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[tor-commits] r24437: {website} Adding example proposals for GSoC. (in website/trunk/about: . en gsocProposal)
Author: atagar
Date: 2011-03-25 15:53:52 +0000 (Fri, 25 Mar 2011)
New Revision: 24437
Added:
website/trunk/about/gsocProposal/
website/trunk/about/gsocProposal/gsoc10-proposal-soat.txt
Modified:
website/trunk/about/en/gsoc.wml
Log:
Adding example proposals for GSoC.
Modified: website/trunk/about/en/gsoc.wml
===================================================================
--- website/trunk/about/en/gsoc.wml 2011-03-25 15:06:02 UTC (rev 24436)
+++ website/trunk/about/en/gsoc.wml 2011-03-25 15:53:52 UTC (rev 24437)
@@ -197,6 +197,22 @@
students. So if you haven't filled up your summer plans yet, please
consider spending some time working with us to make Tor better!
</p>
+
+ <h2><a class="anchor" href="#Template">Application Examples</a></h2>
+
+ <p>
+ Below are examples of some GSoC applications from previous years we liked.
+ The best applications tend to go through several iterations so you're
+ highly encouraged to send drafts early.
+ </p>
+
+ <ul>
+ <li><h4><a href="http://tor.spanning-tree.org/proposal.html";>DNSEL Rewrite</a> by Harry Bock</h4></li>
+ <li><h4><a href="http://kjb.homeunix.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/KevinBerry-GSoC2010-TorProposal.html";>Extending Tor Network Metrics</a> by Kevin Berry</h4></li>
+ <li><h4><a href="../about/gsocProposal/gsoc10-proposal-soat.txt">SOAT Expansion</a> by John Schanck</h4></li>
+ <li><h4><a href="http://www.atagar.com/misc/gsocBlog09/";>Website Pootle Translation</a> by Damian Johnson</h4></li>
+ </ul>
+
</div>
<!-- END MAINCOL -->
<div id = "sidecol">
Added: website/trunk/about/gsocProposal/gsoc10-proposal-soat.txt
===================================================================
--- website/trunk/about/gsocProposal/gsoc10-proposal-soat.txt (rev 0)
+++ website/trunk/about/gsocProposal/gsoc10-proposal-soat.txt 2011-03-25 15:53:52 UTC (rev 24437)
@@ -0,0 +1,164 @@
+1. What project would you like to work on? Use our ideas lists as a starting
+point or make up your own idea. Your proposal should include high-level
+descriptions of what you're going to do, with more details about the parts you
+expect to be tricky. Your proposal should also try to break down the project
+into tasks of a fairly fine granularity, and convince us you have a plan for
+finishing it.
+
+The Snakes on a Tor exit scanner has the potential to dramatically improve the
+safety of Tor users by ferreting out misconfigured and malicious exit nodes.
+At present it suffers from certain stability issues which prevent it from being
+run for long periods of time, and from an overabundance of false positives in
+the results it generates. While I would ideally like to work on designing new
+routines for detecting subtle content modifications and for better handling
+dynamic content -- the issues of stability and false positives need to be
+addressed first. I've begun looking at the SoaT source code and running some
+preliminary experiments, identifying several small stability issues. In the
+coming weeks I'll begin to collect a body of false positives which I'll study
+and design new filters around. The most difficult part of this project may be
+determining what actual positive results look like, and developing a threat
+model that predicts the kinds of modifications which malicious exit nodes are
+likely to make. I'm sure this question has been addressed by members of the Tor
+community, so much of my early work this summer will involve talking to
+community members to better understand the kinds of malicious exit nodes which
+have been seen in the past, and determining how well the current SoaT
+implementation performs against these known attacks.
+
+Timeline:
+ April 26 - May 24:
+
+ * Start to get an idea of what the threat model looks like, continue
+ performing stability tests and gathering a diverse collection of results
+ to study.
+
+ May 24 - June 17:
+
+ * Throw everything I can at SoaT - make it crash and fix the bugs.
+ * Keep collecting data!
+
+ June 17 - July 17:
+
+ * In depth analysis of false positives. Use both false positives and real
+ modifications (or modifications generated by myself which emulate the
+ types of things predicted by the threat model) to develop a data set that
+ SoaT's filters can be evaluated against offline.
+
+ * Use the data set to improve existing filters and create new ones.
+
+ July 17 - August 2:
+ Here the timeline splits depending on progress thus far.
+ Case 1 - There are still too many false positives:
+
+ * Keep developing new filters and tuning old ones.
+
+ Case 2 - False positives have been reduced to an acceptable level:
+
+ * Get SoaT running full time on a dedicated machine. Improve reporting so
+ that SoaT can communicate its suspicions to the Tor team.
+ * Start drafting plans for improving the system.
+
+ August 2 - 16:
+
+ * Perform an extensive test of the system and write up a report of where it
+ * does well and what can be improved.
+
+
+2. Point us to a code sample: something good and clean to demonstrate that you
+know what you're doing, ideally from an existing project.
+
+I'm one of the two lead developers for the Anomos project, the code for which
+can be browsed here [https://git.anomos.info/?p=anomos.git;a=summary].
+
+Anomos is in Python, and I handle almost all of the network code (which makes
+extensive use of SSL), so this project is particularly representative of where
+my skill set intersects with that needed to work on SoaT.
+
+
+3. Why do you want to work with The Tor Project / EFF in particular?
+
+I think Tor is one of the most important free software projects in development
+today - I'm very interested in the political issues surrounding access to
+information, and have been an EFF member for several years now. Tor has also
+been the primary inspiration for my work on Anomos. What particularly attracts
+me about Tor is the sustained emphasis its developers have placed on making it
+a platform for research. This emphasis has attracted a large community of
+skilled anonymity researchers with whom I would be honored to work with and
+learn from as I continue my study of anonymity and begin to conduct my own
+research.
+
+
+4. Tell us about your experiences in free software development environments. We
+especially want to hear examples of how you have collaborated with others
+rather than just working on a project by yourself.
+
+I develop all of my own software under free licenses and make an effort to work
+in groups as often as possible. Anomos, the largest project I've worked on,
+would not have been possible in a non-free environment. It has received
+tremendous support from the community in terms of development, debugging,
+translation, documentation, and testing - the project simply would not have
+been possible without support from the free software community. I run free
+software on all of my computers, and make an active effort to report or patch
+bugs whenever possible.
+
+
+5. Will you be working full-time on the project for the summer, or will you
+have other commitments too (a second job, classes, etc)? If you won't be
+available full-time, please explain, and list timing if you know them for other
+major deadlines (e.g. exams). Having other activities isn't a deal-breaker, but
+we don't want to be surprised.
+
+I will be available full-time to work on Tor. I plan on attending a couple
+conferences and spending a lot of time outdoors, but that won't take me away
+from my work for more than a few days.
+
+
+6. Will your project need more work and/or maintenance after the summer ends?
+What are the chances you will stick around and help out with that and other
+related projects?
+
+My project will almost certainly be completed during the summer. That said,
+I'm very likely to remain active with the Tor project after the summer. I'm
+currently planning on conducting anonymity research as a large part of my
+undergraduate thesis work and would love for that work to involve Tor.
+
+
+7. What is your ideal approach to keeping everybody informed of your progress,
+problems, and questions over the course of the project? Said another way, how
+much of a "manager" will you need your mentor to be?
+
+Especially when it comes to a project I'm really interested in - I'm extremely
+self motivated and require very little management. I generally check in with a
+project manager once per week unless a problem or question arises. I make
+extensive use of version control software, commit frequently, and keep my work
+in a publicly accessible repositories, so my mentor will be able to monitor my
+progress at their leisure. I'm also happy to blog or otherwise communicate my
+progress on a regular basis to the project community.
+
+
+8. What school are you attending? What year are you, and what's your
+major/degree/focus? If you're part of a research group, which one?
+
+I'm in my third year at Hampshire College studying computer science with a
+focus on distributed and peer-to-peer systems. I occasionally work at the
+University of Massachusetts, Amherst conducting BitTorrent research under Arun
+Venkataramani.
+
+
+9. How can we contact you to ask you further questions? Google doesn't share
+your contact details with us automatically, so you should include that in your
+application. In addition, what's your IRC nickname? Interacting with us on IRC
+will help us get to know you, and help you get to know our community.
+
+ You can email me: john@xxxxxxxxxxx
+ GPG Key ID: 0xA1D39D09
+ GPG Fingerprint: 7131 3E78 7500 3BB2 FCDD FA97 91ED 834D A1D3 9D09
+ Instant message me via XMPP: john@xxxxxxxxxxx
+ Or talk to me on IRC: susurrusus on OFTC (I idle in #tor)
+
+
+10. Is there anything else we should know that will make us like your project
+more?
+
+The project I've proposed here is just a starting point - I think I have a lot
+to bring to the Tor project and that this summer will just be the start of a
+lasting academic relationship with the community.
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