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en/volunteer.wml   5) #include "head.wmi" TITLE="Tor: Volunteer" CHARSET="UTF-8"

volunteer.html     6) 
volunteer.html     7) <div class="main-column">
volunteer.html     8) 
volunteer.html     9) <!-- PUT CONTENT AFTER THIS TAG -->

en/volunteer.wml  10) <h2>A few things everyone can do now:</h2>

volunteer.html    11) <ol>

en/volunteer.wml  12) <li>Please consider <a href="<page docs/tor-doc-relay>">running
en/volunteer.wml  13) a relay</a> to help the Tor network grow.</li>
en/volunteer.wml  14) <li>Tell your friends! Get them to run relays. Get them to run hidden

volunteer.html    15) services. Get them to tell their friends.</li>

en/volunteer.wml  16) <li>If you like Tor's goals, please <a href="<page donate>">take a moment
en/volunteer.wml  17) to donate to support further Tor development</a>. We're also looking
en/volunteer.wml  18) for more sponsors &mdash; if you know any companies, NGOs, agencies,
en/volunteer.wml  19) or other organizations that want anonymity / privacy / communications
en/volunteer.wml  20) security, let them know about us.</li>
en/volunteer.wml  21) <li>We're looking for more <a href="<page torusers>">good examples of Tor
en/volunteer.wml  22) users and Tor use cases</a>. If you use Tor for a scenario or purpose not
en/volunteer.wml  23) yet described on that page, and you're comfortable sharing it with us,
en/volunteer.wml  24) we'd love to hear from you.</li>

volunteer.html    25) </ol>
volunteer.html    26) 

en/volunteer.wml  27) <p>Tor has <a href="<page open-positions>">two open positions</a>,
en/volunteer.wml  28) please <a href="<page contact>">contact us</a> if you are qualified!</p>
en/volunteer.wml  29) 

en/volunteer.wml  30) <a id="Usability"></a>

en/volunteer.wml  31) <h2><a class="anchor" href="#Usability">Supporting Applications</a></h2>

volunteer.html    32) <ol>

en/volunteer.wml  33) <li>We need more and better ways to intercept DNS requests so they don't "leak" their

en/volunteer.wml  34) request to a local observer while we're trying to be anonymous. (This
en/volunteer.wml  35) happens because the application does the DNS resolve before going to
en/volunteer.wml  36) the SOCKS proxy.)</li>

en/volunteer.wml  37) <li>Tsocks/dsocks items:

en/volunteer.wml  38) <ul>
en/volunteer.wml  39) <li>We should patch Dug Song's "dsocks" program to use Tor's
en/volunteer.wml  40) <i>mapaddress</i> commands from the controller interface, so we
en/volunteer.wml  41) don't waste a whole round-trip inside Tor doing the resolve before
en/volunteer.wml  42) connecting.</li>
en/volunteer.wml  43) <li>We need to make our <i>torify</i> script detect which of tsocks or
en/volunteer.wml  44) dsocks is installed, and call them appropriately. This probably means
en/volunteer.wml  45) unifying their interfaces, and might involve sharing code between them
en/volunteer.wml  46) or discarding one entirely.</li>
en/volunteer.wml  47) </ul>

en/volunteer.wml  48) </li>

en/volunteer.wml  49) <li>People running relays tell us they want to have one BandwidthRate

en/volunteer.wml  50) during some part of the day, and a different BandwidthRate at other
en/volunteer.wml  51) parts of the day. Rather than coding this inside Tor, we should have a
en/volunteer.wml  52) little script that speaks via the <a href="<page gui/index>">Tor
en/volunteer.wml  53) Controller Interface</a>, and does a setconf to change the bandwidth

en/volunteer.wml  54) rate. There is one for Unix and Mac already (it uses bash and cron),

en/volunteer.wml  55) but Windows users still need a solution.

en/volunteer.wml  56) </li>

volunteer.html    57) <li>Speaking of geolocation data, somebody should draw a map of the Earth

en/volunteer.wml  58) with a pin-point for each Tor relay. Bonus points if it updates as the

en/volunteer.wml  59) network grows and changes. Unfortunately, the easy ways to do this involve
en/volunteer.wml  60) sending all the data to Google and having them draw the map for you. How
en/volunteer.wml  61) much does this impact privacy, and do we have any other good options?</li>

volunteer.html    62) </ol>
volunteer.html    63) 

en/volunteer.wml  64) <a id="Advocacy"></a>

en/volunteer.wml  65) <h2><a class="anchor" href="#Advocacy">Advocacy</a></h2>
en/volunteer.wml  66) <ol>

en/volunteer.wml  67) <li>Create a <a href="https://wiki.torproject.org/noreply/CommunityLogos">community logo</a> under a Creative Commons license that all can use and modify</li>

en/volunteer.wml  68) <li>Create a presentation that can be used for various user group meetings around the world</li>

en/volunteer.wml  69) <li>Create a video about your positive uses of Tor.  Some have already
en/volunteer.wml  70) started on <a href="http://media.torproject.org/video/">Tor's Media
en/volunteer.wml  71) server</a>.</li> 
en/volunteer.wml  72) <li>Create a poster, or a set of posters, around a theme,
en/volunteer.wml  73) such as "Tor for Freedom!"</li>

en/volunteer.wml  74) </ol>
en/volunteer.wml  75) 

en/volunteer.wml  76) <a id="Documentation"></a>
en/volunteer.wml  77) <h2><a class="anchor" href="#Documentation">Documentation</a></h2>

volunteer.html    78) <ol>

en/volunteer.wml  79) <li>Please help Matt Edman with the documentation and how-tos for his

en/volunteer.wml  80) Tor controller,

en/volunteer.wml  81) <a href="<page vidalia/index>">Vidalia</a>.</li>

en/volunteer.wml  82) <li>Evaluate and document

en/volunteer.wml  83) <a href="https://wiki.torproject.org/wiki/TheOnionRouter/TorifyHOWTO">our

en/volunteer.wml  84) list of programs</a> that can be configured to use Tor.</li>

volunteer.html    85) <li>We need better documentation for dynamically intercepting

en/volunteer.wml  86) connections and sending them through Tor. tsocks (Linux), dsocks (BSD),

en/volunteer.wml  87) and freecap (Windows) seem to be good candidates, as would better
en/volunteer.wml  88) use of our new TransPort feature.</li>

en/volunteer.wml  89) <li>We have a huge list of <a href="https://wiki.torproject.org/noreply/TheOnionRouter/SupportPrograms">potentially useful

volunteer.html    90) programs that interface to Tor</a>. Which ones are useful in which
volunteer.html    91) situations? Please help us test them out and document your results.</li>

en/volunteer.wml  92) <li>Help translate the web page and documentation into other
en/volunteer.wml  93) languages. See the <a href="<page translation>">translation

en/volunteer.wml  94) guidelines</a> if you want to help out. We especially need Arabic or
en/volunteer.wml  95) Farsi translations, for the many Tor users in censored areas.</li>

volunteer.html    96) </ol>
volunteer.html    97) 

en/volunteer.wml  98) <a id="Coding"></a>

en/volunteer.wml  99) <a id="Summer"></a>
en/volunteer.wml 100) <a id="Projects"></a>

en/volunteer.wml 101) <h2><a class="anchor" href="#Projects">Good Coding Projects</a></h2>

en/volunteer.wml 102) 
en/volunteer.wml 103) <p>

en/volunteer.wml 104) You may find some of these projects to be good <a href="<page

en/volunteer.wml 105) gsoc>">Google Summer of Code 2010</a> ideas. We have labelled each idea

en/volunteer.wml 106) with how useful it would be to the overall Tor project (priority), how
en/volunteer.wml 107) much work we expect it would be (effort level), how much clue you should
en/volunteer.wml 108) start with (skill level), and which of our <a href="<page
en/volunteer.wml 109) people>#Core">core developers</a> would be good mentors.
en/volunteer.wml 110) If one or more of these ideas looks promising to you, please <a
en/volunteer.wml 111) href="<page contact>">contact us</a> to discuss your plans rather than
en/volunteer.wml 112) sending blind applications. You may also want to propose your own project
en/volunteer.wml 113) idea which often results in the best applications.

en/volunteer.wml 114) </p>
en/volunteer.wml 115) 

en/volunteer.wml 116) <ol>
en/volunteer.wml 117) 

en/volunteer.wml 118) <li>

en/volunteer.wml 119) <b>Tor Browser Bundle for Linux/Mac OS X</b>

en/volunteer.wml 120) <br />

en/volunteer.wml 121) Priority: <i>High</i>

en/volunteer.wml 122) <br />

en/volunteer.wml 123) Effort Level: <i>High</i>
en/volunteer.wml 124) <br />
en/volunteer.wml 125) Skill Level: <i>Medium</i>
en/volunteer.wml 126) <br />

en/volunteer.wml 127) Likely Mentors: <i>Steven, Andrew, Jacob</i>

en/volunteer.wml 128) <br />

en/volunteer.wml 129) The Tor Browser Bundle incorporates Tor, Firefox, Polipo, and the Vidalia user
en/volunteer.wml 130) interface (and optionally the <a href="http://pidgin.im/">Pidgin</a> Instant Messaging client). Components are pre-configured to operate in a secure way, and it has very few dependencies on the

en/volunteer.wml 131) installed operating system. It has therefore become one of the most
en/volunteer.wml 132) easy to use, and popular, ways to use Tor on Windows.
en/volunteer.wml 133) <br />

en/volunteer.wml 134) However, there is currently no working package for Linux and Mac OS

en/volunteer.wml 135) X, so this project would be to implement Tor Browser Bundle for these
en/volunteer.wml 136) platforms. This will involve modifications to Vidalia (C++), possibly
en/volunteer.wml 137) Firefox (C) then creating and testing the launcher on a range of

en/volunteer.wml 138) operating system versions and configurations to verify portability.  Some work on this was completed as part of the Google Summer of Code 2009.  

en/volunteer.wml 139) <br />
en/volunteer.wml 140) Students should be familiar with application development on one or
en/volunteer.wml 141) preferably both of Linux and Mac OS X, and be comfortable with C/C++
en/volunteer.wml 142) and shell scripting.
en/volunteer.wml 143) <br />
en/volunteer.wml 144) Part of this project could be usability testing of Tor Browser Bundle,
en/volunteer.wml 145) ideally amongst our target demographic.
en/volunteer.wml 146) That would help a lot in knowing what needs to be done in terms of bug
en/volunteer.wml 147) fixes or new features. We get this informally at the moment, but a more
en/volunteer.wml 148) structured process would be better.
en/volunteer.wml 149) </li>
en/volunteer.wml 150) 

en/volunteer.wml 151) <li>
en/volunteer.wml 152) <b>Help track the overall Tor Network status</b>

en/volunteer.wml 153) <br />

en/volunteer.wml 154) Priority: <i>Medium to High</i>
en/volunteer.wml 155) <br />
en/volunteer.wml 156) Effort Level: <i>Medium</i>
en/volunteer.wml 157) <br />
en/volunteer.wml 158) Skill Level: <i>Medium</i>
en/volunteer.wml 159) <br />

en/volunteer.wml 160) Likely Mentors: <i>Karsten, Roger</i>

en/volunteer.wml 161) <br />

en/volunteer.wml 162) It would be great to set up an automated system for tracking network
en/volunteer.wml 163) health over time, graphing it, etc. Part of this project would involve
en/volunteer.wml 164) inventing better metrics for assessing network health and growth. Is the
en/volunteer.wml 165) average uptime of the network increasing? How many relays are qualifying
en/volunteer.wml 166) for Guard status this month compared to last month? What's the turnover
en/volunteer.wml 167) in terms of new relays showing up and relays shutting off? Periodically
en/volunteer.wml 168) people collect brief snapshots, but where it gets really interesting is
en/volunteer.wml 169) when we start tracking data points over time.
en/volunteer.wml 170) <br />

en/volunteer.wml 171) Data could be collected from the Tor Network Scanners in <a
en/volunteer.wml 172) href="https://svn.torproject.org/svn/torflow/trunk/README">TorFlow</a>, from

en/volunteer.wml 173) the server descriptors that each relay publishes, and from other
en/volunteer.wml 174) sources. Results over time could be integrated into one of the <a
en/volunteer.wml 175) href="https://torstatus.blutmagie.de/">Tor Status</a> web pages, or be
en/volunteer.wml 176) kept separate. Speaking of the Tor Status pages, take a look at Roger's
en/volunteer.wml 177) <a href="http://archives.seul.org/or/talk/Jan-2008/msg00300.html">Tor
en/volunteer.wml 178) Status wish list</a>.
en/volunteer.wml 179) </li>
en/volunteer.wml 180) 
en/volunteer.wml 181) <li>
en/volunteer.wml 182) <b>Improving Tor's ability to resist censorship</b>
en/volunteer.wml 183) <br />

en/volunteer.wml 184) Priority: <i>Medium to High</i>

en/volunteer.wml 185) <br />

en/volunteer.wml 186) Effort Level: <i>Medium</i>

en/volunteer.wml 187) <br />
en/volunteer.wml 188) Skill Level: <i>High</i>
en/volunteer.wml 189) <br />

en/volunteer.wml 190) Likely Mentors: <i>Nick, Roger, Steven</i>

en/volunteer.wml 191) <br />

en/volunteer.wml 192) The Tor 0.2.1.x series makes <a

en/volunteer.wml 193) href="<gitblob>doc/design-paper/blocking.html">significant

en/volunteer.wml 194) improvements</a> in resisting national and organizational censorship.
en/volunteer.wml 195) But Tor still needs better mechanisms for some parts of its
en/volunteer.wml 196) anti-censorship design.  For example, current Tors can only listen on a
en/volunteer.wml 197) single address/port combination at a time.  There's

en/volunteer.wml 198) <a href="<gitblob>doc/spec/proposals/118-multiple-orports.txt">a

en/volunteer.wml 199) proposal to address this limitation</a> and allow clients to connect
en/volunteer.wml 200) to any given Tor on multiple addresses and ports, but it needs more
en/volunteer.wml 201) work.  Another anti-censorship project (far more difficult) is to try
en/volunteer.wml 202) to make Tor more scanning-resistant.  Right now, an adversary can identify

en/volunteer.wml 203) <a href="<gitblob>doc/spec/proposals/125-bridges.txt">Tor bridges</a>

en/volunteer.wml 204) just by trying to connect to them, following the Tor protocol, and
en/volunteer.wml 205) seeing if they respond.  To solve this, bridges could

en/volunteer.wml 206) <a href="<gitblob>doc/design-paper/blocking.html#tth_sEc9.3">act like

en/volunteer.wml 207) webservers</a> (HTTP or HTTPS) when contacted by port-scanning tools,
en/volunteer.wml 208) and not act like bridges until the user provides a bridge-specific key.
en/volunteer.wml 209) <br />
en/volunteer.wml 210) This project involves a lot of research and design. One of the big
en/volunteer.wml 211) challenges will be identifying and crafting approaches that can still
en/volunteer.wml 212) resist an adversary even after the adversary knows the design, and
en/volunteer.wml 213) then trading off censorship resistance with usability and robustness.
en/volunteer.wml 214) </li>
en/volunteer.wml 215) 
en/volunteer.wml 216) <li>

en/volunteer.wml 217) <b>Tuneup Tor!</b>

en/volunteer.wml 218) <br />

en/volunteer.wml 219) Priority: <i>Medium to High</i>

en/volunteer.wml 220) <br />

en/volunteer.wml 221) Effort Level: <i>Medium to High</i>

en/volunteer.wml 222) <br />

en/volunteer.wml 223) Skill Level: <i>High</i>
en/volunteer.wml 224) <br />
en/volunteer.wml 225) Likely Mentors: <i>Nick, Roger, Mike, Karsten</i>
en/volunteer.wml 226) <br />
en/volunteer.wml 227) Right now, Tor relays measure and report their own bandwidth, and Tor
en/volunteer.wml 228) clients choose which relays to use in part based on that bandwidth.
en/volunteer.wml 229) This approach is vulnerable to
en/volunteer.wml 230) <a href="http://freehaven.net/anonbib/#bauer:wpes2007">attacks where
en/volunteer.wml 231) relays lie about their bandwidth</a>;
en/volunteer.wml 232) to address this, Tor currently caps the maximum bandwidth
en/volunteer.wml 233) it's willing to believe any relay provides.  This is a limited fix, and
en/volunteer.wml 234) a waste of bandwidth capacity to boot.  Instead,
en/volunteer.wml 235) Tor should possibly measure bandwidth in a more distributed way, perhaps
en/volunteer.wml 236) as described in the
en/volunteer.wml 237) <a href="http://freehaven.net/anonbib/author.html#snader08">"A Tune-up for
en/volunteer.wml 238) Tor"</a> paper
en/volunteer.wml 239) by Snader and Borisov. One could use current testing code to
en/volunteer.wml 240) double-check this paper's findings and verify the extent to which they
en/volunteer.wml 241) dovetail with Tor as deployed in the wild, and determine good ways to
en/volunteer.wml 242) incorporate them into their suggestions Tor network without adding too
en/volunteer.wml 243) much communications overhead between relays and directory
en/volunteer.wml 244) authorities.

en/volunteer.wml 245) </li>
en/volunteer.wml 246) 
en/volunteer.wml 247) <li>

en/volunteer.wml 248) <b>Improving Polipo on Windows</b>

en/volunteer.wml 249) <br />

en/volunteer.wml 250) Priority: <i>Medium to High</i>

en/volunteer.wml 251) <br />
en/volunteer.wml 252) Effort Level: <i>Medium</i>
en/volunteer.wml 253) <br />
en/volunteer.wml 254) Skill Level: <i>Medium</i>
en/volunteer.wml 255) <br />

en/volunteer.wml 256) Likely Mentors: <i>Martin, Chris</i>

en/volunteer.wml 257) <br />

en/volunteer.wml 258) Help port <a
en/volunteer.wml 259) href="http://www.pps.jussieu.fr/~jch/software/polipo/">Polipo</a> to
en/volunteer.wml 260) Windows. Example topics to tackle include:
en/volunteer.wml 261) 1) the ability to asynchronously
en/volunteer.wml 262) query name servers, find the system nameservers, and manage netbios
en/volunteer.wml 263) and dns queries.
en/volunteer.wml 264) 2) manage events and buffers
en/volunteer.wml 265) natively (i.e. in Unix-like OSes, Polipo defaults to 25% of ram, in
en/volunteer.wml 266) Windows it's whatever the config specifies). 3) some sort of GUI config
en/volunteer.wml 267) and reporting tool, bonus if it has a systray icon with right clickable
en/volunteer.wml 268) menu options. Double bonus if it's cross-platform compatible.

en/volunteer.wml 269) 4) allow the software to use the Windows Registry and handle proper
en/volunteer.wml 270) Windows directory locations, such as "C:\Program Files\Polipo"

en/volunteer.wml 271) </li>
en/volunteer.wml 272) 

en/volunteer.wml 273) <li>

en/volunteer.wml 274) <b>Tor Controller Status Event Interface</b>

en/volunteer.wml 275) <br />

en/volunteer.wml 276) Priority: <i>Medium</i>
en/volunteer.wml 277) <br />
en/volunteer.wml 278) Effort Level: <i>Medium</i>
en/volunteer.wml 279) <br />

en/volunteer.wml 280) Skill Level: <i>Low to Medium</i>

en/volunteer.wml 281) <br />
en/volunteer.wml 282) Likely Mentors: <i>Matt</i>
en/volunteer.wml 283) <br />

en/volunteer.wml 284) There are a number of status changes inside Tor of which the user may need

en/volunteer.wml 285) to be informed. For example, if the user is trying to set up his Tor as a
en/volunteer.wml 286) relay and Tor decides that its ports are not reachable from outside

en/volunteer.wml 287) the user's network, we should alert the user. Currently, all the user

en/volunteer.wml 288) gets is a couple log messages in Vidalia's 'message log' window, which they

en/volunteer.wml 289) likely never see since they don't receive a notification that something
en/volunteer.wml 290) has gone wrong. Even if the user does actually look at the message log,
en/volunteer.wml 291) most of the messages make little sense to the novice user.
en/volunteer.wml 292) <br />
en/volunteer.wml 293) Tor has the ability to inform Vidalia of many such status changes, and
en/volunteer.wml 294) we recently implemented support for a couple of these events. Still,
en/volunteer.wml 295) there are many more status events the user should be informed of and we
en/volunteer.wml 296) need a better UI for actually displaying them to the user.
en/volunteer.wml 297) <br />
en/volunteer.wml 298) The goal of this project then is to design and implement a UI for
en/volunteer.wml 299) displaying Tor status events to the user. For example, we might put a
en/volunteer.wml 300) little badge on Vidalia's tray icon that alerts the user to new status
en/volunteer.wml 301) events they should look at. Double-clicking the icon could bring up a
en/volunteer.wml 302) dialog that summarizes recent status events in simple terms and maybe

en/volunteer.wml 303) suggests a remedy for any negative events if they can be corrected by

en/volunteer.wml 304) the user. Of course, this is just an example and one is free to

en/volunteer.wml 305) suggest another approach.
en/volunteer.wml 306) <br />

en/volunteer.wml 307) A person undertaking this project should have good UI design and layout

en/volunteer.wml 308) and some C++ development experience. Previous experience with Qt and

en/volunteer.wml 309) Qt's Designer will be very helpful, but are not required. Some

en/volunteer.wml 310) English writing ability will also be useful, since this project will
en/volunteer.wml 311) likely involve writing small amounts of help documentation that should
en/volunteer.wml 312) be understandable by non-technical users. Bonus points for some graphic
en/volunteer.wml 313) design/Photoshop fu, since we might want/need some shiny new icons too.
en/volunteer.wml 314) </li>
en/volunteer.wml 315) 

en/volunteer.wml 316) <li>

en/volunteer.wml 317) <b>Improve our unit testing process</b>

en/volunteer.wml 318) <br />

en/volunteer.wml 319) Priority: <i>Medium</i>

en/volunteer.wml 320) <br />

en/volunteer.wml 321) Effort Level: <i>Medium</i>
en/volunteer.wml 322) <br />
en/volunteer.wml 323) Skill Level: <i>Medium</i>
en/volunteer.wml 324) <br />
en/volunteer.wml 325) Likely Mentors: <i>Nick, Roger</i>
en/volunteer.wml 326) <br />
en/volunteer.wml 327) Tor needs to be far more tested. This is a multi-part effort. To start
en/volunteer.wml 328) with, our unit test coverage should rise substantially, especially in
en/volunteer.wml 329) the areas outside the utility functions. This will require significant
en/volunteer.wml 330) refactoring of some parts of Tor, in order to dissociate as much logic
en/volunteer.wml 331) as possible from globals.
en/volunteer.wml 332) <br />
en/volunteer.wml 333) Additionally, we need to automate our performance testing. We've got
en/volunteer.wml 334) buildbot to automate our regular integration and compile testing already
en/volunteer.wml 335) (though we need somebody to set it up on Windows),
en/volunteer.wml 336) but we need to get our network simulation tests (as built in <a
en/volunteer.wml 337) href="https://svn.torproject.org/svn/torflow/trunk/README">TorFlow</a>)
en/volunteer.wml 338) updated for more recent versions of Tor, and designed to launch a test
en/volunteer.wml 339) network either on a single machine, or across several, so we can test
en/volunteer.wml 340) changes in performance on machines in different roles automatically.
en/volunteer.wml 341) </li>
en/volunteer.wml 342) 
en/volunteer.wml 343) <li>

en/volunteer.wml 344) <b>Help with independent Tor client implementations</b>

en/volunteer.wml 345) <br />
en/volunteer.wml 346) Priority: <i>Medium</i>
en/volunteer.wml 347) <br />
en/volunteer.wml 348) Effort Level: <i>High</i>
en/volunteer.wml 349) <br />
en/volunteer.wml 350) Skill Level: <i>Medium to High</i>
en/volunteer.wml 351) <br />
en/volunteer.wml 352) Likely Mentors: <i>Karsten, Nick</i>
en/volunteer.wml 353) <br />

en/volunteer.wml 354) We're currently working on Tor clients for Java, Android, and Maemo
en/volunteer.wml 355) environments.  The first step is to get a handle on the current state of
en/volunteer.wml 356) the project in which you are interested in helping; Tor for Java,
en/volunteer.wml 357) Android/Orbot, or Tor for Maemo. Check out the repository and
en/volunteer.wml 358) familiarlize yourself with the source code.  Further, support for requesting or even

en/volunteer.wml 359) providing Tor hidden services would be neat, but not required.
en/volunteer.wml 360) <br />
en/volunteer.wml 361) A prospective developer should be able to understand and write new Java

en/volunteer.wml 362) code, including a Java cryptography API. Being able to read C code would be helpful,

en/volunteer.wml 363) too. One should be willing to read the existing documentation,
en/volunteer.wml 364) implement code based on it, and refine the documentation
en/volunteer.wml 365) when things are underdocumented. This project is mostly about coding and
en/volunteer.wml 366) to a small degree about design.
en/volunteer.wml 367) </li>
en/volunteer.wml 368) 
en/volunteer.wml 369) <li>
en/volunteer.wml 370) <b>New Torbutton Features</b>
en/volunteer.wml 371) <br />
en/volunteer.wml 372) Priority: <i>Medium</i>
en/volunteer.wml 373) <br />
en/volunteer.wml 374) Effort Level: <i>High</i>
en/volunteer.wml 375) <br />
en/volunteer.wml 376) Skill Level: <i>High</i>
en/volunteer.wml 377) <br />
en/volunteer.wml 378) Likely Mentors: <i>Mike</i>
en/volunteer.wml 379) <br/>
en/volunteer.wml 380) There are several <a
en/volunteer.wml 381) href="https://bugs.torproject.org/flyspray/index.php?tasks=all&amp;project=5&amp;type=2">good
en/volunteer.wml 382) feature requests</a> on the Torbutton Flyspray section. In particular, <a
en/volunteer.wml 383) href="https://bugs.torproject.org/flyspray/index.php?do=details&amp;id=523">Integrating
en/volunteer.wml 384) 'New Identity' with Vidalia</a>,
en/volunteer.wml 385) <a href="https://bugs.torproject.org/flyspray/index.php?do=details&amp;id=940">ways of
en/volunteer.wml 386) managing multiple cookie jars/identities</a>, <a
en/volunteer.wml 387) href="https://bugs.torproject.org/flyspray/index.php?do=details&amp;id=637">preserving
en/volunteer.wml 388) specific cookies</a> when cookies are cleared,
en/volunteer.wml 389) <a
en/volunteer.wml 390) href="https://bugs.torproject.org/flyspray/index.php?do=details&amp;id=524">better
en/volunteer.wml 391) referrer spoofing</a>, <a
en/volunteer.wml 392) href="https://bugs.torproject.org/flyspray/index.php?do=details&amp;id=564">correct
en/volunteer.wml 393) Tor status reporting</a>, and <a
en/volunteer.wml 394) href="https://bugs.torproject.org/flyspray/index.php?do=details&amp;id=462">"tor://"
en/volunteer.wml 395) and "tors://" urls</a> are all interesting
en/volunteer.wml 396) features that could be added.
en/volunteer.wml 397) <br />
en/volunteer.wml 398) This work would be independent coding in Javascript and the fun world of <a
en/volunteer.wml 399) href="http://www.mozilla.org/keymaster/gatekeeper/there.is.only.xul">XUL</a>,
en/volunteer.wml 400) with not too much involvement in the Tor internals.
en/volunteer.wml 401) </li>
en/volunteer.wml 402) 
en/volunteer.wml 403) <li>
en/volunteer.wml 404) <b>New Thandy Features</b>
en/volunteer.wml 405) <br />
en/volunteer.wml 406) Priority: <i>Medium</i>
en/volunteer.wml 407) <br />
en/volunteer.wml 408) Effort Level: <i>Medium</i>
en/volunteer.wml 409) <br />
en/volunteer.wml 410) Skill Level: <i>Medium to High</i>
en/volunteer.wml 411) <br />
en/volunteer.wml 412) Likely Mentors: <i>Martin</i>
en/volunteer.wml 413) <br />
en/volunteer.wml 414) Additional capabilities are needed for assisted updates of all the Tor
en/volunteer.wml 415) related software for Windows and other operating systems. Some of the
en/volunteer.wml 416) features to consider include:
en/volunteer.wml 417) 1) Integration of the <a
en/volunteer.wml 418) href="http://chandlerproject.org/Projects/MeTooCrypto">MeTooCrypto
en/volunteer.wml 419) Python library</a>
en/volunteer.wml 420) for authenticated HTTPS downloads. 2) Adding a level of indirection
en/volunteer.wml 421) between the timestamp signatures and the package files included in an
en/volunteer.wml 422) update. See the "Thandy attacks / suggestions" thread on or-dev.
en/volunteer.wml 423) 3) Support locale specific installation and configuration of assisted
en/volunteer.wml 424) updates based on preference, host, or user account language settings.
en/volunteer.wml 425) Familiarity with Windows codepages, unicode, and other character sets
en/volunteer.wml 426) is helpful in addition to general win32 and posix API experience and
en/volunteer.wml 427) Python proficiency.
en/volunteer.wml 428) </li>
en/volunteer.wml 429) 
en/volunteer.wml 430) <li>
en/volunteer.wml 431) <b>Simulator for slow Internet connections</b>
en/volunteer.wml 432) <br />
en/volunteer.wml 433) Priority: <i>Medium</i>
en/volunteer.wml 434) <br />
en/volunteer.wml 435) Effort Level: <i>Medium</i>
en/volunteer.wml 436) <br />
en/volunteer.wml 437) Skill Level: <i>Medium</i>
en/volunteer.wml 438) <br />
en/volunteer.wml 439) Likely Mentors: <i>Steven</i>
en/volunteer.wml 440) <br />
en/volunteer.wml 441) Many users of Tor have poor-quality Internet connections, giving low
en/volunteer.wml 442) bandwidth, high latency, and high packet loss/re-ordering. User
en/volunteer.wml 443) experience is that Tor reacts badly to these conditions, but it is
en/volunteer.wml 444) difficult to improve the situation without being able to repeat the
en/volunteer.wml 445) problems in the lab.
en/volunteer.wml 446) <br />
en/volunteer.wml 447) This project would be to build a simulation environment which
en/volunteer.wml 448) replicates the poor connectivity so that the effect on Tor performance
en/volunteer.wml 449) can be measured. Other components would be a testing utility to
en/volunteer.wml 450) establish what are the properties of connections available, and to
en/volunteer.wml 451) measure the effect of performance-improving modifications to Tor.
en/volunteer.wml 452) <br />
en/volunteer.wml 453) The tools used would be up to the student, but dummynet (for FreeBSD)
en/volunteer.wml 454) and nistnet (for Linux) are two potential components on which this
en/volunteer.wml 455) project could be built. Students should be experienced with network
en/volunteer.wml 456) programming/debugging and TCP/IP, and preferably familiar with C and a
en/volunteer.wml 457) scripting language.
en/volunteer.wml 458) </li>
en/volunteer.wml 459) 
en/volunteer.wml 460) <li>
en/volunteer.wml 461) <b>An Improved and More Usable Network Map in Vidalia</b>
en/volunteer.wml 462) <br />
en/volunteer.wml 463) Priority: <i>Low to Medium</i>
en/volunteer.wml 464) <br />
en/volunteer.wml 465) Effort Level: <i>Medium</i>
en/volunteer.wml 466) <br />
en/volunteer.wml 467) Skill Level: <i>Medium</i>
en/volunteer.wml 468) <br />
en/volunteer.wml 469) Likely Mentors: <i>Matt</i>
en/volunteer.wml 470) <br />
en/volunteer.wml 471) One of Vidalia's existing features is a network map that shows the user
en/volunteer.wml 472) the approximate geographic location of relays in the Tor network and
en/volunteer.wml 473) plots the paths the user's traffic takes as it is tunneled through the
en/volunteer.wml 474) Tor network. The map is currently not very interactive and has rather
en/volunteer.wml 475) poor graphics. Instead, we implemented KDE's Marble widget such
en/volunteer.wml 476) that it gives us a better quality map and enables improved interactivity,
en/volunteer.wml 477) such as allowing the user to click on individual relays or circuits to
en/volunteer.wml 478) display additional information. We want to add the ability
en/volunteer.wml 479) for users to click on a particular relay or a country containing one or
en/volunteer.wml 480) more Tor exit relays and say, "I want my connections to exit
en/volunteer.wml 481) from here."
en/volunteer.wml 482) <br />
en/volunteer.wml 483) This project will first involve getting familiar with Vidalia
en/volunteer.wml 484) and the Marble widget's API. One will then integrate the widget
en/volunteer.wml 485) into Vidalia and customize Marble to be better suited for our application,
en/volunteer.wml 486) such as making circuits clickable, storing cached map data in Vidalia's
en/volunteer.wml 487) own data directory, and customizing some of the widget's dialogs.
en/volunteer.wml 488) <br />
en/volunteer.wml 489) A person undertaking this project should have good C++ development
en/volunteer.wml 490) experience. Previous experience with Qt and CMake is helpful, but not
en/volunteer.wml 491) required.
en/volunteer.wml 492) </li>
en/volunteer.wml 493) 
en/volunteer.wml 494) <li>
en/volunteer.wml 495) <b>Torbutton equivalent for Thunderbird</b>
en/volunteer.wml 496) <br />
en/volunteer.wml 497) Priority: <i>Low</i>
en/volunteer.wml 498) <br />
en/volunteer.wml 499) Effort Level: <i>High</i>
en/volunteer.wml 500) <br />
en/volunteer.wml 501) Skill Level: <i>High</i>
en/volunteer.wml 502) <br />
en/volunteer.wml 503) Likely Mentors: <i>Mike</i>
en/volunteer.wml 504) <br />
en/volunteer.wml 505) We're hearing from an increasing number of users that they want to use
en/volunteer.wml 506) Thunderbird with Tor. However, there are plenty of application-level
en/volunteer.wml 507) concerns, for example, by default Thunderbird will put your hostname in
en/volunteer.wml 508) the outgoing mail that it sends. At some point we should start a new
en/volunteer.wml 509) push to build a Thunderbird extension similar to Torbutton.
en/volunteer.wml 510) </li>
en/volunteer.wml 511) 
en/volunteer.wml 512) <li>
en/volunteer.wml 513) <b>Intermediate Level Network Device Driver</b>
en/volunteer.wml 514) <br />
en/volunteer.wml 515) Priority: <i>Low</i>
en/volunteer.wml 516) <br />
en/volunteer.wml 517) Effort Level: <i>High</i>
en/volunteer.wml 518) <br />
en/volunteer.wml 519) Skill Level: <i>High</i>
en/volunteer.wml 520) <br />
en/volunteer.wml 521) Likely Mentors: <i>Martin</i>
en/volunteer.wml 522) <br />
en/volunteer.wml 523) The WinPCAP device driver used by Tor VM for bridged networking does
en/volunteer.wml 524) not support a number of wireless and non-Ethernet network adapters.
en/volunteer.wml 525) Implementation of a intermediate level network device driver for win32
en/volunteer.wml 526) and 64bit would provide a way to intercept and route traffic over such
en/volunteer.wml 527) networks. This project will require knowledge of and experience with
en/volunteer.wml 528) Windows kernel device driver development and testing. Familiarity with
en/volunteer.wml 529) Winsock and Qemu would also be helpful.
en/volunteer.wml 530) </li>
en/volunteer.wml 531) 

en/volunteer.wml 532) <li>
en/volunteer.wml 533) <b>Improve Tor Weather</b>
en/volunteer.wml 534) <br />
en/volunteer.wml 535) Priority: <i>Medium</i>
en/volunteer.wml 536) <br />
en/volunteer.wml 537) Effort Level: <i>Medium</i>
en/volunteer.wml 538) <br />
en/volunteer.wml 539) Skill Level: <i>Medium</i>
en/volunteer.wml 540) <br />

en/volunteer.wml 541) Likely Mentors: <i>Christian, Roger</i>

en/volunteer.wml 542) <br />
en/volunteer.wml 543) <a href="https://weather.torproject.org/">Tor weather</a> is a tool
en/volunteer.wml 544) that allows signing up to receive notifications via email when the
en/volunteer.wml 545) tracked Tor relay is down. Currently, it isn't really useful for
en/volunteer.wml 546) people who use the hibernation feature of Tor, or for those who
en/volunteer.wml 547) have to shut down their relay regularly. During the project, Tor

en/volunteer.wml 548) weather could be extended to allow more flexible configurations.

en/volunteer.wml 549) Other enhancements are also possible: Weather could send out warnings

en/volunteer.wml 550) when your relay runs an out-of-date version of Tor, or when its

en/volunteer.wml 551) observed bandwith drops below a certain value. It might also be a
en/volunteer.wml 552) nice tool that allows for checking whether your relay has earned

en/volunteer.wml 553) you a <a href="<page tshirt>">T-Shirt</a>, or sending reminders to
en/volunteer.wml 554) directory authorities that
en/volunteer.wml 555) their keys are about to expire. Be creative, and consider how the
en/volunteer.wml 556) above project to track overall network status can help you get your job
en/volunteer.wml 557) done more quickly! See also its
en/volunteer.wml 558) <a href="https://svn.torproject.org/svn/weather/trunk/README">README</a>
en/volunteer.wml 559) and <a href="https://svn.torproject.org/svn/weather/trunk/TODO">TODO</a>.

en/volunteer.wml 560) </li>
en/volunteer.wml 561) 

en/volunteer.wml 562) <li>
en/volunteer.wml 563) <b>Bring up new ideas!</b>
en/volunteer.wml 564) <br />
en/volunteer.wml 565) Don't like any of these? Look at the <a

en/volunteer.wml 566) href="<gitblob>doc/roadmaps/2008-12-19-roadmap-full.pdf">Tor development

en/volunteer.wml 567) roadmap</a> for more ideas.

en/volunteer.wml 568) Some of the <a href="<gittree>doc/spec/proposals/">current proposals</a>

en/volunteer.wml 569) might also be short on developers.
en/volunteer.wml 570) </li>
en/volunteer.wml 571) 
en/volunteer.wml 572) <li>
en/volunteer.wml 573) <b>Better Debian/Ubuntu Packaging for Tor+Vidalia</b>
en/volunteer.wml 574) <br />
en/volunteer.wml 575) Vidalia currently doesn't play nicely on Debian and Ubuntu with the
en/volunteer.wml 576) default Tor packages. The current Tor packages automatically start Tor
en/volunteer.wml 577) as a daemon running as the debian-tor user and (sensibly) do not have a

en/volunteer.wml 578) <a href="<gitblob>doc/spec/control-spec.txt">ControlPort</a> defined

en/volunteer.wml 579) in the default torrc. Consequently, Vidalia will try
en/volunteer.wml 580) to start its own Tor process since it could not connect to the existing
en/volunteer.wml 581) Tor, and Vidalia's Tor process will then exit with an error message
en/volunteer.wml 582) the user likely doesn't understand since Tor cannot bind its listening
en/volunteer.wml 583) ports — they're already in use by the original Tor daemon.
en/volunteer.wml 584) <br />
en/volunteer.wml 585) The current solution involves either telling the user to stop the
en/volunteer.wml 586) existing Tor daemon and let Vidalia start its own Tor process, or
en/volunteer.wml 587) explaining to the user how to set a control port and password in their
en/volunteer.wml 588) torrc. A better solution on Debian would be to use Tor's ControlSocket,
en/volunteer.wml 589) which allows Vidalia to talk to Tor via a Unix domain socket, and could
en/volunteer.wml 590) possibly be enabled by default in Tor's Debian packages. Vidalia can
en/volunteer.wml 591) then authenticate to Tor using filesystem-based (cookie) authentication
en/volunteer.wml 592) if the user running Vidalia is also in the debian-tor group.
en/volunteer.wml 593) <br />
en/volunteer.wml 594) This project will first involve adding support for Tor's ControlSocket
en/volunteer.wml 595) to Vidalia. The student will then develop and test Debian and Ubuntu
en/volunteer.wml 596) packages for Vidalia that conform to Debian's packaging standards and
en/volunteer.wml 597) make sure they work well with the existing Tor packages. We can also
en/volunteer.wml 598) set up an apt repository to host the new Vidalia packages.
en/volunteer.wml 599) <br />
en/volunteer.wml 600) The next challenge would be to find an intuitive usable way for Vidalia
en/volunteer.wml 601) to be able to change Tor's configuration (torrc) even though it is
en/volunteer.wml 602) located in <code>/etc/tor/torrc</code> and thus immutable. The best
en/volunteer.wml 603) idea we've come up with so far is to feed Tor a new configuration via
en/volunteer.wml 604) the ControlSocket when Vidalia starts, but that's bad because Tor starts
en/volunteer.wml 605) each boot with a different configuration than the user wants. The second
en/volunteer.wml 606) best idea
en/volunteer.wml 607) we've come up with is for Vidalia to write out a temporary torrc file
en/volunteer.wml 608) and ask the user to manually move it to <code>/etc/tor/torrc</code>,
en/volunteer.wml 609) but that's bad because users shouldn't have to mess with files directly.
en/volunteer.wml 610) <br />
en/volunteer.wml 611) A person undertaking this project should have prior knowledge of
en/volunteer.wml 612) Debian package management and some C++ development experience. Previous
en/volunteer.wml 613) experience with Qt is helpful, but not required.
en/volunteer.wml 614) </li>
en/volunteer.wml 615) 
en/volunteer.wml 616) <li>
en/volunteer.wml 617) <b>Tor/Polipo/Vidalia Auto-Update Framework</b>
en/volunteer.wml 618) <br />
en/volunteer.wml 619) We're in need of a good authenticated-update framework.
en/volunteer.wml 620) Vidalia already has the ability to notice when the user is running an
en/volunteer.wml 621) outdated or unrecommended version of Tor, using signed statements inside
en/volunteer.wml 622) the Tor directory information. Currently, Vidalia simply pops
en/volunteer.wml 623) up a little message box that lets the user know they should manually
en/volunteer.wml 624) upgrade. The goal of this project would be to extend Vidalia with the
en/volunteer.wml 625) ability to also fetch and install the updated Tor software for the
en/volunteer.wml 626) user. We should do the fetches via Tor when possible, but also fall back
en/volunteer.wml 627) to direct fetches in a smart way. Time permitting, we would also like
en/volunteer.wml 628) to be able to update other
en/volunteer.wml 629) applications included in the bundled installers, such as Polipo and
en/volunteer.wml 630) Vidalia itself.
en/volunteer.wml 631) <br />
en/volunteer.wml 632) To complete this project, the student will first need to first investigate
en/volunteer.wml 633) the existing auto-update frameworks (e.g., Sparkle on OS X) to evaluate
en/volunteer.wml 634) their strengths, weaknesses, security properties, and ability to be
en/volunteer.wml 635) integrated into Vidalia. If none are found to be suitable, the student
en/volunteer.wml 636) will design their own auto-update framework, document the design, and
en/volunteer.wml 637) then discuss the design with other developers to assess any security
en/volunteer.wml 638) issues. The student will then implement their framework (or integrate
en/volunteer.wml 639) an existing one) and test it.
en/volunteer.wml 640) <br />
en/volunteer.wml 641) A person undertaking this project should have good C++ development
en/volunteer.wml 642) experience. Previous experience with Qt is helpful, but not required. One
en/volunteer.wml 643) should also have a good understanding of common security
en/volunteer.wml 644) practices, such as package signature verification. Good writing ability
en/volunteer.wml 645) is also important for this project, since a vital step of the project
en/volunteer.wml 646) will be producing a design document to review and discuss
en/volunteer.wml 647) with others prior to implementation.
en/volunteer.wml 648) </li>
en/volunteer.wml 649) 

en/volunteer.wml 650) <li>

en/volunteer.wml 651) <b>Improving the Tor QA process: Continuous Integration for builds</b>

en/volunteer.wml 652) <br />

en/volunteer.wml 653) It would be useful to have automated build processes for Windows and
en/volunteer.wml 654) probably other platforms. The purpose of having a continuous integration
en/volunteer.wml 655) build environment is to ensure that Windows isn't left behind for any of
en/volunteer.wml 656) the software projects used in the Tor project or its accompanying.<br />
en/volunteer.wml 657) Buildbot may be a good choice for this as it appears to support all of

en/volunteer.wml 658) the platforms Tor does. See the

en/volunteer.wml 659) <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BuildBot">wikipedia entry for

en/volunteer.wml 660) buildbot</a>.<br />
en/volunteer.wml 661) There may be better options and the person undertaking this task should

en/volunteer.wml 662) evaluate other options. Any person working on this automatic build
en/volunteer.wml 663) process should have experience or be willing to learn how to build all
en/volunteer.wml 664) of the respective Tor related code bases from scratch. Furthermore, the
en/volunteer.wml 665) person should have some experience building software in Windows
en/volunteer.wml 666) environments as this is the target audience we want to ensure we do not
en/volunteer.wml 667) leave behind. It would require close work with the Tor source code but
en/volunteer.wml 668) probably only in the form of building, not authoring.<br />
en/volunteer.wml 669) Additionally, we need to automate our performance testing for all platforms.
en/volunteer.wml 670) We've got buildbot (except on Windows &mdash; as noted above) to automate
en/volunteer.wml 671) our regular integration and compile testing already,
en/volunteer.wml 672) but we need to get our network simulation tests (as built in torflow)
en/volunteer.wml 673) updated for more recent versions of Tor, and designed to launch a test
en/volunteer.wml 674) network either on a single machine, or across several, so we can test
en/volunteer.wml 675) changes in performance on machines in different roles automatically.

en/volunteer.wml 676) </li>
en/volunteer.wml 677) 

en/volunteer.wml 678) <li>
en/volunteer.wml 679) <b>Usability testing of Tor</b>
en/volunteer.wml 680) <br />

en/volunteer.wml 681) Priority: <i>Medium</i>
en/volunteer.wml 682) <br />
en/volunteer.wml 683) Effort Level: <i>Medium</i>
en/volunteer.wml 684) <br />
en/volunteer.wml 685) Skill Level: <i>Low to Medium</i>
en/volunteer.wml 686) <br />
en/volunteer.wml 687) Likely Mentors: <i>Andrew</i>
en/volunteer.wml 688) <br />

en/volunteer.wml 689) Especially the browser bundle, ideally amongst our target demographic.
en/volunteer.wml 690) That would help a lot in knowing what needs to be done in terms of bug
en/volunteer.wml 691) fixes or new features. We get this informally at the moment, but a more
en/volunteer.wml 692) structured process would be better.
en/volunteer.wml 693) </li>

en/volunteer.wml 694) </ol>
en/volunteer.wml 695) 

en/volunteer.wml 696) <a id="OtherCoding"></a>
en/volunteer.wml 697) <h2><a class="anchor" href="#OtherCoding">Other Coding and Design related ideas</a></h2>

volunteer.html   698) <ol>

en/volunteer.wml 699) <li>Tor relays don't work well on Windows XP. On

en/volunteer.wml 700) Windows, Tor uses the standard <tt>select()</tt> system

en/volunteer.wml 701) call, which uses space in the non-page pool. This means

en/volunteer.wml 702) that a medium sized Tor relay will empty the non-page pool, <a

en/volunteer.wml 703) href="https://wiki.torproject.org/noreply/TheOnionRouter/WindowsBufferProblems">causing

en/volunteer.wml 704) havoc and system crashes</a>. We should probably be using overlapped IO

en/volunteer.wml 705) instead. One solution would be to teach <a
en/volunteer.wml 706) href="http://www.monkey.org/~provos/libevent/">libevent</a> how to use
en/volunteer.wml 707) overlapped IO rather than select() on Windows, and then adapt Tor to

en/volunteer.wml 708) the new libevent interface. Christian King made a

en/volunteer.wml 709) <a href="https://svn.torproject.org/svn/libevent-urz/trunk/">good

en/volunteer.wml 710) start</a> on this in the summer of 2007.</li>

en/volunteer.wml 711) 

en/volunteer.wml 712) <li>We need to actually start building our <a href="<page
en/volunteer.wml 713) documentation>#DesignDoc">blocking-resistance design</a>. This involves

en/volunteer.wml 714) fleshing out the design, modifying many different pieces of Tor, adapting

en/volunteer.wml 715) <a href="<page vidalia/index>">Vidalia</a> so it supports the

en/volunteer.wml 716) new features, and planning for deployment.</li>

en/volunteer.wml 717) 

en/volunteer.wml 718) <li>We need a flexible simulator framework for studying end-to-end
en/volunteer.wml 719) traffic confirmation attacks. Many researchers have whipped up ad hoc
en/volunteer.wml 720) simulators to support their intuition either that the attacks work
en/volunteer.wml 721) really well or that some defense works great. Can we build a simulator
en/volunteer.wml 722) that's clearly documented and open enough that everybody knows it's
en/volunteer.wml 723) giving a reasonable answer? This will spur a lot of new research.
en/volunteer.wml 724) See the entry <a href="#Research">below</a> on confirmation attacks for
en/volunteer.wml 725) details on the research side of this task &mdash; who knows, when it's
en/volunteer.wml 726) done maybe you can help write a paper or three also.</li>

en/volunteer.wml 727) 

en/volunteer.wml 728) <li>Tor 0.1.1.x and later include support for hardware crypto accelerators

en/volunteer.wml 729) via OpenSSL. It has been lightly tested and is possibly very buggy.  We're looking for more rigorous testing, performance analysis, and optimally, code fixes to openssl and Tor if needed.</li>

en/volunteer.wml 730) 

volunteer.html   731) <li>Perform a security analysis of Tor with <a
volunteer.html   732) href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuzz_testing">"fuzz"</a>. Determine

en/volunteer.wml 733) if there are good fuzzing libraries out there for what we want. Win fame by

volunteer.html   734) getting credit when we put out a new release because of you!</li>

en/volunteer.wml 735) 

volunteer.html   736) <li>Tor uses TCP for transport and TLS for link
volunteer.html   737) encryption. This is nice and simple, but it means all cells
volunteer.html   738) on a link are delayed when a single packet gets dropped, and
volunteer.html   739) it means we can only reasonably support TCP streams. We have a <a

en/volunteer.wml 740) href="https://wiki.torproject.org/noreply/TheOnionRouter/TorFAQ#TransportIPnotTCP">list

en/volunteer.wml 741) of reasons why we haven't shifted to UDP transport</a>, but it would
en/volunteer.wml 742) be great to see that list get shorter. We also have a proposed <a

en/volunteer.wml 743) href="<gitblob>doc/spec/proposals/100-tor-spec-udp.txt">specification

en/volunteer.wml 744) for Tor and

en/volunteer.wml 745) UDP</a> &mdash; please let us know what's wrong with it.</li>

en/volunteer.wml 746) 

volunteer.html   747) <li>We're not that far from having IPv6 support for destination addresses
volunteer.html   748) (at exit nodes). If you care strongly about IPv6, that's probably the
volunteer.html   749) first place to start.</li>

en/volunteer.wml 750) 
en/volunteer.wml 751) <li>We need a way to generate the website diagrams (for example, the "How
en/volunteer.wml 752) Tor Works" pictures on the <a href="<page overview>">overview page</a>
en/volunteer.wml 753) from source, so we can translate them as UTF-8 text rather than edit
en/volunteer.wml 754) them by hand with Gimp. We might want to
en/volunteer.wml 755) integrate this as an wml file so translations are easy and images are
en/volunteer.wml 756) generated in multiple languages whenever we build the website.</li>
en/volunteer.wml 757) 
en/volunteer.wml 758) <li>How can we make the <a
en/volunteer.wml 759) href="http://anonymityanywhere.com/incognito/">Incognito LiveCD</a>
en/volunteer.wml 760) easier to maintain, improve, and document?</li>

volunteer.html   761) </ol>
volunteer.html   762) 

en/volunteer.wml 763) <a id="Research"></a>
en/volunteer.wml 764) <h2><a class="anchor" href="#Research">Research</a></h2>

volunteer.html   765) <ol>

volunteer.html   766) <li>The "website fingerprinting attack": make a list of a few
volunteer.html   767) hundred popular websites, download their pages, and make a set of
volunteer.html   768) "signatures" for each site. Then observe a Tor client's traffic. As
volunteer.html   769) you watch him receive data, you quickly approach a guess about which
volunteer.html   770) (if any) of those sites he is visiting. First, how effective is
volunteer.html   771) this attack on the deployed Tor codebase? Then start exploring
volunteer.html   772) defenses: for example, we could change Tor's cell size from 512
volunteer.html   773) bytes to 1024 bytes, we could employ padding techniques like <a
volunteer.html   774) href="http://freehaven.net/anonbib/#timing-fc2004">defensive dropping</a>,
volunteer.html   775) or we could add traffic delays. How much of an impact do these have,
volunteer.html   776) and how much usability impact (using some suitable metric) is there from
volunteer.html   777) a successful defense in each case?</li>

volunteer.html   778) <li>The "end-to-end traffic confirmation attack":
volunteer.html   779) by watching traffic at Alice and at Bob, we can <a
volunteer.html   780) href="http://freehaven.net/anonbib/#danezis:pet2004">compare
volunteer.html   781) traffic signatures and become convinced that we're watching the same
volunteer.html   782) stream</a>. So far Tor accepts this as a fact of life and assumes this
volunteer.html   783) attack is trivial in all cases. First of all, is that actually true? How
volunteer.html   784) much traffic of what sort of distribution is needed before the adversary
volunteer.html   785) is confident he has won? Are there scenarios (e.g. not transmitting much)
volunteer.html   786) that slow down the attack? Do some traffic padding or traffic shaping
volunteer.html   787) schemes work better than others?</li>

en/volunteer.wml 788) <li>A related question is: Does running a relay/bridge provide additional
en/volunteer.wml 789) protection against these timing attacks? Can an external adversary that can't

en/volunteer.wml 790) see inside TLS links still recognize individual streams reliably?

en/volunteer.wml 791) Does the amount of traffic carried degrade this ability any? What if the
en/volunteer.wml 792) client-relay deliberately delayed upstream relayed traffic to create a queue
en/volunteer.wml 793) that could be used to mimic timings of client downstream traffic to make it
en/volunteer.wml 794) look like it was also relayed? This same queue could also be used for masking
en/volunteer.wml 795) timings in client upstream traffic with the techniques from <a
en/volunteer.wml 796) href="http://www.freehaven.net/anonbib/#ShWa-Timing06">adaptive padding</a>,
en/volunteer.wml 797) but without the need for additional traffic. Would such an interleaving of
en/volunteer.wml 798) client upstream traffic obscure timings for external adversaries? Would the
en/volunteer.wml 799) strategies need to be adjusted for asymmetric links? For example, on
en/volunteer.wml 800) asymmetric links, is it actually possible to differentiate client traffic from
en/volunteer.wml 801) natural bursts due to their asymmetric capacity? Or is it easier than
en/volunteer.wml 802) symmetric links for some other reason?</li>

en/volunteer.wml 803) <li>Repeat Murdoch and Danezis's <a
en/volunteer.wml 804) href="http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~sjm217/projects/anon/#torta">attack from
en/volunteer.wml 805) Oakland 05</a> on the current Tor network. See if you can learn why it
en/volunteer.wml 806) works well on some nodes and not well on others. (My theory is that the
en/volunteer.wml 807) fast nodes with spare capacity resist the attack better.) If that's true,
en/volunteer.wml 808) then experiment with the RelayBandwidthRate and RelayBandwidthBurst
en/volunteer.wml 809) options to run a relay that is used as a client while relaying the
en/volunteer.wml 810) attacker's traffic: as we crank down the RelayBandwidthRate, does the
en/volunteer.wml 811) attack get harder? What's the right ratio of RelayBandwidthRate to
en/volunteer.wml 812) actually capacity? Or is it a ratio at all? While we're at it, does a
en/volunteer.wml 813) much larger set of candidate relays increase the false positive rate
en/volunteer.wml 814) or other complexity for the attack? (The Tor network is now almost two
en/volunteer.wml 815) orders of magnitude larger than it was when they wrote their paper.) Be
en/volunteer.wml 816) sure to read <a href="http://freehaven.net/anonbib/#clog-the-queue">Don't
en/volunteer.wml 817) Clog the Queue</a> too.</li>

volunteer.html   818) <li>The "routing zones attack": most of the literature thinks of
volunteer.html   819) the network path between Alice and her entry node (and between the
volunteer.html   820) exit node and Bob) as a single link on some graph. In practice,
volunteer.html   821) though, the path traverses many autonomous systems (ASes), and <a
volunteer.html   822) href="http://freehaven.net/anonbib/#feamster:wpes2004">it's not uncommon
volunteer.html   823) that the same AS appears on both the entry path and the exit path</a>.
volunteer.html   824) Unfortunately, to accurately predict whether a given Alice, entry,
volunteer.html   825) exit, Bob quad will be dangerous, we need to download an entire Internet
volunteer.html   826) routing zone and perform expensive operations on it. Are there practical
volunteer.html   827) approximations, such as avoiding IP addresses in the same /8 network?</li>

en/volunteer.wml 828) <li>Other research questions regarding geographic diversity consider
en/volunteer.wml 829) the tradeoff between choosing an efficient circuit and choosing a random

en/volunteer.wml 830) circuit. Look at Stephen Rollyson's <a

en/volunteer.wml 831) href="http://swiki.cc.gatech.edu:8080/ugResearch/uploads/7/ImprovingTor.pdf">position
en/volunteer.wml 832) paper</a> on how to discard particularly slow choices without hurting

en/volunteer.wml 833) anonymity "too much". This line of reasoning needs more work and more
en/volunteer.wml 834) thinking, but it looks very promising.</li>

en/volunteer.wml 835) <li>Tor doesn't work very well when relays have asymmetric bandwidth

volunteer.html   836) (e.g. cable or DSL). Because Tor has separate TCP connections between
volunteer.html   837) each hop, if the incoming bytes are arriving just fine and the outgoing
volunteer.html   838) bytes are all getting dropped on the floor, the TCP push-back mechanisms
volunteer.html   839) don't really transmit this information back to the incoming streams.
volunteer.html   840) Perhaps Tor should detect when it's dropping a lot of outgoing packets,
volunteer.html   841) and rate-limit incoming streams to regulate this itself? I can imagine
volunteer.html   842) a build-up and drop-off scheme where we pick a conservative rate-limit,
volunteer.html   843) slowly increase it until we get lost packets, back off, repeat. We
volunteer.html   844) need somebody who's good with networks to simulate this and help design
volunteer.html   845) solutions; and/or we need to understand the extent of the performance
volunteer.html   846) degradation, and use this as motivation to reconsider UDP transport.</li>
volunteer.html   847) <li>A related topic is congestion control. Is our
volunteer.html   848) current design sufficient once we have heavy use? Maybe
volunteer.html   849) we should experiment with variable-sized windows rather
volunteer.html   850) than fixed-size windows? That seemed to go well in an <a
volunteer.html   851) href="http://www.psc.edu/networking/projects/hpn-ssh/theory.php">ssh
volunteer.html   852) throughput experiment</a>. We'll need to measure and tweak, and maybe
volunteer.html   853) overhaul if the results are good.</li>

en/volunteer.wml 854) <li>Our censorship-resistance goals include preventing
en/volunteer.wml 855) an attacker who's looking at Tor traffic on the wire from <a

en/volunteer.wml 856) href="<gitblob>doc/design-paper/blocking.html#sec:network-fingerprint">distinguishing

en/volunteer.wml 857) it from normal SSL traffic</a>. Obviously we can't achieve perfect
en/volunteer.wml 858) steganography and still remain usable, but for a first step we'd like to
en/volunteer.wml 859) block any attacks that can win by observing only a few packets. One of
en/volunteer.wml 860) the remaining attacks we haven't examined much is that Tor cells are 512
en/volunteer.wml 861) bytes, so the traffic on the wire may well be a multiple of 512 bytes.
en/volunteer.wml 862) How much does the batching and overhead in TLS records blur this on the
en/volunteer.wml 863) wire? Do different buffer flushing strategies in Tor affect this? Could
en/volunteer.wml 864) a bit of padding help a lot, or is this an attack we must accept?</li>

volunteer.html   865) <li>Tor circuits are built one hop at a time, so in theory we have the
volunteer.html   866) ability to make some streams exit from the second hop, some from the
volunteer.html   867) third, and so on. This seems nice because it breaks up the set of exiting

en/volunteer.wml 868) streams that a given relay can see. But if we want each stream to be safe,

volunteer.html   869) the "shortest" path should be at least 3 hops long by our current logic, so
volunteer.html   870) the rest will be even longer. We need to examine this performance / security
volunteer.html   871) tradeoff.</li>

en/volunteer.wml 872) <li>It's not that hard to DoS Tor relays or directory authorities. Are client

volunteer.html   873) puzzles the right answer? What other practical approaches are there? Bonus
volunteer.html   874) if they're backward-compatible with the current Tor protocol.</li>

en/volunteer.wml 875) <li>Programs like <a

en/volunteer.wml 876) href="<page torbutton/index>">Torbutton</a> aim to hide

en/volunteer.wml 877) your browser's UserAgent string by replacing it with a uniform answer for
en/volunteer.wml 878) every Tor user. That way the attacker can't splinter Tor's anonymity set
en/volunteer.wml 879) by looking at that header. It tries to pick a string that is commonly used
en/volunteer.wml 880) by non-Tor users too, so it doesn't stand out. Question one: how badly
en/volunteer.wml 881) do we hurt ourselves by periodically updating the version of Firefox
en/volunteer.wml 882) that Torbutton claims to be? If we update it too often, we splinter the
en/volunteer.wml 883) anonymity sets ourselves. If we don't update it often enough, then all the
en/volunteer.wml 884) Tor users stand out because they claim to be running a quite old version
en/volunteer.wml 885) of Firefox. The answer here probably depends on the Firefox versions seen
en/volunteer.wml 886) in the wild. Question two: periodically people ask us to cycle through N
en/volunteer.wml 887) UserAgent strings rather than stick with one. Does this approach help,
en/volunteer.wml 888) hurt, or not matter? Consider: cookies and recognizing Torbutton users
en/volunteer.wml 889) by their rotating UserAgents; malicious websites who only attack certain
en/volunteer.wml 890) browsers; and whether the answers to question one impact this answer.
en/volunteer.wml 891) </li>

en/volunteer.wml 892) <li>Right now Tor clients are willing to reuse a given circuit for ten
en/volunteer.wml 893) minutes after it's first used. The goal is to avoid loading down the
en/volunteer.wml 894) network with too many circuit extend operations, yet to also avoid having
en/volunteer.wml 895) clients use the same circuit for so long that the exit node can build a
en/volunteer.wml 896) useful pseudonymous profile of them. Alas, ten minutes is probably way
en/volunteer.wml 897) too long, especially if connections from multiple protocols (e.g. IM and
en/volunteer.wml 898) web browsing) are put on the same circuit. If we keep fixed the overall
en/volunteer.wml 899) number of circuit extends that the network needs to do, are there more
en/volunteer.wml 900) efficient and/or safer ways for clients to allocate streams to circuits,
en/volunteer.wml 901) or for clients to build preemptive circuits? Perhaps this research item
en/volunteer.wml 902) needs to start with gathering some traces of what connections typical
en/volunteer.wml 903) clients try to launch, so you have something realistic to try to optimize.
en/volunteer.wml 904) </li>
en/volunteer.wml 905) <li>How many bridge relays do you need to know to maintain
en/volunteer.wml 906) reachability? We should measure the churn in our bridges. If there is
en/volunteer.wml 907) lots of churn, are there ways to keep bridge users more likely to stay
en/volunteer.wml 908) connected?
en/volunteer.wml 909) </li>

volunteer.html   910) </ol>
volunteer.html   911) 

en/volunteer.wml 912) <p>

en/volunteer.wml 913) <a href="<page contact>">Let us know</a> if you've made progress on any
en/volunteer.wml 914) of these!

en/volunteer.wml 915) </p>

volunteer.html   916) 

en/volunteer.wml 917)   </div><!-- #main -->

volunteer.html   918) 

en/volunteer.wml 919) #include <foot.wmi>