[tor-bugs] #11183 [Pluggable transport]: Make an HTTP requestor Firefox extension for meek-client

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#11183: Make an HTTP requestor Firefox extension for meek-client
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 Reporter:  dcf                  |          Owner:  asn
     Type:  project              |         Status:  new
 Priority:  normal               |      Milestone:
Component:  Pluggable transport  |        Version:
 Keywords:  meek                 |  Actual Points:
Parent ID:  #10935               |         Points:
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 Following the discussion at https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-
 dev/2014-February/006266.html and the summary at
 [[doc/meek#HowtolooklikebrowserHTTPS]], I think our best option for having
 TLS that looks like a browser is to make a browser extension that meek-
 client uses as a tool to make HTTPS requests.

 To summarize: meek-client needs to make HTTPS requests, but needs to do so
 with a TLS signature that isn't trivially blockable. A browser doesn't
 have a blockable TLS signature, so we can have meek-client drive a browser
 to make requests on its behalf. Rather than ship an entire separate
 browser to users, we can use an extension in Tor Browser itself, one whose
 only purpose is to make HTTPS requests using the browser's networking
 code, bypassing the browser's proxy settings that would otherwise send all
 requests through Tor.

 The communication goes:
   browser ↔ tor ↔ meek-client ↔ extension ↔ www.google.com

 There will need to be some kind of IPC between meek-client and the
 extension. I haven't figured out how that will work. Maybe the extension
 can be an HTTP proxy--that would be super easy to integrate with meek-
 client. But maybe you don't want an HTTP proxy running in your browser
 bundle, even if it's only intended for a specific purpose. Maybe the IPC
 needs to be authenticated somehow, and the extension needs to somehow
 inform the other process of how to contact it.

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Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/11183>
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