[anti-censorship-team] obfs4/lyrebird terminology

[David Fifield]

On Wed, Aug 21, 2024 at 03:29:58PM +0200, meskio wrote:
> Quoting David Fifield (2024-08-21 06:03:26)
> > A coupld of forthcoming papers are using "Lyrebird" as if it were the
> > name of a protocol, a synonym for obfs4:
> > 
> > https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.13310
> > > Obfs4/Lyrebird is based on Scramblesuit [56].
> > 
> > https://eprint.iacr.org/2024/1086
> > > The obfs4/lyrebird protocol, specified in [60], is separated into two
> > > distinct phases:
> > 
> > This, to me, seems like an incorrect use of terminology. I am planning
> > to tell the authors so. But I just want to check that my understanding
> > matches the consensus opinion, which I would summarize thus:
> > 
> > There is no such thing as a "lyrebird" protocol. Lyrebird is a program
> > that implements several protocols, including obfs3, obfs4, and meek.
> > Lyrebird is a fork of obfs4proxy, which likewise is a program, not a
> > protocol. Just as there is no "lyrebird" protocol, there is no
> > "obfs4proxy" protocol; these are names of programs that both happen to
> > implement an identical protocol, which protocol is called obfs4.
> 
> Yes, your description matches my understanding of it. I was pushing for a rename 
> to something not obfs4 to avoid that confusion, but as you say it looks like it 
> creates it's own confusion.
> 
> Thank you for looking into it.

I sent some emails to the authors.

One of them pointed me to this already published FOCI extended abstract
that has a similar confusion.

https://www.petsymposium.org/foci/2024/foci-2024-0004.php
> lyrebird (obfs4). Previously known as obfs4, lyrebird is...