[tor-project] Anti-censorship team monthly report: December 2019

Philipp Winter phw at torproject.org
Fri Jan 3 17:24:56 UTC 2020


Snowflake
=========

* Published Snowflake WebExtension 0.2.0, enables metrics on different
  types of proxy implementation.

* Fixed a data race in the Snowflake broker.
  <https://bugs.torproject.org/32576>

* Started collecting metrics on Snowflake proxy types at the broker.
  <https://bugs.torproject.org/31157>

* Continued investigations of Snowflake health and blocking in China.
  <https://bugs.torproject.org/32657>

* Expanded Snowflake test coverage.
  <https://bugs.torproject.org/29259>

GetTor
======

* Fixed distributor update script to prevent filling up disk space on
  the GetTor machine.
  <https://bugs.torproject.org/32712>

Obfs4 and bridges
=================

* Published obfs4 bridge docker image version 0.3:
  <https://community.torproject.org/relay/setup/bridge/docker/>

* Added a new default bridges located at the University of Minnesota.
  <https://bugs.torproject.org/32547>

* Added a cache to bridgestrap, so scan results can persist across
  restarts.

BridgeDB
========

* Started porting BridgeDB to Python 3.  Numerous unit tests now fail
  because strings and bytes are strictly separated in Python 3.  This
  will require significantly more work.
  <https://bugs.torproject.org/30946>

* Summarised an upcoming project deliverable in which we will build a
  feedback loop between BridgeDB and OONI.  OONI wants bridges to test
  and BridgeDB wants to know where its bridges are blocked.  We should
  get the two to talk to each other.
  <https://bugs.torproject.org/32740>

* Worked with Karsten to have some of our BridgeDB metrics published on
  Tor Metrics.  The graphs are now online at
  <https://metrics.torproject.org/bridgedb-transport.html>
  and
  <https://metrics.torproject.org/bridgedb-distributor.html>.
  <https://bugs.torproject.org/32135>

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

* Continued talking to our admins to unify our monitoring infrastructure
  using both Nagios and Prometheus.
  <https://bugs.torproject.org/31159>

* We discussed the idea of making our bridge authority more resistant to
  outages by setting up two physical instances behind a single,
  "virtual" IP address.
  <https://bugs.torproject.org/31878#comment:3>

Outreach
========

* On January 9th, Philipp will give a talk on censorship resistance and
  Tor at FH Hagenberg in Austria:
  <https://twitter.com/torproject/status/1208102010832277504>


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