Anti-censorship team Jan 2021 report ====================================

Snowflake ---------

*There was an unexplained 4-day decrease in the number of Snowflake users, almost to zero.

https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/anti-censorship-team/2021-January/000...

* Changed some domains used by the Snowflake proxy browser extension, to avoid antivirus warnings.

https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowf...

* Updated version of webrtc dependency to new major version release

https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowf...

* Version bump for snowflake in Tor Browser

* Reclassified proxies with unknown NAT types to be in the restricted NAT bucket

https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowf...

* Prevent proxies from reverting from a known NAT type to an unknown NAT type

https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowf...

BridgeDB/rdsys --------------

* Wrapped up documentation that discusses how rdsys tests resources. https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/rdsys/-/issues/31

* Implemented a pluggable "persistence layer" in rdsys that helps distributors seamlessly store persistent data. https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/rdsys/-/issues/5

* Summarised long-term plans regarding the future of BridgeDB and rdsys. https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/rdsys/-/issues/12

* Filed "meta issue" for Salmon and a bunch of new child issues. https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/rdsys/-/issues/35

* Allowed more granular specification of distribution proportions https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/rdsys/-/issues/37

GetTor ------

* Added redaction of email addresses from SMTP error messages before errors are logged. This is to protect personal information from being saved in logs.

https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/gettor-project/trac/-/issu...

* Updated version of GetTor binaries to include fix for meek-azure bug

https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/gettor-project/gettor/-/is...

* Fixed GetTor's locale parser

https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/gettor-project/gettor/-/is...

Bridgestrap --------------

* Finally merged the issue we had with Tor going dormant on bridgestrap. In the process we discovered another issue in the way bridgestrap interacted with its Tor controller library.

https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/bridgestrap/-/issues/12

Other -----

* Default bridges did not work in Tor Browser 10.5a7, but are working again in 10.5a8. The underlying cause was a problem in tor's configuration parsing. https://blog.torproject.org/new-release-tor-browser-105a7 https://blog.torproject.org/new-release-tor-browser-105a8

* Brainstormed ways to build a Web-based version of our censorship analysis tool emma. https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/emma/-/issues/4

* Started teaching emma to try more than once if a TCP connection times out. https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/emma/-/issues/6

* Published a job opening in the anti-censorship team: https://www.torproject.org/about/jobs/software-developer-anticensorship/

* Philipp reviewed research papers for the DNS Privacy Workshop: https://www.ndss-symposium.org/ndss2021/cfp-dns-privacy-workshop/

* We have a wiki page for our anti-censorship reading group:

https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/team/-/wikis/Anti-censorsh...