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Tor's Bug Smash Fund: Fundraising Campaign
by Al Smith 17 Sep '20

17 Sep '20

Hello Tor! Today, the Tor Project is launching our second annual Bug Smash Fund,[1] a month-long fundraising campaign (7/31 - 8/31). The goal of the Bug Smash Fund campaign is to raise unrestricted funds that we allocate to finding and fixing bugs / doing maintenance / and addressing issues that aren’t flashy or exciting for most funders, but totally necessary for the health of Tor and all of the third party apps that rely on Tor to provide privacy, security, and anonymity to their users. Unrestricted funding, like what we’re raising for the Bug Smash Fund, is key for the Tor Project to improve our agility and stop relying on the slow, piecemeal process of grant funding in order to accomplish our goals and respond to emergent issues. Last year during our first Bug Smash Fund campaign, we raised $86,081 that we used to close 74 tickets.[2] In 2019, we were able to allocate all of the donations we raised in-person at DEF CON to the Bug Smash Fund. That was about $40,000. As we all know, this year is different, and it will be a big stretch to meet or exceed the amount we raised last year without this event. So your help to amplify this campaign could really help make this campaign a success. How to help: -- Tweet about the Bug Smash Fund using the #TorBugSmash and a link to our launch blog post. Here are some suggested posts.[3] -- Quote tweet @torproject posts about the Bug Smash Fund with your own take about why unrestricted funds are so important for the health of Tor. -- Forward this email to those who might be able to amplify the campaign. Activities in August to support the Bug Smash Fund campaign: -- Hosting a second PrivChat event featuring stories about smashing bugs in software development on (date tbd) -- Sharing regularly on social media and engaging our friends to amplify the campaign -- Sending two emails to previous donors who have not made a donation in the last 90 days -- Promoting a new cryptocurrency campaign on Blockchair: https://blockchair.com/donut/tor-project If you have any questions about or ideas for the Bug Smash Fund campaign, please email me or Isabela or grants(a)torproject.org, we would be happy to talk about it. Happy Friday, Al [1] https://blog.torproject.org/tor-bug-smash-fund-2020 [2] https://blog.torproject.org/tor-bug-smash-fund-2019-final-update [3] https://pad.riseup.net/p/OiWVPFGPw7I9vnX7MnN2 -- Al Smith (they/them) Fundraising • Communications The Tor Project

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Anti-censorship meeting notes, 17 Sep 2020
by Philipp Winter 17 Sep '20

17 Sep '20

Hi all, Here are our meeting minutes: http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2020/tor-meeting.2020-09-17-15.59.html And here is our meeting pad: Anti-censorship work meeting pad -------------------------------- Next meeting: Thursday September 17th 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 * Public bug-reporting pad: * https://pad.riseup.net/p/tor-anti-censorship-bugs-keep == Announcements == * Our GitLab instance now supports open registration. * (As an experiment, for now.) * No anti-censorship meeting next week, on Sep 24. == Discussion == * == Actions == * == Interesting links == * == Reading group == * We will discuss "Triplet Censors: Demystifying Great Firewall's DNS Censorship Behavior" on 2020-10-01 * https://www.usenix.org/conference/foci20/presentation/anonymous * 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 (2020-09-17): * Turned last week's reading group discussion into GitLab issues: * https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/http… * Proposed and implemented a "registration API" that HTTPT and other proxies can use to register themselves with rdsys: * https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/rdsys/-/issues/4 * Started updating GetTor links after somebody pointed out that its Tor Browser copies are outdated. * Dealt with my hosting provider because their SMTP server would reject monit's email as spam. It's fixed now. * Recorded 10-minute overview of Tor's anti-censorship efforts for University of Michigan class. * Plenty of rdsys work. * Made Salmon distributor work with HTTP streaming interface. * Simplified data structures and added unit tests. * Started working on technical blog post that talks about rdsys's design and implementation. * Experimented with integrating Google's reCAPTCHA. Seems difficult to proxy requests so that Google doesn't see client IP addresses :( Next week: * Help with: * https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/trac/-/issues/31874 * https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/bridgedb/-/issues/31871 * https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/rdsys/-/issues/4 cecylia (cohosh): last updated 2020-08-27 Last week: - deployed snowflake#40008 - started snowflake measurements in china to track performance and censorship attempts (snowflake#32657) - continuous monitoring of NAT situation - prep for being away next month - meeting with tunnel bear This week: - Away Needs help with: - still need a review of fix for snowflake#21314 (snowflake!9) juggy : This week: - Got very basic "suggested readings" list up and running here : https://jugheadjones10.github.io/anti-censorship-reading/ Next week: - Keep studying BridgeDB to write architectural overview Help with: - Open issues here (https://github.com/jugheadjones10/anti-censorship-reading ) for papers/resources/readings that you think might be useful for newcomers arlolra: 2020-06-11 Last week: - Next week: - follow ups to #33365 - start on #31201 Help with: - dcf: 2020-09-17 Last week: Next week: Help with: Antonela: 2020-08-27 This week: - Wrapping Babatunde's research on the use of circumvention tools during internet censorship in Africa. Wrapping Personas for s30 with it. For september: - We are planning interviews with users in China to run our bridges discovery issues script in real time. We discussed to include TBA + snowflake as a task for users to run over a week or two and report back. https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/ux/research/-/issues/4 - I still have bridges.tpo to lektor issue open - More work on UX/UI for TB 10.0/10.5 - Review Salmon related tickets (im late with it!) agix:2020-09-17 Last week: -Nothing to add for last week Next week: -Finish #34318 -Look into #31873 -Get familiar with Go and start to work on rdsys issue #5 Help with: - hanneloresx: 2020-09-17 Last week: - Start on #33727 - Continue investigating and respond to comments on #32117 Next week: - Continue last week's work. Help with: - thymbahutymba: 2020-04-02 Last week: - CI/CD pipeline for multiarch docker images, which has a problem with the apt tor version even though the apt repository have been changed into the Dockerfile. Next week: Help with: HashikD: 2020-08-27 This week: - GSoC blog Next week: - Away on exams Help with: -

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Metrics Meeting September 17th 2020 - Next one will be in November
by Gaba 17 Sep '20

17 Sep '20

Hi! We had the last metrics meeting until November 5th. Remember that you can send a mail to metrics-team(a)lists.torproject.org if there is anything metrics related that needs to be discussed. Meeting pad for 2020: http://kfahv6wfkbezjyg4r6mlhpmieydbebr5vkok5r34ya464gqz6c44bnyd.onion/p/tor… Content of the pad: **************************************************************************************** This pad is shared publicly. **************************************************************************************** Public pad URL is: https://pad.riseup.net/p/tor-metricsteam-2020.1-keep Weekly meetings, every Thursday at 15 UTC, in #tor-meeting at OFTC (channel is logged while meetings are in progress). Links: Metrics Team wiki page: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/metrics/team OnionPerf board: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/metrics/onionperf/-/boards OnionPerf milestone: https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/metrics/-/milestones/1 All Metrics Roadmap: https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/metrics/-/boards Next meeting: Thursday, November 5th , 15 UTC ----------------------------------------------------- Agenda Thursday, September 17th, 15 UTC ----------------------------------------------------- OnionPerf development wrapping (freezing for the next 2 months) karsten tags 0.8 this evening, unless somebody raises concerns very soon. karsten continues uploading tarballs, updates the wiki (documentation overview, table of and instructions for long-running instances), and updates the link on m-web. acute thinks about alternatives for onionperf.torproject.org and updates the issue accordingly. Funding proposal for next OnionPerf phase (link in the mail that was sent). OnionPerf Deployment Architecture: https://people.torproject.org/~gaba/onionperf-architecture-1.pdf Objective 1: Diversify the demographics of our data O1.1 Decide on regions, set up instances (manually at first, automatically later) O1.2 Evaluate measurement data using a big PostgreSQL database Objective 2: Automate setup of OnionPerf instances. O2.1 Improve ease of deployment and maintenance O2.2 Improve monitoring Objective 3: Improve automation for visualization of data O3.1: Update existing visualizations to accomodate larger number of measurements O3.2: Create visualizations for Shadow results (?) Objective 4: Improve the storage of instance’s old data 4.1 Set up storage, upload tarballs, and keep them there (and add new ones) throughout the year. 4.2 Setup storage for Shadow simulation runs or results Objective 5: Add memory and infrastructure to run a network simulator with Shadow jnewsome following up with rob Do we suspend metrics meeting until November? Yes Log: http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2020/tor-meeting.2020-09-17-14.58.log… -- she/her are my pronouns GPG Fingerprint EE3F DF5C AD91 643C 21BE 8370 180D B06C 59CA BD19

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September 2020 Tor DEMO Day
by Antonela D 16 Sep '20

16 Sep '20

Hello Tor, This is happening at the end of the month! You can present any side project, main project, work in progress ideas, concepts, and anything that makes other people excited about what you are building or you are willing to build around Tor. Feel free to list yourself in the pad. https://pad.riseup.net/p/tor-monthly-hall-demos-august-september-2020-keep I hope to see you there! A ............................................ ██████ .███████ ███ ...███ .██████ .███████ ██ ██ ██ ████ .████ ██ ██ ██ ██ ..██ █████ ..██ ████ ██ ██ ...██ ███████ ██ ..██ ██ ..██ ██ ██ ██ ...██ ██ ██████ ███████ ██ . .██ ██████ ███████ ............................................ Why? ---- - We want to spice up our remote working routine and also break the silos between teams. - The first edition was a success and we want to share this experience with the broad Tor community! How? ---- - We will call for presenters. - The agenda will be set before the meeting and will be shared with tor-project. - We want 5 to 8 minutes length presentations. We will handle questions at the end of all presentations. - Slides are allowed, but not mandatory. You may share your screen or a pre-recorded video if that makes you less anxious. - We like the adrenaline of the live presentations, but if they wish, presenters can share pre-recorded videos with us. They should be sent a few hours in advance and will be lined up and shared with assistants during the session. Who? ---- - Anyone who wants to share what they have been hacking on. It doesn't need to be a finished feature but a work in progress. It can be small like a Tor Browser feature or something you have been hacking around Tor not officially. - Presenters have 5 to 8 minutes. People can ask questions via text in the pad for 3 minutes. - Antonela will moderate at this time. We can rotate this role. Where? ------ During the All Hands Meeting. The room will be shared a few days before the meeting. When? ----- During the All Hands Meeting on Wednesday SEPTEMBER 30TH at 16 UTC Agenda ------------------------------ d[-_-]b dj resident @mikeperry ------------------------------ - 5 min for the presentation - 3 min for questions ------------------------------ Questions will be written in text on the pad at any time during the presentation. Presenters will answer them in audio. -- Antonela Debiasi UX Team Lead torproject.org @antonela E2330A6D1EB5A0C8

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tooling/gitlab weekly meetings
by Gaba 15 Sep '20

15 Sep '20

Hi, We are going to meet weekly again about Gitlab and other tooling that we use for functioning/development. The next meeting will be on Tuesday at 15UTC in #tor-meeting in irc.oftc.net. The agenda will be: - coordinate challenges on using gitlab and next steps (permissions, account creations, wikis, documentation, etc) and prioritizing what we are going to work on next. - any other tooling we are talking about cheers, gaba -- she/her are my pronouns GPG Fingerprint EE3F DF5C AD91 643C 21BE 8370 180D B06C 59CA BD19

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Network meeting notes, 14 Sep 2020
by Gaba 14 Sep '20

14 Sep '20

Hi! 0.4.4.5 tor release is coming this week! Meeting minutes for the meeting: http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2020/tor-meeting.2020-09-14-16.59.txt The content of the pad for today is: == Network meeting pad! == Next meeting is at Tuesday 21st of September 1700 UTC on #tor-meeting on OFTC. Welcome to our meeting! We meet each month at: Mondays at 1700 UTC On #tor-meeting on OFTC. (This channel is logged while meetings are in progress.) (See https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-project/2017-September/001459.ht… for background.) Want to participate? Awesome! Here's what to do: 1. If you have updates, enter them below, under your name. 2. If you see anything you want to talk about in your updates, put them in boldface! 3. Show up to the IRC meeting and say hi! After each week's meetings, the contents of this pad will be sent to tor-project @ lists.torproject.org. After that is done, the pad can be used for the next week. == Previous notes == (Search the tor-project mailing list archive for older notes.) https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-project/ == Stuff to do every week == Let's check and update our roadmap: What's done, and what's coming up? Any change? Board: https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/core/-/boards S28 & S30 - ahf & dgoulet Non sponsor stuff 044 fixes and releases DoS defenses = Dgoulet + Asn Library Size reduction = Ahf + Dgoulet sbws = Ahf + Juga Check reviewer assignments! How reviews from last week worked? Any blocker? Here are the outstanding reviews: Merge requests in Core NOT already marked for backport: https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/core/-/merge_requests?scope=all&ut… Let's check out 0.4.4 release status and open tickets! Tickets in 0.4.4.x with no owner. https://gitlab.torproject.org/dashboard/issues?scope=all&utf8=%E2%9C%93&sta… nickm: https://gitlab.torproject.org/dashboard/issues?scope=all&utf8=%E2%9C%93&sta… dgoulet: https://gitlab.torproject.org/dashboard/issues?scope=all&utf8=%E2%9C%93&sta… ahf: https://gitlab.torproject.org/dashboard/issues?scope=all&utf8=%E2%9C%93&sta… asn: https://gitlab.torproject.org/dashboard/issues?scope=all&utf8=%E2%9C%93&sta… Core Tor Releases: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/core/team/-/wikis/NetworkTeam/CoreTorRele… == Reminders == * Remember to "/me status: foo" at least once daily. * Remember that our current code reviews should be done by end-of-week. * Make sure you are in touch with everybody with whom you are doing work for the next releases. * Check other's people call for help in their entries. Volunteers need help. Please help them when you are around. Maybe we should have times of day when different people are responders, and expectations of who helps. ------------------------------- ---- 14th September 2020 ------------------------------- == Announcements [please date] == [Sept 14th] Anybody to present at State of the Onion please add yourself to the TPI all hands pad or talk with Isa. [Sept 14th] Anybody wanting to mentor a student for next Outreachy round (December 2020 to March 2021) talk with Gaba. https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/team/-/issues/1 - Outreachy project idea: Dev Tooling in Tor (ahf) == Discussion [please date] == 0.4.4 stable release (August 17th - let's keep this until we have RC) https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/core/team/-/issues/11 044 tickets merge ready and need review tickets from nick tickets from ahf do we need a new 044 RC? 19 September: Anything to do before 0.4.4.5? And do we call it an rc, or a stable? Issues in https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/core/team/-/issues === Active Proposed Policies === * Pull Request Guidelines (stalled) === Design proposals under discussion === 315: require more fields in directory documents (still waiting [6/1]) 316: flashflow (asn and nickm are reviewing, should schedule discussion with pastly. [5/18]) 317: dns (under discussion on ML [5/18]) 318: limit protovers (waiting for more commment; needs discussion [6/1]) 319: wide everything (nick replied on ml; waiting for more discussion [6/1]) 320: tap out again - Do we have a consensus to replace this with a "deprecate v2 onion services" proposal? If so, who writes it? [6/1] protover rethinking (teor's email to tor-dev) (nick needs to reply [5/18]) 321: happy families (need feedback [6/1]) 322: dirport linkspec (need feedback [6/1]) == Recommended links == == Updates == Name: Week of XYZ (planned): - What you planned for last week. Week of XYZ (actual): - What you did last week. Week of ABC (planned): - What you're planning to do this week. Help with: - Something you may need help with. PLEASE DO NOT BULK-DELETE THE OLD ENTRIES! Leave the "Planned" parts! Leave the parts for last week and this week! (feel free to delete your own stuff that's more than 1-2 weeks old) Nick: Week of 10 August (planned): - get ready for vacation: - Wrap up easy tickets - Write up status notes on longer term projects (ticket triage, style, ci, planning, S55, 044 release) - Review as much stuff as I can - unassign whatever I can't do myself. - inbox zero - release candidate, possibly. - First cut at gitlab CI? Probably based on my exeriments and hc's patches. Week of 10 August (actual): - Got gitlab CI running - Wrote a hand-off email for current project statuses - Inbox zero - Released 0.4.4.4-rc - Triaged 044-should and 044-must with asn - Triaged S55 and assigned-to-@nickm - Editied a bunch of wiki pages to update links, delete cruft, and note further improvements - A couple of tiny patches (...VACATION...) Week of 14 September (planned): - Release 0.4.4.5 or 0.4.4.5-rc - Recover from vacation - Handle whatever pending reviews I have - Discuss priorities and upcoming work, then hacking TBD. Possible priorities are: - code styling - proposal implementation - ticket backlog reduction - bugfixing - spec revision - - ??? ahf Week of 8/9 (planned) - Fenix#34179 - 0.4.4 tickets. - Follow up Jenkins failures from CI. They all look legit. Week of 8/9 (actually) - Test of fenix#34179 - glob() issue blocking the TB team's nightly master builds tor#40114. - iOS master build discussion with Benjamin on getting a nightly version of Tor.framework working. - CI issues on AppVeyor sometimes? Week of 14/9 (planned) - Next steps with Fenix. - Look into Weasel's Jenkins issues. asn: Week of 07/09 (planned): - More work on #32729. - More work on v3 metrics. - AFK from Wednesday till the weekend. Week of 07/09 (actual): - Worked on v3 metrics differential privacy - Did some more Android work on #32729, but it needs more. - Started revising PoW proposal but waiting for some feedback by tevador. Week of /08 (actual): - More work on v3 metrics - Try to reproduce #32729 again - Talk on anti-DoS proposals on a local research group on Wednesday jnewsome: Week of Sep 8 (planned): - Enable additional tests in shadow-phantom-preload CI using patched interposable libc - Add shadow ptrace spin optimization - Resume work on clone for shadow-phantom-preload Week of Sep 8 (actual): - Enabled additional tests in shadow-phantom-preload CI using patched interposable libc - Fixed a shadow ptrace worker migration bug - Fixed a shadow preload bug of using uninitialized pthread state. - WIP on shadow preload optimization to tell plugin to block instead of spinning when shadow is switching to a different plugin thread. Week of Sep 14 (planned): - Finish shadow preload "don't spin" optimization - Add shadow ptrace spin optimization - Get pthread_create working in shadow-ptrace -- she/her are my pronouns GPG Fingerprint EE3F DF5C AD91 643C 21BE 8370 180D B06C 59CA BD19

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Tails report for August 2020
by sajolida＠pimienta.org 12 Sep '20

12 Sep '20

Tails report for August, 2020 [1] RELEASES * Tails 4.10 was released on August 25 [2]. * Tails 4.11 is scheduled for September 22 [3]. The following changes were introduced in Tails 4.10: * Update Linux to 5.7.10. This should improve the support for newer hardware (graphics, Wi-Fi, etc.). * Hide the welcome message when starting Thunderbird. * Fix support for USB Wi-Fi adapters with Atheros AR9271 hardware. (#17834 [4]) * Fix USB tethering from iPhone. (#17820 [5]) CODE * Added support for older TREZOR firmware (!142 [6]). * Started working on the upgrade to Thunderbird 78 ESR, and in particular its new OpenPGP support (#17148 [7]). * Automated generation of our Changelog (#17886 [8]). * Automated generation of the security advisory boilerplate from a template that technical writers can improve (!128 [9]). * Hidden broken "Turn on Wi-Fi Hotspot" feature in GNOME Wi-Fi settings (#17887 [10]). * Fixed sorting Intel GPUs last in the "Error starting GDM" message (#17903 [11]). * Upgraded Linux to 5.7.17-1 (#17895 [12]). DOCUMENTATION AND WEBSITE * Changed massively our instructions on how to start Tails: * Documented Shift + Restart on Windows [13]. (#16456 [14]) We're not telling Windows users to use the Boot Menu key anymore. It's still the default for Linux [15]. * Wrote dedicated pages for starting Tails on PC [16] and Mac [17]. * Simplified troubleshooting sections. We simplified and made consistent the troubleshooting instructions [18] in all installation scenarios. * Removed instructions to report to Help Desk from the installation scenarios but kept them on doc/first steps/start [19]. We believe that all these changes will lower your workload and make more people start Tails at the same time. * Rephrased our FAQ about VPN [20]. (#15783 [21]) * Wrote an FAQ about 32-bit computers [22]. (#17866 [23]) * Fixed all outdated links to torproject.org. (#17717 [24]) * Used ikiwiki's automatic referencing of HTML ids in table of content on the pages that have the longest tables of content. (#17844 [25]) Now you can copy links directly from the table of content to point to: https://tails.boum.org/support/faq/#javascript USER EXPERIENCE * Analyzed the responses of the OpenPGP and Pidgin survey [26]. (#17821 [27]) It's pretty exciting because we barely have quantitative data about our user base at large. Highlights: * Our users find Tails relatively easy to use compared to an industry average. * Linux users are still the biggest share of the respondents and this hasn't changed much since 2017. * The top 5 wishes of our users are, in rough order: * Do nothing because Tails is great already :) * More persistent settings: security level in Tor Browser, background, keyboard, and language * Messaging applications and voice calls * Make Tor less painful for web browsing * Better upgrades * OpenPGP is much more popular outside Thunderbird: 49% vs. 16%. * Enigmail users are more technical than OpenPGP users overall. * Electrum (28%) is more used than Thunderbird (27%), which is more used than XMPP (17%). * IRC is used by a non-negligible 8% of respondents. HOT TOPICS ON OUR HELP DESK This last month we felt that the social crisis created by covid is starting to take a toll on our users mental state, and we received more derailed emails than usual. Hopefully there are local resources you can count on for this difficult times. Take care! * Many users wrote to us with problems related to MacbookPros from 2020. Apple in general does not prioritize collaborating with Free Software projects, and their newest hardware is usually very hard for Free Software developers to get working with Linux, and thus Tails. In comparison, hardware for PC tends to be more open and get support for Linux faster. Please take that into consideration if you are buying hardware to run Tails. * The last release also saw some users with graphics cards issues. Please read the page shown on the error message [28] before mailing us, because there might be a solution for your graphics card. * Some users had problems [29] to do automatic upgrades to Tails 4.10. Update: this was fixed. INFRASTRUCTURE * Set up infrastructure that will allow Release Managers to upload to git-annex faster (tails/sysadmin/-/issues/17687 [30]). * Started coordination for requiring Buster or newer for running our test suite (#17842 [31]). * Started upgrading our Jenkins "isotester" workers to Buster. * Summed up [32] the findings from "Gather usability data about our current CI" (#16959 [33]). FUNDING GRANTS * Our grant to Reset [34] from May 1 was rejected. * We applied to RIPE NCC [35] to work on usability improvements for censorship circumvention. DONATIONS * We surveyed "lapsed donors" [36] who haven't donated since 2019 and analyzed 121 responses. Conclusions: * We're doing good! Negative comments were few exceptions in a mass of love: the work that we do is very important and we do it well. * We should communicate a bit more and better with past donors: * The main reason for lapsed donors not to renew their donation is lack of awareness. * We should write a newsletter to donors half-way through the year or when we have major improvements. * Adding an opt-in mechanism for our newsletter would allow us to be less shy to write them. * LimeSurvey is more convenient to send mass emails to donors. * We should communicate more about the impact of donations and how we spend the money. * About our donors and their interests: * Donors are mostly users (74%) but they are really into helping others (70%). * Donors mostly talk about: * Privacy (24) * Protection from oppressive governments and persecution (18) * Liberty and freedom of speech (16) * We merged a first batch of improvements to our Donate [37] page: * To better explain our mission: * We wrote new slogans. * We improved the text on the left. * To better explain how we spend our money: * We simplified the chart and added short text to explain each of maintenance, improvements, user experience, and administration. * We added a section about our impact with numbers of daily users. * To increase trust: * We duplicated the recommendations from the Home page. * We improved the color scheme of the charts. PARTNERS * We added Freiheitsfoo as partner [38]. ON-GOING DISCUSSIONS * Exporting secret PGP key in SeaHorse: Link to the thread [39]. * GitLab MR terminology update: WIP→ Draft : Link to the thread [40]. * Reviewers: Link to the thread [41]. TRANSLATIONS ALL THE WEBSITE * de: 29% (1921) strings translated, 14% strings fuzzy * es: 49% (3241) strings translated, 7% strings fuzzy * fa: 21% (1401) strings translated, 13% strings fuzzy * fr: 80% (5231) strings translated, 8% strings fuzzy * it: 27% (1805) strings translated, 10% strings fuzzy * pt: 19% (1289) strings translated, 9% strings fuzzy CORE PAGES OF THE WEBSITE [42] * de: 47% (992) strings translated, 23% strings fuzzy * es: 83% (1744) strings translated, 7% strings fuzzy * fa: 20% (422) strings translated, 15% strings fuzzy * fr: 79% (1651) strings translated, 12% strings fuzzy * it: 48% (1010) strings translated, 21% strings fuzzy * pt: 38% (803) strings translated, 15% strings fuzzy CORE PAGES OF THE WEBSITE FOR LANGUAGES NOT ACTIVATED ON THE WEBSITE YET * ar: 8% (172) strings translated, 7% strings fuzzy * ca: 8% (185) strings translated, 7% strings fuzzy * id: 8% (189) strings translated, 4% strings fuzzy * pl: 9% (214) strings translated, 6% strings fuzzy * ru: 10% (230) strings translated, 7% strings fuzzy * sr_Latn: 7% (164) strings translated, 3% strings fuzzy * tr: 9% (216) strings translated, 6% strings fuzzy * zh: 12% (272) strings translated, 7% strings fuzzy * zh_TW: 23% (505) strings translated, 13% strings fuzzy METRICS * Tails has been started more than 939 540 times this month. This makes 30 308 boots a day on average. How do we know this? [43] Links: ------ [1] https://tails.boum.org/news/report_2020_08/ [2] https://tails.boum.org/news/version_4.10/index.en.html [3] https://tails.boum.org/contribute/calendar/ [4] https://gitlab.tails.boum.org/tails/tails/-/issues/17834 [5] https://gitlab.tails.boum.org/tails/tails/-/issues/17820 [6] https://gitlab.tails.boum.org/tails/tails/-/merge_requests/142 [7] https://gitlab.tails.boum.org/tails/tails/-/issues/17148 [8] https://gitlab.tails.boum.org/tails/tails/-/issues/17886 [9] https://gitlab.tails.boum.org/tails/tails/-/merge_requests/128 [10] https://gitlab.tails.boum.org/tails/tails/-/issues/17887 [11] https://gitlab.tails.boum.org/tails/tails/-/issues/17903 [12] https://gitlab.tails.boum.org/tails/tails/-/issues/17895 [13] https://tails.boum.org/install/win/usb/index.en.html#start-tails [14] https://gitlab.tails.boum.org/tails/tails/-/issues/16456 [15] https://tails.boum.org/install/linux/index.en.html#start-tails [16] https://tails.boum.org/doc/first_steps/start/pc/index.en.html [17] https://tails.boum.org/doc/first_steps/start/mac/index.en.html [18] https://tails.boum.org/install/win/usb/index.en.html#troubleshooting [19] https://tails.boum.org/doc/first_steps/start/pc/index.en.html#help-desk [20] https://tails.boum.org/support/faq/index.en.html#vpn [21] https://gitlab.tails.boum.org/tails/tails/-/issues/15783 [22] https://tails.boum.org/support/faq/index.en.html#32-bit [23] https://gitlab.tails.boum.org/tails/tails/-/issues/17866 [24] https://gitlab.tails.boum.org/tails/tails/-/issues/17717 [25] https://gitlab.tails.boum.org/tails/tails/-/issues/17844 [26] https://tails.boum.org/blueprint/user_survey/#openpgp-pidgin [27] https://gitlab.tails.boum.org/tails/tails/-/issues/17821 [28] https://tails.boum.org/gdm [29] https://gitlab.tails.boum.org/tails/tails/-/issues/17908 [30] https://gitlab.tails.boum.org/tails/sysadmin/-/issues/17687 [31] https://gitlab.tails.boum.org/tails/tails/-/issues/17842 [32] https://tails.boum.org/blueprint/CI_usability/ [33] https://gitlab.tails.boum.org/tails/tails/-/issues/16959 [34] https://reset.tech/ [35] https://www.ripe.net/support/cpf/call-for-applications [36] https://tails.boum.org/blueprint/donation_process/#survey [37] https://tails.boum.org/donate/index.en.html [38] https://tails.boum.org/partners/index.en.html [39] https://lists.autistici.org/thread/20200909.161300.5d51a9ea.en.html#i202009… [40] https://lists.autistici.org/thread/20200831.183100.8fbe036d.en.html [41] https://lists.autistici.org/thread/20200819.102500.4dd81e8c.en.html [42] https://tails.boum.org/contribute/l10n_tricks/core_po_files.txt [43] https://tails.boum.org/support/faq/index.en.html#boot-statistics

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Anti-censorship meeting notes, 10 Sep 2020
by Philipp Winter 10 Sep '20

10 Sep '20

Hi all, Here are our meeting minutes: http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2020/tor-meeting.2020-09-10-15.58.html And here is our meeting pad: Anti-censorship work meeting pad -------------------------------- Next meeting: Thursday September 10th 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 * Public bug-reporting pad: * https://pad.riseup.net/p/tor-anti-censorship-bugs-keep == Announcements == * Filed several "First Contribution" tickets for rdsys: * https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/rdsys/-/issues * Let's use "Research" label for issues that have a research component to it * Helpful for students who are looking for projects. * Internews is organising a pluggable transport implementers meeting on Oct 12-16. * Attendance will be remote. * RSVP here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSd778O0ChoPwvilhpSMUvufsfE-6HzkHtG… == Discussion == * Write occasional "tech talk"-style blog posts? * E.g. present rdsys's design and architecture. * May result in valuable feedback. == Actions == * == Interesting links == * == Reading group == * We will discuss "HTTPT: A Probe-Resistant Proxy" on Sep 10 * https://censorbib.nymity.ch/pdf/Frolov2020b.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 (2020-09-10): * Wrote and published August 2020 team report. * https://blog.torproject.org/anti-censorship-august-2020 * Signed up for a lightning talk for the pluggable transport implementers meeting. * Will present the design of rdsys and solicit feedback. * Worked with Hashik on getting his GSoC 2020 blog post published. * https://blog.torproject.org/gsoc-2020-snowflake-proxy-mobile * Sponsor 30 ticket and roadmap maintenance. * Created wiki page that summarises the process of writing our monthly report. * https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/team/-/wikis/Processes/Mo… * Proposed project ideas to a BSc student at my old college. * Lots of refactoring of rdsys. * Created an HTTP streaming interface that lets the backend notify distributors of changes to resources. * Realised that monit alerts didn't make it to mailing list because my mail provider classified them as spam. * https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/monit-configuration/-/iss… * Read Sergey's HTTPT paper. Next week: * Wrap up a prototype of Salmon. Help with: * https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/trac/-/issues/31874 * https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/bridgedb/-/issues/31871 cecylia (cohosh): last updated 2020-08-27 Last week: - deployed snowflake#40008 - started snowflake measurements in china to track performance and censorship attempts (snowflake#32657) - continuous monitoring of NAT situation - prep for being away next month - meeting with tunnel bear This week: - Away Needs help with: - still need a review of fix for snowflake#21314 (snowflake!9) juggy : This week: - Got very basic "suggested readings" list up and running here : https://jugheadjones10.github.io/anti-censorship-reading/ Next week: - Keep studying BridgeDB to write architectural overview Help with: - Open issues here (https://github.com/jugheadjones10/anti-censorship-reading ) for papers/resources/readings that you think might be useful for newcomers arlolra: 2020-06-11 Last week: - Next week: - follow ups to #33365 - start on #31201 Help with: - dcf: 2020-09-10 Last week: Next week: Help with: Antonela: 2020-08-27 This week: - Wrapping Babatunde's research on the use of circumvention tools during internet censorship in Africa. Wrapping Personas for s30 with it. For september: - We are planning interviews with users in China to run our bridges discovery issues script in real time. We discussed to include TBA + snowflake as a task for users to run over a week or two and report back. https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/ux/research/-/issues/4 - I still have bridges.tpo to lektor issue open - More work on UX/UI for TB 10.0/10.5 - Review Salmon related tickets (im late with it!) agix:2020-09-03 Last week: -Nothing to add for last week Next week: -Finish #34318 -Look into #31873 Help with: - hanneloresx: 2020-09-03 Last week: Next week: - Start on #33727 - Continue investigating and respond to comments on #32117 Help with: - thymbahutymba: 2020-04-02 Last week: - CI/CD pipeline for multiarch docker images, which has a problem with the apt tor version even though the apt repository have been changed into the Dockerfile. Next week: Help with: HashikD: 2020-08-27 This week: - GSoC blog Next week: - Away on exams Help with: -

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Anti-censorship team monthly report: August 2020
by Philipp Winter 04 Sep '20

04 Sep '20

Hi all, Here's what we accomplished in August 2020: Snowflake --------- * We set up an anonymous bug-reporting pad for the team. Take a look at our reporting instructions: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… * NAT type matching in Snowflake browser proxies. Released version 0.4.1 of the browser extension. https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… * Perform a test for symmetric NATs on startup. https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… * Implemented a fix so Snowflake stops using the client's network when Tor isn't making reqests. https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… * Hashik Donthineni, our GSoC 2020 student, successfully finished his Android proxy app project! It needs more UI improvements and testing before being ready for use. https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… * Made progress on allowing clients to split traffic across multiple proxies. https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… * Updated Snowflake stats to include counts of restricted, unrestricted, and unknown proxies. https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… BridgeDB -------- * Inspected several months worth of BridgeDB's HTTPS distributor logs and distilled a few insights. https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/bridgedb/-/issues/31871 * Took a closer look at bot scraping attempts. https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/bridgedb/-/issues/32117 Rdsys ----- * Decided to call our BridgeDB redesign rdsys, which is short for "resource distribution system." Do you have a better name? If so, let us know! * Created a GitLab repository for rdsys. The code is a messy construction site and will continue to be in the foreseeable future. https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/rdsys * Improved the way rdsys talks to bridgestrap to verify that bridges are working. * Built an HTTP streaming interface between rdsys's backend and its distributors. This interface allows the backend to stream resource updates to the distributors without delay. The goal is that resources (i.e. bridges) are distributed to users immediately after they are added to the system. Salmon ------ * Implemented a crude prototype of the Salmon bridge distribution mechanism. Brainstormed a handful of privacy-preserving features that would improve the original design. https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/rdsys/-/issues/1 Bridgestrap ----------- * Improved the service's shutdown procedure, caching mechanism, its documentation, and its HTTP API. Added a command line flag to print bridgestrap's cache. https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/bridgestrap * Added a token bucket mechanism to limit the number of requests that the service accepts. Emma ---- * Updated the resources that emma tries to connect to (replaced a guard relay and removed the default bridge "frosty"). Changed trac links to GitLab links. https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/emma Miscellaneous ------------- * Retired the default bridge "frosty" because the colocation site where the bridge was running will be shut down. https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser-build/-/issues/4… Outreach -------- * Published a blog post on our challenges, priorities, and progress. https://blog.torproject.org/anti-censorship-challenges-priorities-progress * Published our July 2020 report as blog post. https://blog.torproject.org/anti-censorship-july-2020 * David presented his Turbo Tunnel paper at FOCI'2020. His talk is available online: https://www.usenix.org/conference/foci20/presentation/fifield * Roger participated in a FOCI'2020 panel on "Internet Freedom in the Domestic Arena." * Cecylia was a panelist at Tor's latest PrivChat iteration, called "the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Censorship Circumvention." The recording is available online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOOChyMCZH4

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Browser meeting is happening on Tuesday instead of Monday
by Gaba 04 Sep '20

04 Sep '20

Hi! For next week only we are moving the Browser meeting from Monday to Tuesday the 8th of September at 18:00 UTC on #tor-meeting on OFTC. Pad: http://kfahv6wfkbezjyg4r6mlhpmieydbebr5vkok5r34ya464gqz6c44bnyd.onion/p/tor… cheers, gaba -- she/her are my pronouns GPG Fingerprint EE3F DF5C AD91 643C 21BE 8370 180D B06C 59CA BD19

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