[tor-project] Anti-censorship team meeting notes, 2022-09-29

meskio meskio at torproject.org
Thu Sep 29 17:16:17 UTC 2022


Hey everyone!

Here are our meeting logs:

http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2022/tor-meeting.2022-09-29-15.58.html

And our meeting pad:

Anti-censorship work meeting pad

--------------------------------

Next meeting: Thursday Oct 6 16:00 UTC

Weekly meetings, every Thursday at 16:00 UTC, in #tor-meeting at OFTC
(channel is logged while meetings are in progress)

== Goal of this meeting ==

Weekly check-in about the status of anti-censorship work at Tor.
Coordinate collaboration between people/teams on anti-censorship at Tor.

== Links to Useful documents ==

	* Our anti-censorship roadmap:
		* Roadmap: https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/anti-censorship/-/boards
	* The anti-censorship team's wiki page:
		* https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/team/-/wikis/home
	* Past meeting notes can be found at:
		* https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-project/
	* Tickets that need reviews:  from sponsors we are working on:
		* All needs review tickets:
			* https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/anti-censorship/-/merge_requests?scope=all&utf8=%E2%9C%93&state=opened&assignee_id=None
		* Sponsor 28
			* must-do tickets: https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/milestones/10
			* possible tickets: https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/issues?scope=all&utf8=%E2%9C%93&state=opened&label_name%5b%5d=Sponsor%2028&milestone_title=None
		* Sponsor 96
			* https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/milestones/24

== Announcements ==

	* 

== Discussion ==

	* snowflake-01 bridge resources
		* https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/anti-censorship-team/2022-September/000247.html and following
		* summary of optimizations so far: https://forum.torproject.net/t/iran-circumventing-censorship-with-tor/4590/20
			* cumulative merge request https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowflake/-/merge_requests/100
		* the bridge is doing about 2.5 Gbps for most of the day, but it clearly has hit some kind of resource limitation, even with apparent CPU and RAM headroom
		* current thinking is that it has to do with conntrack in the kernel and perhaps network interface driver tuning
			* https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/anti-censorship-team/2022-September/000262.html
		* will require some preparation and a reboot, planned to happen later today
			* move some operation to second NIC https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowflake/-/issues/40186
			* disable conntrack https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowflake/-/issues/40189
			* reboot https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowflake/-/issues/40189
	* Snowflake Enable Distributed Snowflake Support at broker src shell
		* https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/team/-/issues/95
		* we are blocked to enable it as it will reject all proxies that are not updated, mostly standalone proxies
		* 28% of the unrestricted proxies haven't updated
		* current Tor Browser's snowflake-client doesn't have relay URL support, we need to change that: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser-build/-/issues/40629
		* we will try to reject old proxy next Monday, and a revert guide will be prepared by shelikhoo to help every team member revert this chance as if needed
	* snowflake proxy resources
		* https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/anti-censorship-team/2022-September/000249.html and following
		* there is a squeeze on proxies with unrestricted NAT
		* merge request to have existing proxies provide more service: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowflake-webext/-/merge_requests/47
		* had probetest restart itself more frequently, 4h instead of 7d https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/anti-censorship-team/2022-September/000267.html
	* Moat went down, has now been fixed
		* Too many file descriptors issue, probably from increased load
		* meskio will regenerate the captchas
	* Iran obfs4 block by protocol src shell
		* https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/team/-/issues/96#note_2838730
		* a connection to fresh new private bridge was blocked when crossing the Iranian border
		* Iran might be blocking random looking protocols, or just anything they can't recognize

== Actions ==


== Interesting links ==


== Reading group ==

	* We will discuss "" on
		* 
		* Questions to ask and goals to have:
			* What aspects of the paper are questionable?
			* Are there immediate actions we can take based on this work?
			* Are there long-term actions we can take based on this work?
			* Is there future work that we want to call out in hopes that others will pick it up?

== Updates ==

Name:
    This week:
        - What you worked on this week.
    Next week:
        - What you are planning to work on next week.
    Help with:
	     - Something you need help with.

cecylia (cohosh): last updated 2022-09-29
	Last week:
    - monitored snowflake proxy pool
    - implemented more frequent polling and higher max clients for unrestricted proxies
	    - https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowflake-webext/-/merge_requests/47
	  - set timeout for probetest to 4h
	    - https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/anti-censorship-team/2022-September/000267.html
	  - answered forum posts and did some ticket maintenance
	  - handled moat outage
		  - https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/rdsys/-/issues/121
	This week:
		- continue monitoring snowflake proxy pool and implement some improvements
		- resume Conjure work
		- wrap up manifest v3 candidate
	Needs help with:

dcf: 2022-09-29
	Last week:
		- did a bunch of profiling and performance optimizations on the snowflake-01 bridge
			- profiling: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowflake/-/issues/40086#note_2836854 ff.
			- increase instances from 4 to 8 https://bugs.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowflake/40173
			- increase instances from 8 to 12 https://bugs.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowflake/40176
			- reduce websocketconn allocation, reduce keepalive timeout https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowflake/-/issues/40175
			- reduce copy buffer allocations https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowflake/-/issues/40177
			- reduce the size of send queues https://bugs.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowflake/40179
			- reduce allocation in queuing incoming packets (didn't have an effect) https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowflake/-/issues/40187
		- made a graph of Tor usage in Iran in the past week
			- https://forum.torproject.net/t/graphs-of-user-counts-from-iran-since-the-onset-of-shutdowns/4843/1
	Next week:
		- assist with disabling of conntrack and reboot of snowflake-01 bridge https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowflake/-/issues/40186 https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowflake/-/issues/40189 https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowflake/-/issues/40188
		- disable non-WireGuard SSH access to snowflake-02
		- migrate goptlib to gitlab https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/team/-/issues/86#note_2823122
		- try Conjure PT development version https://forum.torproject.net/t/tor-dev-introducing-a-conjure-pt-for-tor/4429
	Help with:

meskio: 2022-09-29
   Last week:
       - try and fail to do the final deploy of rdsys-gettor
       - catch up after two weeks AFK
       - set up a Bridge for Iran
   Next week:
       - deploy rdsys-gettor
       - fix language issues in BridgeDB (bridgedb#40056)

Shelikhoo: 2022-09-29
   Last Week:
		- [Merge Request Awaiting] Add SOCKS5 forward proxy support to snowflake (snowflake!64)
		- [Discussion & Deployment] Rollout of Distributed Snowflake Support
		- [Coding & Deployment] Proposal: Centralized Probe Result Collector (anti-censorship/team#54)
		- [Research] HTTPT Planning https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/httpt/-/issues/1
		- [Research] Generate Charts for presention: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/team/-/issues/92#note_2836476
		- [Research] Iran 2 hop Bridge investigation (https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/team/-/issues/96#note_2838730, https://github.com/net4people/bbs/issues/127)
		- [Research] Investigate Distributed Snowflake Rollout Issue (https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/team/-/issues/95)
   Next Week:
		- [Research] WebTunnel Planning (Continue)
		- Generate Charts for presention: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/team/-/issues/92#note_2836476 (Continue)
		- [Research] Add upload connection info to rdsys in WebTunnel
		- [Research] Fix vantage point summary upload in China

Itchy Onion: 2022-09-29
    Last week:
        - update snowflake plugin API to RACE 2.3.0
        - continue debugging the message dropping issue
    This week:
        - continue debugging the message dropping issue





-- 
meskio | https://meskio.net/
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