[tor-project] Anti-censorship team monthly report: July 2020

[Philipp Winter]

Hi all,

Here's the July 2020 report of Tor's anti-censorship team:

Snowflake
=========

* Rolled out a feature to match up Snowflake proxies and clients based
  on their NAT type.  This will drastically improve performance for
  Snowflake clients behind restrictive NATs.
  https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowflake/-/issues/34129

* Added more STUN servers to default configuration in Tor Browser. This
  solves two issues: it allows clients to perform NAT type discovery to
  be matched up with more compatible proxies, and it unblocks Snowflake
  in areas that block access to Google's STUN servers.
  https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowflake/-/issues/30579

* Adapted Snowflake CI to the new GitLab instance.
  https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowflake/-/issues/40003

* Investigated proxy-go timeouts.
  https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowflake/-/issues/30498

* Fixed a small bug that could cause infinite hangs in Snowflake proxies
  and clients.
  https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowflake/-/issues/40005

* Worked on a docker container for easy deployment of Snowflake proxies.
  https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowflake/-/issues/40002

* Moved forward with our Android app UI.
  https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowflake-mobile/-/issues/11


BridgeDB
========

* Fixed a critical bug that prevented BridgeDB from reloading
  bridge descriptors every 30 minutes, as it's supposed to.  This bug
  significantly delayed the time until a new bridge was handed out to
  users.  Hopefully, the patch will result in bridge operators seeing
  more users.
  https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/bridgedb/-/issues/40001

* We are spending an increasing amount of time planning and
  experimenting with a reimplementation of BridgeDB.  The
  reimplementation will make it easier to integrate new components like
  bridgestrap and new distributors like Salmon.
  https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/bridgedb/-/issues/32900

* Added internal metrics to BridgeDB's metrics.  You can find the latest
  internal metrics here:
  https://collector.torproject.org/recent/bridgedb-metrics/
  https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/bridgedb/-/issues/31422

* Wrote a patch that helps BridgeDB take into account bridge
  reachability measurements from wolpertinger.
  https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/bridgedb/-/issues/34260

* Fixed incorrect and missing parts in BridgeDB's metrics specification.
  https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/bridgedb/-/issues/40003

* Fixed a broken link in BridgeDB's README and ported BridgeDB's "make
  pylint" target to Python 3.
  https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/bridgedb/-/issues/33647

* Fixed a bug that would confuse BridgeDB when it dealt with Gmail's
  quoted responses.
  https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/bridgedb/-/issues/33835

* Made progress on creating a research plan for understanding the issues
  that users run into when interacting with BridgeDB.
  https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/ux/research/-/issues/4


Miscellaneous
=============

* Simplified bridgestrap's code base and fixed a bug in its cashing
  system.
  https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/bridgestrap/

* Merged a volunteer-provided bridge setup guide for Windows.
  https://community.torproject.org/relay/setup/bridge/windows/