[tor-bugs] #5614 [Pluggable transport]: Develop an experimental Python pluggable transport library

[Tor Bug Tracker & Wiki]

#5614: Develop an experimental Python pluggable transport library
---------------------------------+------------------------------------------
 Reporter:  karsten              |          Owner:  asn                     
     Type:  project              |         Status:  new                     
 Priority:  normal               |      Milestone:  Sponsor Z: March 1, 2013
Component:  Pluggable transport  |        Version:                          
 Keywords:                       |         Parent:                          
   Points:                       |   Actualpoints:                          
---------------------------------+------------------------------------------
 In sponsor F year 2 deliverable 19 (#5549) we concluded that writing a
 Python pluggable transport library is feasible.  This ticket is about the
 actual development of an experimental Python library for pluggable
 transports.  Deliverable 19 says "If we decide it's smart, get it
 started," but it doesn't make any promises how far we'll get.  That's why
 this is a sponsor Z deliverable that isn't tied to the sponsor F milestone
 in November.

 George outlined a few possible next steps (which should probably become
 child tickets soon):

  - George knows a couple of people who are coding Python pluggable
 transports; one of them is wiretapped with banana phone, another one is
 the Portland university guys.  He wants to prepare a pluggable transport
 library for them.  Roger adds that flash proxy also has a Python part.  In
 general, Roger thinks that looking at other Python pluggable transports
 and trying to help them all use our framework should be part of this
 deliverable.

  - George thinks that most of the future transports we are thinking of can
 be handled (performance-wise) by a Python program.  He wants to prepare an
 obfs2-like thing and benchmark it by feeding it with thousands of
 connections.  George wants to see how many of them it will handle (he
 expects ''many'').

  - George also wants to prepare a very lite managed proxy library, which
 will read environment variables etc.  He also wants to write a very simple
 pluggable transport in Python which will use that managed proxy library.

  - George wants to evaluate py2exe (and the other similar things).

 Here are a few more random notes which seem relevant:

  - Nick suggests that we could do something minimalistic with twisted.
 George hopes to be able to use all the other web protocols baked in
 twisted for transports.

  - George will try to learn the truth about bytearrays and cryptographic
 material overwriting.  The idea is that by using bytearrays in Python one
 can actually overwrite cryptographic material "securely".

-- 
Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/5614>
Tor Bug Tracker & Wiki <https://trac.torproject.org/>
The Tor Project: anonymity online