[tor-bugs] #5028 [Ooni]: Tor bridge scanning

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#5028: Tor bridge scanning
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 Reporter:  hellais  |          Owner:  runa                     
     Type:  project  |         Status:  assigned                 
 Priority:  normal   |      Milestone:  Sponsor F: March 15, 2012
Component:  Ooni     |        Version:                           
 Keywords:           |         Parent:                           
   Points:           |   Actualpoints:                           
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Comment(by hellais):

 Replying to [comment:36 ioerror]:
 > Replying to [comment:33 karsten]:
 > >
 > > I think I understand your concerns.  But that doesn't mean it's
 impossible to obtain "some sort of automated ground truth of bridge
 reachability from some countries" which is what we promised in the
 deliverable.
 >
 > We already have that ground truth, don't we?
 >
 > Obfu bridges are generally reachable, tls bridges are generally blocked
 either before we test or by confirmation with a follow up probe. Has that
 changed? Are we doing a scan of the obfu bridges? Or just the normal
 HTTPS/TLS bridges?
 >

 I agree with what Jake is saying. To put it in another way, what do we
 plan on discovering by doing this scan that we don't already know?
 Is this discovery worth possibly risking the disclosure of Tor bridge
 addresses to the adversary?

 > > The TCP scan of HTTPS bridges may not be the best approach, but it's
 the best we have right now.  At least so far I only heard "oh noes, don't
 do it," not "here's a better way to deliver what we promised, and we can
 do it within 3 days."  Until I hear the latter I'll stick with the
 approach we have.  I don't know if the results will be conclusive, but I
 sure want to find out.
 >
 > My suggestion is to deliver the news that we know without impacting the
 resources which are scarce. The fact that the ground truth is now "active
 probing" is really quite a thing! If that is indeed still happening, of
 course.

 Maybe we can do some extra research on the active probing being done by
 GFW. There is already a lot of information that we have
 collected with respect to this in the past and we could get more.

-- 
Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/5028#comment:37>
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