 07 Jan '21

07 Jan '21

Happy new year! Here are our meeting notes: http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2021/tor-meeting.2021-01-07-15.58.html and our meeting pad: Anti-censorship work meeting pad -------------------------------- Next meeting: Thursday January 7th 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 checkin about the status of anti-censorship work at Tor. Coordinate collaboration between people/teams on anti-censorship at Tor. == 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 30 https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/milestones/4 https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/milestones/7 https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/milestones/5 https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/milestones/6 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&… Anti-censorship related tickets that we want other teams to fix: https://pad.riseup.net/p/tor-anti-censorship-tickets-keep <-- it will be moved into gitlab with TPO labels <-- do we still need this? The label is 'for anticensorship team' Public bug-reporting pad: https://pad.riseup.net/p/tor-anti-censorship-bugs-keep == Announcements == Cure53 is engaged by the Berkeley Counter-Power Lab to do a security audit of Turbo Tunnel in Snowflake. dcf has advised them to correspond on the anti-censorship-team list if possible. == Discussion == https://www.reddit.com/r/TOR/comments/kj7git/is_bamsoftwarecom_related_to_t… Malwarebytes apparently blocks snowflake.bamsoftware.com and snowflake-broker.bamsoftware.com. But this should not have happened since https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… (webext-0.0.6), which changed *.bamsoftware.com to *.freehaven.net? https://gitweb.torproject.org/pluggable-transports/snowflake.git/commit/?id… How did this user get a copy of the browser extension that still contacts these old domains? Pick a reading for the next reading group discussion == Actions == December 2020 monthly report: https://pad.riseup.net/p/mh4PvdOzncZlcxwHGROn == Interesting links == GitHub is now available in Iran: https://github.blog/2021-01-05-advancing-developer-freedom-github-is-fully-… == Reading group == We will discuss "Early Detection of Censorship Events with Psiphon Network Data" on Jan 21, 2021. https://tics.site/proceedings/2019a/icn_2019_7_10_38005.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. phw: This week (2020-01-07): Filled out TPA survey. Figured out root cause of bridgestrap's dormant mode issue. https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/bridgestrap/-/issues/12 Improved queuing mechanism of rdsys's interaction with bridgestrap. Filed issue to incorporate emma into OONI. https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/emma/-/issues/5 Filed monit issue to watch out for future obfs4proxy problems. https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/monit-configuration/-/iss… Found and fixed race condition in bridgestrap's cache implementation. Next week: Progress on Salmon's privacy improvements. Brainstorm a way to do censorship measurement for Salmon. Help with: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/bridgestrap/-/merge_reque… cecylia (cohosh): last updated 2020-01-07 Last 2-3 weeks: - mostly afk - updated version of pion webrtc to 3.0.0 (snowflake#40027) This week: - cleaned up a simple script for comparing the performance of two versions of snowflake: https://gitlab.torproject.org/-/snippets/69 This week: - continued work on snowflake overhead performance, and stacking reliable protocols Needs help with: - review of snowflake!25 (closes snowflake#40027) arlolra: 2020-10-29 Last week: - Next week: - getting back up to speed - follow ups to #33365 - start on #31201 Help with: - dcf: 2021-01-07 Last week: - Azure bookkeeping Next week: - make a ticket to change {snowflake,snowflake-broker}.freehaven.net into CNAMES of the corresponding torproject.net domains, not bamsoftware.com - review pion v3 upgrade https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… Help with: Antonela: 2020-08-27 This week: agix:2021-01-07 Last week: -Research on httpt #4 Next week: -Finish rdsys #6 Help with: - hanneloresx: 2020-10-22 Last week: - Took break to focus on work Next week: - #32117: Look at CAPTCHA success rate for users from the US across different types of bridges Help with: - HashikD: 2020-11-19 This week: - Next week: - Help with: -

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OONI Monthly Report: December 2020
by Maria Xynou 06 Jan '21

06 Jan '21

Hello, Happy New Year! Hope 2021 brings more good health and joy to all. Throughout December 2020, the OONI team worked on the following sprints: * Sprint 27 - Hexacorallia (December 1 - 6, 2020) * Sprint 28 - Corallimorpharia (December 7 - 19, 2020) * Sprint 29 - Dogfish shark (December 20 - 31, 2020) Our work can be tracked through the various OONI GitHub repositories: https://github.com/ooni Highlights are shared in this report below. ## Year in Review: OONI in 2020 Every year we summarize what the OONI team did through our annual “Year in Review” posts. At the end of December 2020, we published “Year in Review: OONI in 2020”, which shares OONI highlights from 2020, as well as upcoming OONI projects for 2021. In this post, we also highlight accomplishments from the OONI community in 2020. This post is available here: https://ooni.org/post/ooni-in-2020/ ## OONI Probe Mobile ### Released OONI Probe Mobile 2.8.0 We released OONI Probe Mobile 2.8.0 for: * Android: https://github.com/ooni/probe-android/releases/tag/v2.8.0 * iOS: https://github.com/ooni/probe-ios/releases/tag/v2.8.0 On Android, OONI Probe tests are run as Android services, where a notification of test progress is displayed. On both Android and iOS, the latest release enables users to free up space by deleting old measurement files in the app settings, and the OONI Probe measurement engine has been updated to v0.21.0. ### Other OONI Probe Mobile improvements Throughout December 2020, we also worked on the following: * Ensured we removed unused probe-engine settings: https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/1307 * Ensured that tapping on notifications doesn't open OONI Run or the app: https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/1307 * Fixed the unit tests on iOS * Changed the modal options for requesting push notification permission: https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/1306 * Added support for interrupting OONI Probe tests when the user’s connectivity changes: https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/1296 * Carried out some research on potentially disabling battery optimization: https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/1301 * Made some progress on implementing the check-in API: https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/1299 ## OONI Probe Desktop Throughout December 2020, we worked on the following: * Integrated the “Choose websites” function into the OONI Probe CLI (so that it can be supported on OONI Probe Desktop): https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/1283 * Implemented an MVP for automated OONI Probe testing on Windows: https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/1053 * Explored whether it’s possible to shed privileges or run with reduced privileges on Windows during automated testing: https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/1300 * Added support for max_runtime to OONI Probe desktop: https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/1280 * Started implementing a new dashboard to align with the look and feel of OONI Probe Mobile: https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/1274 ### Updating OONI Probe macOS homebrew package We made considerable progress on updating the OONI Probe macOS homebrew package with the OONI Probe Command Line Interface (CLI), as documented through this ticket: https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/1289 ## OONI Probe Engine In early December 2020, we completed a series of routine OONI Probe engine releases (in support of the OONI Probe Mobile 2.8.0 release), as documented through this ticket: https://github.com/ooni/probe-engine/issues/1043 ## Building Debian package for OONI Probe We further improved upon the new Debian package for OONI Probe: https://github.com/ooni/probe-cli/pull/162 We now have an OONI Probe Debian package that can be installed and run in the background: https://github.com/ooni/backend/issues/452 ## Expanding OONI Probe measurement methodologies As part of our ongoing efforts to improve upon and expand our measurement methodologies, we: * Reviewed the new HTTP/3 experiment (contributed by a community members) for quality assurance, as documented through this ticket: https://github.com/ooni/probe-engine/issues/1057 (this is an ongoing task) * Carried out research and encrypted DNS experiments: https://github.com/ooni/probe-engine/issues/900 ## Wrote paper on measuring DoT/DoH blocking using OONI Probe During the last weeks of December 2020, OONI’s Simone wrote an academic paper on measuring DoT/DoH blocking through the use of OONI Probe experiments. This paper describes DNScheck (an active network experiment for the detection of DoT/DoH blocking), which we implemented into OONI Probe. We compiled a list of popular DoT/DoH services and ran DNSCheck measurements with the help of volunteer OONI Probe users. Our paper presents preliminary measurement findings from Kazakhstan (AS48716), Iran (AS197207), and China (AS45090). We have submitted this paper to the DNS Privacy Workshop 2021: https://www.ndss-symposium.org/ndss2021/cfp-dns-privacy-workshop/ ## OONI Explorer In December 2020, we worked on refactoring the OONI Explorer search page to run only on the client side: https://github.com/ooni/explorer/issues/413 We have built a measurement aggregation toolkit, a generic web-based tool that can help with creating useful visualizations with aggregated measurement data from the API. It is currently deployed in the experimental section of OONI Explorer: https://explorer.ooni.org/experimental/mat Throughout December 2020, we made a series of improvements to our measurement aggregation toolkit, as documented here: https://github.com/ooni/explorer/issues/528 Progress on future work to improve it is documented here: https://github.com/ooni/explorer/issues/536 ## OONI backend Throughout December 2020, we worked on the following backend activities: * Switched orchestrate traffic to test-list/urls to API: https://github.com/ooni/backend/issues/478 * Investigated MIA route flapping * Investigated AMS connectivity issues * Monitored the dashboard reactive test-list * Deployed persistent journald * Fixed the measurement_forwarder ## Published new OONI Partners page We published a new page on the OONI website which features all of our partners, highlights their work, links to their websites, and shares some of the research reports and projects that we have collaborated on. The new OONI Partners page is available here: https://ooni.org/partners ## Creating a new Donate page for the OONI website We steadily made progress on creating a new Donate page for the OONI website. This involved: * Relevant frontend development: https://github.com/ooni/ooni.org/pull/723 * Writing the copy for the new page: https://github.com/ooni/ooni.org/issues/713 We also: * Wrote copy for OONI’s new Open Collective account: https://github.com/ooni/ooni.org/issues/704 * Edited the copy on OONI’s GitHub Sponsors page: https://github.com/ooni/ooni.org/issues/722 ## Collaboration with Netalitica on test lists We continued to collaborate with Netalitica researchers, who did excellent work updating more Citizen Lab test lists. Throughout December 2020, we reviewed (and shared feedback on) Netalitica updates to the following test lists: * Zimbabwe: https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists/pull/701 * Algeria: https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists/pull/702 * Colombia: https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists/pull/707 * Ethiopia: https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists/pull/708 * Lebanon: https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists/pull/709 We also updated the following test lists (in collaboration with community members): * Global & Nigerian: https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists/pull/694 * Global: https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists/pull/696 and https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists/pull/700 * Cuban: https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists/pull/698 * Nigerian: https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists/pull/699 ## Community use of OONI data ### Amnesty Malaysia: Unsilenced Amnesty Malaysia launched a campaign, called Unsilenced, which aims to fight censorship and defend freedom of expression in Malaysia. This campaign is available here: https://unsilenced.amnesty.my/ Among the resources listed on the Unsilenced site are the OONI website and OONI measurements collected from Malaysia (linking to the Malaysian page on OONI Explorer). ## Community activities ### Internet Shutdown Measurement Training Group Presentations Between 12th October 2020 to 19th November 2020, we helped lead Internews’ 6-week Internet Shutdown Measurement Training for human rights defenders in Sub-Saharan Africa. Throughout this training program, participants were asked to work in groups to develop relevant research and advocacy projects, which we supported through mentorship. On 1st December 2020, the training participants presented their research and advocacy projects. Leading up to these presentations, we supported training participants by reviewing their presentations and sharing feedback. ### Workshop: Building capacity for internet shutdown advocacy On 15th December 2020, OONI’s Maria attended Internews’ workshop, “Building capacity for internet shutdown advocacy: Community needs assessment”, where she facilitated the discussion on community needs around censorship measurement data. Information about the workshop is available here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/building-capacity-for-internet-shutdown-advoca… ## Userbase In December 2020, 3,834,624 OONI Probe measurements were collected from 4,443 networks in 191 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. -- Maria Xynou Research & Partnerships Director Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) https://ooni.org/ PGP Key Fingerprint: 2DC8 AFB6 CA11 B552 1081 FBDE 2131 B3BE 70CA 417E

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reminder: trac.torproject.org retires in two days
by Antoine Beaupré 29 Dec '20

29 Dec '20

Hi, This is just a quick heads up to remind everyone that our dear old Trac instance, https://trac.torproject.org/ is retiring in two days, on December 9th, as announced 6 months ago[1]. [1]: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-project/2020-June/002866.html Around that time, Trac was put in "read-only mode", in that no changes were allowed through the web interface whatsoever. We have heard approximately zero complaints about the change: while some people have concerns about GitLab and lots of things could be improved there, it seems no one is actually missing poor old Trac. As much of the Trac content as possible was migrated into GitLab. An integral copy of the [Trac wiki] and [Trac issues] will be kept as is in GitLab. Most of those issues were migrated to their own projects, and lots of the wiki content was spread out to different, team-specific wikis (which makes the content a bit hard to find, see [issue 66] for details on that). [Trac wiki]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/legacy/trac/-/wikis/home [Trac issues]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/legacy/trac/-/issues [issue 66]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/gitlab/-/issues/66 Trac was also thoroughly archived on the Wayback machine[2] for those cases where you really only know how to find something by looking at it "the Trac way". This should also salvage some pages that do not get rendered quite right in the GitLab migration, which happens. [2]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/team/-/issues/40003 The plan, right now, is to redirect the Wiki and issue URLs into GitLab's relevant legacy project, and everything else to the GitLab front page. (It is considered bad practice to hotwire old sites into the wayback machine: we prefer to refer to live data instead, even though that old data is still available.) The actual virtual machine where Trac is hosted will be destroyed 30 days after the redirections are in place, as an exceptional measure considering the service Trac has given us over the years. Absolutely do tell us if you feel there is some critical data that would be lost when that happens, something that was not correctly migrated to Gitlab *and* would not be available through the Wayback machine. Further progress updates on the life and tribulation of troodi, the machine that hosted trac.torproject.org all those years, will only be posted in this ticket: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/team/-/issues/34373 ## Post-scriptum: history People might also be interested in the history of bug trackers at the Tor project: * lost in the mists of time: migration from Bugzilla to Flyspray (40 tickets) * 2010-04-23: [migration from Flyspray to Trac completed][] (last Flyspray ticket is [1393][], first Trac ticket is [2000][]) * 2016-11-29: [first request to setup a GitLab server][] * ~2017: oniongit.eu (warning: squatted domain) deployed to test GitLab with the network team, considered as gitlab.torproject.net but ultimately [abandoned][] * 2019-02-28: `gitlab-01` AKA dip.torproject.org test server setup ([issue 29400][]), following the [Brussels meeting][] * 2019-07-17: GitLab discussed again at the [Stockholm meeting][] * 2019-07-29: Formal proposal to deploy GitLab [sent to tor-project][], no objection * 2020-03-05: GitLab migrated from `gitlab-01` (AKA "dip") to `gitlab-02` using the Omnibus package * 2020-04-27: `gitlab-01` retired * 2020-06-13 19:00UTC: [Trac readonly][] * 2020-06-13 02:25UTC: Trac tickets migrated (32401 tickets, last ticket id is [34451][], first GitLab legacy project ticket id is 40000) * 2020-06-14 21:22UTC: Trac wiki migrated * 2020-06-15 18:30UTC: bugs.torproject.org redirects to gitlab * 2020-06-16 02:15UTC: GitLab launch announced to tor-internal * 2020-06-17 12:33UTC: Archivebot starts crawling all tickets of, and the entire Trac website * 2020-06-23: Archivebot completes the full Trac crawl, Trac is fully archived on the Internet Archive Coming up next: * 2020-09-09: Trac redirects to GitLab * 2021-01-09: Trac server, troodi, destroyed [migration from Flyspray to Trac completed]: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2010-April/000183.html [1393]: https://bugs.torproject.org/1393 [2000]: https://bugs.torproject.org/2000 [first request to setup a GitLab server]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/services/-/issues/20821 [abandoned]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/services/-/issues/21840 [issue 29400]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/services/-/issues/29400 [Brussels meeting]: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/meetings/2019BrusselsAdmi… [Stockholm meeting]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/legacy/trac/-/wikis/org/meetings/2019Stockhol… [sent to tor-project]: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-project/2019-July/002407.html [Trac readonly]: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-project/2020-June/002872.html [34451]: https://bugs.torproject.org/34451 A. -- Antoine Beaupré torproject.org system administration

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(FWD) Research assistant position on Tor and Lightweight Cryptography
by Roger Dingledine 29 Dec '20

29 Dec '20

Forwarding on behalf of Tariq. We helped them get some funding to do research work on the intersection of Tor and IoT, and here is one of those spots. (Ok, reading the page in more detail, maybe it's more like the union of Tor and IoT, not the intersection. :) I asked him for clarification around timing and citizenship, and he said "We are flexible in the dates. Also the person just needs the right to work in the UK, but does not need to be a UK citizen." --Roger ----- Forwarded message from Tariq Elahi <t.elahi(a)ed.ac.uk> ----- Date: Thu, 10 Dec 2020 16:50:06 +0000 From: Tariq Elahi <t.elahi(a)ed.ac.uk> To: Roger Dingledine <arma(a)torproject.org> Cc: Vesselin Velichkov <vvelichk(a)staffmail.ed.ac.uk> Subject: Research assistant position for Tor and LWC Hi Roger, I hope you are well. As you know we were successful in our bid for the REPHRAIN centre and are now in the process of hiring fine researchers and implementers to join our projects. I am writing about a joint project with my colleague at Edinburgh Vesselin Velichkov (a crypto analyst) and myself. I was wondering if you would mind spreading the word around your network for a 6 month Research Assistant/Post-doctoral researcher position. Maybe you already know of someone, so any leads out be greatly appreciated. In short, the project is about implementing and evaluating various light weight crypto algorithms on embedded platforms. The project seeks to investigate the viability and directions for embedding PETS like Tor and mixnets to networks of IoT-class devices. The start date is early January, but we have some slight flexibility there. Remote work is possible, but a UK bank account is necessary. More information can be found here: https://www.rephrain.ac.uk/preserve/ Thanks for you help in advance. Best wishes, Tariq -- The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in Scotland, with registration number SC005336. ----- End forwarded message -----

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Tails report for November 2020
by intrigeri 18 Dec '20

18 Dec '20

Hi, The Tails report for November 2020 is out: https://tails.boum.org/news/report_2020_11/ Cheers!

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