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[tor-project] Anti-censorship team meeting notes, 2026-05-28

Hey everyone!
Here are our meeting logs: https://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2026/tor-meeting.2026-05-28-16.00.html 

And our meeting pad:

Anti-censorship
--------------------------------

Next meeting: Thursday, May 28 16:00 UTC
Facilitator: cohosh

^^^(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: shelikhoo
== 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 

    Projects the TPI anti-censorship team is working on:

    Project 201: Signaling channels
milestone for may https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/milestones/83
board https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/boards/2675?label_name[]=Project%20201 



== Announcements ==
Signaling channels evaluation conclusions: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/team/-/work_items/192#note_3418348 

    feel free to post comments in the issue if you have
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/team/-/wikis/Signaling-Channels/channels?version_id=6ff454383c08a0c843ad6cc2fd2473489c279e36&version_number=10
Report on Rust TLS Fingerprint Diversification/Imitation Implementation Routes
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/team/-/work_items/194#note_3418590 


== Discussion ==

    Request from GP for orbot-* proxy type names
more specific than "iptproxy" which non-orbot IPtProxy apps are now using 

    orbot-ios, orbot-android


== Actions ==



== Interesting links ==

    https://github.com/net4people/bbs/issues/603#issuecomment-4529373091
rumors about relay traffic in russia, might block all p2p traffic not going through approved TURN servers 


== Reading group ==
We will discuss "QUICstep: Evaluating connection migration based QUIC censorship circumvention " on June 11 

    https://petsymposium.org/popets/2026/popets-2026-0014.pdf

    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): 2026-05-28

    Last week:
- worked on documentation of signalling channel use (https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/team/-/work_items/189)
- helped with initial exploration of writing SQS in rust (https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/team/-/work_items/191) 

    Next week:

        - continue signaling channel documentation

        - continue to review PT spec implementation in UAT
- make proxy-bridge reachability checks robust to bridge outages (snowflake#40504) 

        - more work on letting broker inform proxies how often to poll

            - revise and deploy proxy support
- follow up about running shadow simulations for snowflake performance 

        - revisit conjure integration with lyrebird

        - take a look at potential snowflake orbot bug

            - https://github.com/guardianproject/orbot-android/issues/1183



dcf: 2026-05-28

    Last week:
- upgraded tor on snowflake bridges to 0.4.9.8 for security release https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowflake/-/work_items/40542
- did analysis of zlib compression of snowflake rendezvous messages https://gitlab.torproject.org/dcf/snowflake-rendezvous-zlib https://lists.torproject.org/mailman3/hyperkitty/list/anti-censorship-team@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx/thread/ZK3KJ6F3BCJRVNS55BMB6MXQNTTEFRTB/ 

    Next week:

    Help with:


meskio: 2026-05-28
    Last week:
        - investigate ideas for signaling channels (team#192)
        - investigate problems with netlify (tor-browser#44997)
- c-tor crashed on bridgestrap, add an alert to detect it (bridgestrap#49) 
    Next week:
        - AFK


Shelikhoo: 2026-05-28
    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
- [Research] proxy pool overload and potential blocking in Iran ( https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowflake/-/issues/40077#note_3361718 )
- [Research] Add three NAT type buckets to the snowflake broker ( https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowflake/-/issues/40077#note_3361718 ) 

    - WebTunnel Censorship Research

    - Vantage point maintaince
- Research on Signaling Channel: TLS fingerprint diversification/imitation 

    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 
        - Vantage point maintaince
- [Research] proxy pool overload and potential blocking in Iran ( https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowflake/-/issues/40077#note_3361718 )
- [Research] Add three NAT type buckets to the snowflake broker ( https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowflake/-/issues/40077#note_3361718 ) 

    - WebTunnel Censorship Research
- Research on Signaling Channel: TLS fingerprint diversification/imitation 

    - Writing Reports on TLS fingerprint diversification/imitation


onyinyang: 2026-05-28

    Last week(s):

    - Continued working on implementing Project 201:

    - AMPCache Library in Rust

    - SQS Rustlang Library in Rust

    Next week:

    - Continue working on Project 201

    -AMPCache Rustlang Library

    - SQS Rustlang Library

       - Continue tasks for project #170 (Postponed for May)


   Switch back to some of these:
       As time allows:
          - 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
- 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: 2026-05-28

    Last weeks:

    - Researching possible DTLS block in Russia

    - https://github.com/net4people/bbs/issues/603#issuecomment-4451730751

    - Implementing DTLS 1.3 in pion

    Next weeks:

    - Implementing DTLS 1.3 in pion

    Help with:

    -




Facilitator Queue:

    onyinyang cohosh meskio  shelikhoo
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 
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