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