Hi everyone,
Here's what the anti-censorship team has been up to in October:
Snowflake =========
* Continued work on a sequencing and reliability layer for snowflake: https://bugs.torproject.org/29206
* Localised the snowflake.torproject.org website and implemented a language switcher: https://bugs.torproject.org/31384
* Added an automatic packaging script for the snowflake web extension: https://bugs.torproject.org/31253
* Fixed a bug in the web extension hat was keeping open UDP sockets: https://bugs.torproject.org/31285
* Continued to investigate and monitor snowflake network health.
* Snowflake web extension localisation updates.
* Refactored the web extension code to allow for multiplexing of multiple clients through a single browser proxy: https://bugs.torproject.org/31310
* Reduced unnecessary error messages in snowflake logs.
BridgeDB ========
* Finished updating BridgeDB's requirements and created a process for keeping requirements up-to-date in the future: https://bugs.torproject.org/29484 https://gitweb.torproject.org/bridgedb.git/tree/doc/HACKING.md#n36
* Finished BridgeDB's language switcher: https://bugs.torproject.org/26543 You can find it in the top right corner over at https://bridges.torproject.org
* Accidentally fixed another UI issue while implementing the language switcher: https://bugs.torproject.org/19839
* Debugged and fixed BridgeDB's email autoresponder. It broke after the underlying operating system was updated to the latest Debian stable: https://bugs.torproject.org/32105
* Finished specification of BridgeDB's metrics format: https://bugs.torproject.org/31780
* Started ripping out PGP support in BridgeDB's email autoresponder: https://bugs.torproject.org/17548 BridgeDB's PGP keys have expired many years ago and the feature does not seem popular enough to warrant the (likely non-trivial) effort of resurrecting it.
* Implemented a parser for BridgeDB metrics and used it to create a bunch of visualisations: https://bugs.torproject.org/32135
* Fixed a bug that resulted in BridgeDB not logging vanilla bridges in its metrics: https://bugs.torproject.org/32203
* Took a look at BridgeDB's broken email localisation: https://bugs.torproject.org/15404 This is another broken feature that may not be worth the effort it takes to fix it.
* Requested and installed new translations. Thanks to all volunteers who helped translate BridgeDB!
GetTor ======
* Moved to a new VM.
* More work towards bringing the Twitter responder back to life.
Miscellaneous =============
* Implemented a prototype of bridgestrap, a service that takes as input a bridge line and tells you if it can bootstrap a tor connection over the given bridge: https://bugs.torproject.org/31874
* Filed a ticket to discuss the future of website mirrors: https://bugs.torproject.org/31990
* Wrapped up our "set up new obfs4 bridges" campaign: https://bugs.torproject.org/30777 Our volunteers helped set up approximately 100 new bridges!
* Started distributing some of our new high-capacity private obfs4 bridges. Also created a YAML file to coordinate who got what bridges.
Obfs4 =====
* Made good progress on improving our obfs4 bridge Docker image: https://bugs.torproject.org/31834
* Finished a prototype of sharknado, a backwards-compatible obfs4 improvement: https://bugs.torproject.org/30716#comment:16
* Created a wiki page that documents the process for supplying an NGO with private obfs4 bridges: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/teams/AntiCensorshipTeam/NGOBridgeSupport
* Conducted a probe test of a subset of our newly created obfs4 bridges from the bridge campaign in September. Found that all of the new bridges we tested seem to be blocked already in China: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/attachment/ticket/31701/obfs4-reachability-2019-10-03.pdf
Tor Browser ===========
* Upgraded goptlib to v1.1.0, fixing an error condition that would arise when using a pluggable transport with a non-working proxy: https://bugs.torproject.org/32076 https://bugs.torproject.org/32056