[tor-bugs] #23888 [Obfuscation/Snowflake]: Creating a Snowflake WebExtension addon

[Tor Bug Tracker & Wiki]

#23888: Creating a Snowflake WebExtension addon
---------------------------------------+--------------------
     Reporter:  oarel                  |      Owner:  (none)
         Type:  enhancement            |     Status:  new
     Priority:  Medium                 |  Milestone:
    Component:  Obfuscation/Snowflake  |    Version:
     Severity:  Normal                 |   Keywords:
Actual Points:                         |  Parent ID:
       Points:                         |   Reviewer:
      Sponsor:                         |
---------------------------------------+--------------------
 The idea is to create a WebExtension that allows one to become a Snowflake
 bridge by just installing it. That way it only suffices to install an
 extension and forget about it, unlike the approach of keeping a tab always
 open with the snowflake JS code.

 Since it's based on WebExtensions it can be easily deployed for other
 browsers in their addon store.

 I did try to make one myself but I don't have the expertise and time to
 debug all the problems that resulted. One of the important take aways that
 I learned in that process was that automatically loading scripts from
 external sites is prohibited and will result in the addon not passing the
 review in the addon store, so the `snowflake.js` and `modernizr.js` should
 be embedded with the addon. However, this would require modifying
 `snowflake.js` since when it's loaded locally it throws some typeError and
 doesn't show that there's some connection to snowflake.bamsoftware.com in
 the browser console. For debugging, to verify that the addon works as
 intended one may load it from `about:debug` and check `about:networking`
 in the DNS and WebSockets part.

 For the implementation these resources should be loaded in the background
 to ensure a permanent state with this in the `manifest.json`,

 {{{
 "background": {
                 "page": "pages/Snowflake.html"
         },
 }}}

--
Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/23888>
Tor Bug Tracker & Wiki <https://trac.torproject.org/>
The Tor Project: anonymity online