[tor-commits] r24471: {website} Adding Orbot project ideas provided by Nathan. (website/trunk/getinvolved/en)
Damian Johnson
atagar1 at gmail.com
Sun Mar 27 19:54:11 UTC 2011
Author: atagar
Date: 2011-03-27 19:54:10 +0000 (Sun, 27 Mar 2011)
New Revision: 24471
Modified:
website/trunk/getinvolved/en/volunteer.wml
Log:
Adding Orbot project ideas provided by Nathan.
Modified: website/trunk/getinvolved/en/volunteer.wml
===================================================================
--- website/trunk/getinvolved/en/volunteer.wml 2011-03-27 19:16:30 UTC (rev 24470)
+++ website/trunk/getinvolved/en/volunteer.wml 2011-03-27 19:54:10 UTC (rev 24471)
@@ -402,7 +402,10 @@
<p>
<b>Project Ideas:</b><br />
- <i><a href="#orbotDevelopment">More on Orbot & Android OS-specific development</a></i>
+ <i><a href="#orbot-torbutton">TorButton for Mobile Firefox 4 or Custom Browser on Android</a></i><br />
+ <i><a href="#orbot-userInterface">Build a better user interface for Orbot</a></i><br />
+ <i><a href="#orbot-optimisation">Core Tor mobile optimisation</a></i><br />
+ <i><a href="#orbot-orlibAndOutreach">Orbot integration library and community outreach</a></i>
</p>
<a id="project-torbutton"></a>
@@ -650,6 +653,53 @@
<p>For more information see <a href="https://tails.boum.org/todo/boot_menu/">https://tails.boum.org/todo/boot_menu/</a></p>
</li>
+ <a id="orbot-torbutton"></a>
+ <li>
+ <b>TorButton for Mobile Firefox 4 or Custom Browser on Android</b>
+ <br>
+ Priority: <i>High</i>
+ <br>
+ Effort Level: <i>High</i>
+ <br>
+ Skill Level: <i>High</i>
+ <br>
+ Likely Mentors: <i>Nathan (n8fr8), Jake, Mike Perry</i>
+ <p>Initial work has been done on implementing a proxy-setting add-on for
+ Firefox on Android (see <a
+ href="https://github.com/guardianproject/ProxyMob">ProxyMob</a>), but a
+ full port of TorButton needs to be done (dependent upon Firefox 4 port of
+ TorButton). The other approach is to implement a custom "Tor
+ Browser" based on Firefox or Webkit browser. See <a
+ href="http://code.google.com/p/torora/wiki/Android">Torora</a> for progress
+ on this so far.</p>
+ </li>
+
+ <a id="orbot-userInterface"></a>
+ <li>
+ <b>Build a better user interface for Orbot</b>
+ <br>
+ Priority: <i>High</i>
+ <br>
+ Effort Level: <i>Medium</i>
+ <br>
+ Skill Level: <i>Medium</i>
+ <br>
+ Likely Mentors: <i>Nathan (n8fr8), Jake</i>
+ <p>Improved home screen to show confirmation of connection (via a TorCheck
+ API call), better statistics about data transferred (up/down), number of
+ circuits connected, quality of connection and so on. The "Tether
+ Wifi" Android application is a good model to follow in how it shows a
+ realtime count of bytes transferred as well as notifications when wifi
+ clients connect. In addition, better handling of Tor system and error
+ messages would also be very helpful, include use of standard Android
+ operating systems notifications. The addition of a wizard or tutorial
+ walkthrough for novice users to explain to them exactly what is and what is
+ not anonymized or protected would greatly improve the likelihood they will
+ use Orbot correctly. All of this should work on the range of screens and
+ device types now offered for Android, from 2" phone to 10"
+ Tablet.</p>
+ </li>
+
<a id="resistCensorship"></a>
<li>
<b>Improving Tor's ability to resist censorship</b>
@@ -726,7 +776,7 @@
<br>
Skill Level: <i>Medium</i>
<br>
- Likely Mentors: <i>Damian</i>
+ Likely Mentors: <i>Damian (atagar)</i>
<p><a href="<page projects/arm>">Arm</a> is a Tor command line status
monitor on *nix environments (Linux, Mac, and BSD). It functions much like
top does, giving a CLI overlay of Tor's bandwidth usage, connections,
@@ -802,60 +852,6 @@
changes in performance on machines in different roles automatically.</p>
</li>
- <a id="orbotDevelopment"></a>
- <li>
- <b>More on Orbot & Android OS-specific development</b>
- <br>
- Priority: <i>Medium</i>
- <br>
- Effort Level: <i>High</i>
- <br>
- Skill Level: <i>Medium to High</i>
- <br>
- Likely Mentors: <i>Nathan, Jake</i>
- <p><b>Android Java UI work:</b> Improved home screen to show better
- statistics about data transferred (up/down), number of circuits
- connected, quality of connection and so on. The "Tether Wifi"
- Android application is a good model to follow in how it shows
- a realtime count of bytes transferred as well as notifications
- when wifi clients connect. In addition, better display/handling
- of Tor system/error messages would also be very helpful. Finally,
- the addition of a wizard or tutorial walkthrough for novice
- users to explain to them exactly what is and what is not anonymized
- or protected would greatly improve the likelihood they will use
- Orbot correctly.</p>
-
- <p><b>Android Java OS/Core app work:</b> Better system-wide
- indication, either via the notification bar, "Toast" pop-up dialogs
- or some other indicator, that an application's traffic is indeed
- moving through Orbot/Tor. For instance, right now you need to
- first go to a torcheck web service to ensure your browser is
- routing via Tor. Orbot should be able to notify you that circuits
- are being opened, used, etc. The aforementioned data transfer
- tracker might provide this type of awareness as well.</p>
-
- <p><b>Android Java Library/Community Outreach work:</b> We need
- to package a simple library for use with third-party application
- to easily enable them to support "Torification" on non-rooted
- devices (i.e. w/o transparent proxying). This library should
- include a wrapper for the Apache HTTPClient library, a utility
- class for detecting the state of Orbot connectivity, and other
- relevant/useful things an Android app might need to anonymize
- itself. This work would include the creation of the library,
- documentation, and sample code. Outreach or effort to implement
- the library within other open-source apps would follow.</p>
-
- <p><b>Android OS/C/Linux work:</b> The port of Tor to Android
- is basically a straight cross-compile to Linux ARM. There has
- been no work done in looking the optimization of Tor within a
- mobile hardware environment, on the ARM processor or other
- Android hardware, or on mobile networks. It should be noted,
- that even without optimization, Tor is handling the mobile
- network environment very well, automatically detecting change
- in IP addresses, reconnecting circuits, etc. across switching
- from 2G to 3G to Wifi, and so forth.</p>
- </li>
-
<a id="simulateSlowConnections"></a>
<li>
<b>Simulator for slow Internet connections</b>
@@ -1070,6 +1066,74 @@
design/Photoshop fu, since we might want/need some shiny new icons too.</p>
</li>
+ <a id="orbot-optimisation"></a>
+ <li>
+ <b>Core Tor mobile optimisation</b>
+ <br>
+ Priority: <i>Medium</i>
+ <br>
+ Effort Level: <i>Medium</i>
+ <br>
+ Skill Level: <i>High</i>
+ <br>
+ Likely Mentors: <i>Nathan (n8fr8), Jake</i>
+ <p>
+ The existing port of Tor to Android is basically a straight
+ cross-compile to Linux ARM. There has been no work done in looking at
+ possible optimizations of Tor within a mobile hardware environment or on
+ mobile networks. In addition, a number of additional Android OS APIs are
+ available (such as wireless network status) that could be taken
+ advantage of.
+ </p>
+
+ <p>
+ It should be noted, that even without optimisation, Tor is handling the
+ mobile network environment very well, automatically detecting change in
+ IP addresses, opening circuits, etc, as the device switches from no
+ coverage to 2G, 3G or Wifi constantly as it changes position. However,
+ this observation of "very well", is just based on user
+ experience, and not any detailed study of what exactly is happening, and
+ what threats might exist because of this constantly changing network state.
+ </p>
+
+ <p>
+ Finally, the build process needs to be moved to the Android NDK from the
+ custom GCC toolchain we are now using, and compatibility with Android
+ 2.3 and 3.x Honeycomb OS need to be verified.
+ </p>
+
+ <p>
+ For more information see the <a
+ href="https://svn.torproject.org/svn/projects/android/trunk/Orbot/BUILD">Orbot
+ build documentation</a>.
+ </p>
+ </li>
+
+ <a id="orbot-orlibAndOutreach"></a>
+ <li>
+ <b>Orbot integration library and community outreach</b>
+ <br>
+ Priority: <i>Medium</i>
+ <br>
+ Effort Level: <i>Low</i>
+ <br>
+ Skill Level: <i>Medium</i>
+ <br>
+ Likely Mentors: <i>Nathan (n8fr8)</i>
+ <p>
+ We need additional work on <a
+ href="https://github.com/guardianproject/orlib">ORLib</a>, our library for
+ use with third-party application to easily enable them to support
+ "Torification" on non-rooted devices (i.e. w/o transparent
+ proxying). This library includes a SOCKS client, a wrapper for the Apache
+ HTTPClient library, a utility class for detecting the state of Orbot
+ connectivity, and other relevant/useful things an Android app might need to
+ anonymize itself. This work would includes direct development of the
+ library, documentation, and sample code. Outreach or effort to implement
+ the library within other open-source apps is also needed.
+ </p>
+ </li>
+
<a id="vidaliaNetworkMap"></a>
<li>
<b>An Improved and More Usable Network Map in Vidalia</b>
@@ -1120,7 +1184,7 @@
<br>
Skill Level: <i>Medium</i>
<br>
- Likely Mentors: <i>Damian</i>
+ Likely Mentors: <i>Damian (atagar)</i>
<p>
Arm has several unique features, some of the most interesting being its
connection listing (correlating netstat results against the Tor consensus)
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