[TWN team] Updates to the wiki pages

Lunar lunar at torproject.org
Mon Sep 2 22:05:02 UTC 2013 

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CHANGED: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/TorWeeklyNews/2013/9
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--- @	Mon, 02 Sep 2013 20:05:02 +0000
+++ @	Mon, 02 Sep 2013 22:05:02 +0000
@@ -11,15 +11,6 @@
 
 Welcome to the tenth issue of Tor Weekly News, the weekly newsletter
 that covers what is happening in the XXX Tor community.
-
-New Release of XXX
-------------------
-
-XXX: cite specific release date, numbers, and developers responsible
-
-XXX: details about release
-
- [XXX]
 
 Serious network overload
 ------------------------
@@ -154,36 +145,53 @@
 [XXX] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/9321
 [XXX] https://labs.riseup.net/code/issues/5462
 
-Contents of PirateBrowser 0.6b
-------------------------------
-
-Matt Pagan took a look at the Pirate Browser to examine the contents of
-the package [XXX]. He used copy of Windows XP on a virtual machine and
-Microsoft File Checksum Integrity Verifier utility to compare the MD5 and
-SHA1 sums of the contents of the App folder for the Pirate Browser 0.6b
-and the Tor Browser Bundle 2.3.25-12(en-US).
+A peek inside the Pirate Browser
+--------------------------------
+
+Torrent-sharing website The Pirate Bay started shipping a custom
+browser — the Pirate Browser — on August 10th. They advertised using
+Tor to circumvent censorship but unfortunately did not provide any
+source code for their project.
+
+Matt Pagan examined the contents of the package [XXX] in order to get a
+better idea of what it was. He compared the contents of the Pirate
+Browser 0.6b archive using cryptographic checksums to the contents of
+the Tor Browser Bundle 2.3.25-12 (en-US version).
 
 According to Matt's findings the Pirate Browser includes unmodified
-versions of Tor 0.2.3.25 and Vidalia 0.2.20 with a slightly modified torrc file.
-It comes with “Configured for speed” section but as Roger Dingledine puts it:
-“Just for the record, the three lines here don't help speed much (or maybe at al
-l).” [XXX]
-
-The second biggest modification is the exit nodes exclusion from several countri
-es
-“that might have blocks”. According to Roger: “This line probably has the bigges
-t impact
-on performance. Whether it improves or reduces performance I cannot say, though.
-Depends on a lot of complex variables around Internet topologies.”
-
-Later, Matt also pointed out the exclusion of HTTPS-Everywhere, NoScript, Torbut
-ton, etc. [XXX]
-
- XXX: Expand
+versions of tor 0.2.3.25 and Vidalia 0.2.20. The tor configuration
+contains slight deviation from the one shipped with the Tor Browser
+Bundle. One section labeled “Configured for speed” unfortunately shows
+wrong understanding of the Tor network. Roger Dingledine commented in a
+subsequent email [XXX]: “Just for the record, the three lines here don't
+help speed much (or maybe at all).”
+
+The remaining configuration change that “probably has the biggest impact
+on performance“, according to Roger, excludes exit nodes from Danmark,
+Ireland, United Kindgom, the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, China, Iran,
+Finland, and Norway. “Whether it improves or reduces performance [Roger]
+cannot say, though. Depends on a lot of complex variables around
+Internet topologies.”
+
+The browser itself is based of Firefox 23.0, with FoxyProxy configured
+to use Tor only for a few specific of addresses, and a few extra
+bookmarks.
+
+Later, Matt also highlighted [XXX] that some important extensions of the
+Tor Browser, namely HTTPS Everywhere, NoScript, and Torbutton were
+also missing from the Pirate Browser.
+
+In any cases, the Pirate Browser is unlikely to explain the sudden
+influx of new Tor clients. grarpamp forwarded an email exchanged with
+the Pirate Browser admin contact [XXX] which shows that numbers
+(550 000 known direct downloads) and dates (“most downloads during the
+first week”) do not match.
 
  [XXX] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-talk/2013-August/029703.html
  [XXX] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-talk/2013-August/029729.html
+ [XXX] http://piratebrowser.com/piratebrowser_patterns.json
  [XXX] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-talk/2013-August/029707.html
+ [XXX] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-talk/2013-August/029736.html
 
 Monthly status reports for XXX month 2013
 -----------------------------------------
@@ -212,7 +220,9 @@
 
 Help Desk Roundup
 -----------------
-This week we saw in increase in the number of users wanting to download
+
+This week Tor help desk saw an increase in the number of users wanting to downlo
+ad
 or install Orbot. Orbot can be downloaded from the Google Play store,
 the Amazon App store, f-droid.org, and guardianproject.info. Guides on
 using Orbot can be found on the Guardian Project's Orbot page[XXX], or
@@ -224,43 +234,81 @@
 [XXX]: https://www.torproject.org/docs/android.html.en
 [XXX]: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-talk/2013-August/029688.html
 
-Miscellaneous development news
-------------------------------
-
-Tails contributors meeting https://mailman.boum.org/pipermail/tails-dev/2013-Aug
-ust/003523.html
-
-Item 1 with cited source [XXX].
-
-Item 2 with cited source [XXX].
-
-Item 3 with cited source [XXX].
-
- [XXX]
- [XXX]
- [XXX]
-
-Vulnerabilities
----------------
-
-XXX: Reported vulnerabilities [XXX].
-
- [XXX] vulnerability report source
+Miscellaneous news
+------------------
+
+The next Tails contributors meeting [XXX] will happen on IRC the
+September 4th at 8pm UTC (10pm CEST). “Every one interested in contributing to
+Tails is welcome” to join #tails-dev on the OFTC network.
+
+[XXX] https://mailman.boum.org/pipermail/tails-dev/2013-August/003523.html
+
+Yawning Angel has been “designing a UDP based protocol to serve as the
+bulk data transport for something along the lines of ‘obfs3, but over
+UDP’.” They are sollicitating feedback on their initial draft of the
+Lightweight Obfuscated Datagram Protocol (LODP) [XXX].
+
+[XXX] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2013-August/005334.html
+
+Kévin Dunglas announced [XXX] their work on a PHP library for the Tor Control
+Port [XXX], released under the MIT license.
+
+[XXX] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2013-August/005340.html
+[XXX] https://github.com/dunglas/php-torcontrol/
+
+Kathy Brade and Mark Smith have released a first patch [XXX] for Mozilla's
+update mechanism which “successfully updated TBB on Linux, Windows, and
+Mac OS ‘in the lab’ using both incremental and ‘full replace’ updates.”
+This is meant for the 3.x series of the Tor Browser Bundle and
+is still a work a progress, but this is a significant milestone toward
+streamlined updates for TBB users.
+
+[XXX] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/4234#comment:19
+
+Erinn Clark announced that the software powering trac.torproject.org has
+been upgraded to version 0.12.3 [XXX]. Among several other improvements,
+this new version allowed Erinn to experiment with the often requested
+Git integration [XXX].
+
+[XXX] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2013-August/005328.html
+[XXX] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2013-September/005346.html
+
+David Goulet has released the second release candidate for the 2.0 rewrite
+of Torsocks [XXX]: “Please continue to test, review and contribute it!”
+
+[XXX] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2013-September/005359.html
+
+Much to her surprise, Erinn Clark found a “fraudulent PGP key with [her] email a
+ddress”
+on the keyservers [XXX]. “Do not under any circumstances trust
+anything that may have ever been signed or encrypted with this key” of short id
+0xCEE1590D.
+She reminded that the Tor Project official signatures are listed on the project'
+s website [XXX].
+
+[XXX] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2013-September/005348.html
+[XXX] https://www.torproject.org/docs/signing-keys.html
+
+Philipp Winter published final version of ScrambleSuit: A Polymorphic Network
+Protocol to Circumvent Censorship [XXX,XXX,XXX].
+
+ [XXX] https://twitter.com/__phw/status/374643498177138688
+ [XXX] http://www.cs.kau.se/philwint/pdf/wpes2013.pdf
+ [XXX] http://www.cs.kau.se/philwint//scramblesuit/
 
 Upcoming events
 ---------------
 
-Jul XX-XX | Event XXX brief description
-          | Event City, Event Country
-          | Event website URL
+Sep 29-01 | Tor at OpenITP Circumvention Tech Summit IV
+          | Berlin, Germany
+          | https://www.openitp.org/openitp/circumvention-tech-summit.html
           |
-Jul XX-XX | Event XXX brief description
-          | Event City, Event Country
-          | Event website URL
-
-
-This issue of Tor Weekly News has been assembled by XXX, XXX, and
-XXX.
+Oct 09-10 | Andrew speaking at Secure Poland 2013
+          | Warszawa, Poland
+          | http://www.secure.edu.pl/
+
+This issue of Tor Weekly News has been assembled by Lunar, dope457, mttp,
+and bastik.
 
 Want to continue reading TWN? Please help us create this newsletter.
 We still need more volunteers to watch the Tor community and report
@@ -272,22 +320,3 @@
   [XXX] https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/news-team
 
    Possible items:
-     * RFC: Lightweight Obfuscated Datagram Protocol (LODP)
-       [1]​https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2013-August/0053
-       34.html
-     * Tor Control PHP library
-       [2]​https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2013-August/0053
-       40.html
-     * Perl Crescent updated TBB using Mozilla's update mechanism
-       [3]https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/4234#comment:19
-     * Trac got updated, new features like the timeline showing changesets
-       in repos (configurable) and the tag cloud.
-       [4]​https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2013-August/0053
-       28.html
-
-References
-
-   1. https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2013-August/005334.html
-   2. https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2013-August/005340.html
-   3. https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/4234#comment:19
-   4. https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2013-August/005328.html

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