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[tor-project] Anti-censorship team meeting notes, 2026-02-26

Hey everyone!

Here are our meeting logs:
https://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2026/tor-meeting.2026-02-26-16.01.html

And our meeting pad:

Anti-censorship work meeting pad
--------------------------------
Anti-censorship
--------------------------------

Next meeting: Thursday, March 5 16:00 UTC
Facilitator: shelikhoo

^^^(See Facilitator Queue at tail)

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

This week's Facilitator: onyinyang
== 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 the Tor Project and Tor community. 


== 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 projects, 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 
        * Project 158 <-- meskio working on it
            * https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/anti-censorship/-/issues/?label_name%5B%5D=Project%20158 


== Announcements ==

== Discussion ==
    * (new) orbot asked us about using snowflake assets for their kindness mode improvements 
    * snowflake client go 1.22 support
        * https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowflake/-/issues/40490#note_3354767 
        * golang workspaces
            * https://go.dev/ref/mod#workspaces
            * https://go.dev/doc/tutorial/workspaces
            * https://go.dev/blog/get-familiar-with-workspaces
    * snowflake proxy pool depleted
        * https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowflake/-/issues/40519         * we can recommend proxy operators that are concerned to reduce the poll-interval, by default is set to 5s         * the actuall user experience right now is not too bad, snowflake connects after a couple of retries         * lets investigate what is the actual problem in Iran blocking proxies and we'll see what we can do about it 


== Actions ==

    *

== Interesting links ==

        * https://nordvpn.com/blog/nordwhisper-protocol/ 2025

== 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? 
    * Next in the Reading Group Queue:
        *

== 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): 2026-02-26
    Last week:
        - tried to roll back KCP version
        - more work on implementing proxy fairness proposal
        - worked on proxy fairness simulations
        - attended FOCI
        - opened issue for potential snowflake proxy censorship in Iran
            - https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowflake/-/issues/40519 
    Next week:
        - roll back KCP version
        - research snowflake enumeration attacks (snowflake#40396)
        - implement proxy fairness proposal
        - follow up on snowflake rendezvous failures (snowflake#40447)
        - revisit conjure integration with lyrebird
        - take a look at potential snowflake orbot bug
            - https://github.com/guardianproject/orbot-android/issues/1183


dcf: 2026-02-26
    Last week:
        - commented on a "??" geoip fix in snowflake proxy https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowflake/-/merge_requests/672#note_3351445         - posted notes about the Russian National Domain Name System (NSDI) https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/censorship-analysis/-/issues/40070#note_3351482 https://github.com/net4people/bbs/issues/580         - merged a metrics-timeline merge request https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/network-health/metrics/timeline/-/merge_requests/19         - posted ideas about counter-whitelisting circumvention in Russia https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/censorship-analysis/-/issues/40070#note_3351820 
    Next week:
        - see about upgrading tor on the snowflake-02 bridge https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowflake/-/issues/40511         - open issue to have snowflake-client log whenever KCPInErrors is nonzero https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowflake/-/issues/40262#note_2886018             - parent: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowflake/-/issues/40267 
Help with:

meskio: 2026-02-26
    Last week:
        - rdsys stopped parsing extrainfo, no PTs were distributed (rdsys#291) 
        - fetch translations in rdsys was failing (rdsys!633)
        - look at the snowflake proxies block in Iran (snowflake#40519)
        - release and deploy rdsys 1.2 (rdsys#296)
        - make template for rdsys releases (rdsys!632)
    Next week:
        - no webtunnel bridges in the https distributor (rdsys#262)


Shelikhoo: 2026-02-26
    Last Week:
         - [Testing] Unreliable+unordered WebRTC data channel transport for Snowflake rev2 (cont.)( https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowflake/-/merge_requests/315 ) testing environment setup/research 
            - Merge request Reviews
            - Vantage point maintaince
            - Expore DNS tunneling options(https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/team/-/issues/173)             - fix containrrr/watchtower is no longer maintained (https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowflake/-/issues/40505)             - Vaultwarden Data Loss Report: [error: cannot decrypt] (https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/team/-/issues/42511)             - Disable Annoyance Element "#ai-panels/Gitlab Duo Agent Chat" at Gitlab instance (https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/team/-/issues/42509) 
    Next (working) Week/TODO:
        - Merge request reviews
        - [Deployment]Unreliable+unordered WebRTC data channel transport for Snowflake rev2 (cont.)( https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowflake/-/merge_requests/315 ) Building custom Tor Browser with patch applied 
        - MR Review
        - Design experment for internet shutdown
        - Vantage point maintaince
            - Deploy DNS tunneling options(https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/team/-/issues/173) 



onyinyang: 2026-02-26
    Last week(s):
            - attended FOCI
        - Working on https distributor language selector https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/rdsys/-/issues/196 

Next week:
    - Away until March 18
    - Continue work on rdsys#196
    - Continue Investigating rdsys#248 i.e., why dysfunctional webtunnel bridges are being distributed 
        - Troubleshooting conjure not connecting in China
            - waiting for more information from conjure authors/maintainers

      Switch back to some of these:
          As time allows:
              - Lox still seems to be filling up the disk on the rdsys-test server despite changes made to delete old entries, look into what's going wrong                Blog post for conjure: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/conjure/-/issues/46               - review Tor browser Lox integration https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser/-/merge_requests/1300 
              - add TTL cache to lox MR for duplicate responses:
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/lox/-/merge_requests/305

        - Work on outstanding milestone issues:
            - key rotation automation

        Later:
        pending decision on abandoning lox wasm in favour of some kind of FFI? https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser/-/issues/43096): 
            - add pref to handle timing for pubkey checks in Tor browser
            - add trusted invitation logic to tor browser integration:
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser/-/issues/42974
        - improve metrics collection/think about how to show Lox is working/valuable 
        - sketch out Lox blog post/usage notes for forum

    (long term things were discussed at the meeting!):
        - brainstorming grouping strategies for Lox buckets (of bridges) and gathering context on how types of bridges are distributed/use in practice             Question: What makes a bridge usable for a given user, and how can we encode that to best ensure we're getting the most appropriate resources to people?                 1. Are there some obvious grouping strategies that we can already consider?                     e.g., by PT, by bandwidth (lower bandwidth bridges sacrificed to open-invitation buckets?), by locale (to be matched with a requesting user's geoip or something?)                 2. Does it make sense to group 3 bridges/bucket, so trusted users have access to 3 bridges (and untrusted users have access to 1)? More? Less? 

theodorsm: 2026-02-19
        Last weeks:
            - Bumping pion stack version with backport: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowflake/-/merge_requests/662O 
            - Implementing DTLS 1.3 in pion
        Next weeks:
            - Implementing DTLS 1.3 in pion
        Help with:
            -



Facilitator Queue:
    cohosh onyinyang shelikhoo meskio
1. First available staff in the Facilitator Queue will be the facilitator for the meeting 2. After facilitating the meeting, the facilitator will be moved to the tail of the queue 

--
---
onyinyang

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