[tor-reports] Isis' April 2014 Report

Thu Jun 5 09:32:30 UTC 2014

# -*- mode: org; coding: utf-8 -*-

*** status report 2014/04
**** Isis' April 2014: Review

In April 2014, I:

 * Redesigned the HTTPS interface for BridgeDB, so that now the links for TBB
   downloads are updated. The explanation instructions no longer mention
   Vidalia, but instead explain how to enter bridge lines into TorLauncher.

 * Redesigned BridgeDB's system for getting translated strings, so that emails
   may also be translated now.

 * Redesigned from scratch BridgeDB's email distributor, because it was full
   of bugs, needed its templates and strings completely overhauled, had almost
   no unittest coverage (except for the tests which sysrqb recently wrote),
   and had no documentation.

**** Tickets worked on in April 2014:
***** Component: Trac (1 match)
#11557 restore trac privileges for isis

***** Component: Torflow (1 match)
#5464 Decentralized measurement for network load balancing

***** Component: TorBrowserButton (1 match)
#9906 TBB3 new identity surprises users by closing all tabs

***** Component: Tor bundles/installation (1 match)
#7501 Audit PDF.js

***** Component: Tor (3 matches)
#9729 Make bridges publish additional ORPort addresses in their descriptor
#10849 tunneldirconns 0 makes hidden services publish descriptors over http -- and they're refused
#11513 Make UNRESTRICTED_SERVER_CIPHER_LIST non-stupid

***** Component: Quality Assurance and Testing (1 match)
#10417 BridgeDB should be built and tested on Jenkins

***** Component: Pluggable transport (1 match)
#11501 Improve visual identity of Tor's PTs

***** Component: BridgeDB (21 matches)
#5232 Import bridges into BridgeDB in a separate thread and database transaction
#5384 Image Steganography for BridgeFinder
#7207 BridgeHerder: A tool to manage bridges
#9174 Bridgedb obfs detection not relieable
#9199 Rethink the logging of BridgeDB
#9316 BridgeDB should export statistics
#9385 bridgedb's email responder should fuzzy match email addresses within time periods
#9652 Treat Pluggable Transports as Individual Bridges
#9678 "Select Language" button on bridges.tpo
#9875 Write tests for BridgeDB's log module
#10194 Allow for preferential bridge assignment to buckets
#10239 Payment for bridges (and effects this would have)
#10803 bridges.torproject.org still mentions Vidalia
#11346 BridgeDB should link to the BridgeDB homepage somewhere
#11347 BridgeDB should have a separate landing page for TorLauncher users
#11377 New BridgeDB GimpCaptcha should be case insensitive (or should say it's sensitive)
#11467 "Type the two words" on BridgeDB CAPTCHA confusing to users
#11475 Get bridges email says to use Vidalia
#11514 Captcha not working
#11522 Current exception in BridgeDB email distributor
#11664 BridgeDB's email server is currently not responding

**** In May 2014, I plan to work on:

I plan to start work on the database backend improvements for BridgeDB
(proposal #226). 

I also plan to start designing an API for new distributors to send information
pertaining to a client's (a client of that specific distributor) request for
bridges to the database management system, and receive JSON (or some similar
standardized, easy-to-parse, format) with the bridge lines in response.

Continue to work with GSoC student on new Twitter distributor.

Continue to create unittests and fix bugs in what remains of the old BridgeDB
codebase.

**** Relevant Papers/Research:
O’Donnell, Ryan. "A history of the PCP theorem." Course notes on the PCP
  Theorem and Hardness of Approximation, Autumn (2005).

Canetti, Ran, and Marc Fischlin. "Universally composable commitments."
  Advances in Cryptology—Crypto 2001. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2001.
  http://www.trust.rub.de/media/ei/lehrmaterialien/Seminar_kryptanalyse_und_beweisbare_sicherheit/UCC.pdf

Bitansky, Nir, et al. "Recursive composition and bootstrapping for SNARKs and
  proof-carrying data." Proceedings of the 45th annual ACM symposium on
  Symposium on theory of computing. ACM, 2013.
  http://www.cs.tau.ac.il/~tromer/papers/bootsnark-20120403.pdf

Ben-Sasson, Eli, et al. "SNARKs for C: Verifying program executions
  succinctly and in zero knowledge." Advances in
  Cryptology–CRYPTO 2013. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2013. 90-108.
  http://www.tau.ac.il/~tromer/papers/csnark-20130816.pdf

Parno, Bryan, et al. "Pinocchio: Nearly practical verifiable computation."
  Security and Privacy (SP), 2013 IEEE Symposium on. IEEE, 2013.
  http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.310.5946&rep=rep1&type=pdf

Danezis, George, et al. "Pinocchio coin: building zerocoin from a succinct
  pairing-based proof system." Proceedings of the First ACM workshop on
  Language support for privacy-enhancing technologies. ACM, 2013.
  http://www0.cs.ucl.ac.uk/staff/G.Danezis/papers/DanezisFournetKohlweissParno13.pdf

-- 
 ♥Ⓐ isis agora lovecruft
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