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volunteer.html      4) 

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

volunteer.html     32) <ol>

en/volunteer.wml   33) <li>Help translate the web page and documentation into other
en/volunteer.wml   34) languages. See the <a href="<page translation>">translation
en/volunteer.wml   35) guidelines</a> if you want to help out. We especially need Arabic or
en/volunteer.wml   36) Farsi translations, for the many Tor users in censored areas.</li>
en/volunteer.wml   37) <li>Evaluate and document
en/volunteer.wml   38) <a href="https://wiki.torproject.org/wiki/TheOnionRouter/TorifyHOWTO">our
en/volunteer.wml   39) list of programs</a> that can be configured to use Tor.</li>
en/volunteer.wml   40) <li>We have a huge list of <a href="https://wiki.torproject.org/noreply/TheOnionRouter/SupportPrograms">potentially useful
en/volunteer.wml   41) programs that interface to Tor</a>. Which ones are useful in which
en/volunteer.wml   42) situations? Please help us test them out and document your results.</li>

volunteer.html     43) </ol>
volunteer.html     44) 

en/volunteer.wml   45) <a id="Advocacy"></a>

en/volunteer.wml   46) <h2><a class="anchor" href="#Advocacy">Advocacy</a></h2>
en/volunteer.wml   47) <ol>

en/volunteer.wml   48) <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   49) <li>Create a presentation that can be used for various user group meetings around the world</li>

en/volunteer.wml   50) <li>Create a video about the positive uses of Tor, what Tor is, or how
en/volunteer.wml   51) to use it.  Some have already

en/volunteer.wml   52) started on <a href="http://media.torproject.org/video/">Tor's Media

en/volunteer.wml   53) server</a>, <a
en/volunteer.wml   54) href="http://www.howcast.com/videos/90601-How-To-Circumvent-an-Internet-Proxy">Howcast</a>,
en/volunteer.wml   55) and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/freedom4internet">Youtube</a>.</li> 

en/volunteer.wml   56) <li>Create a poster, or a set of posters, around a theme,
en/volunteer.wml   57) such as "Tor for Freedom!"</li>

en/volunteer.wml   58) </ol>
en/volunteer.wml   59) 

en/volunteer.wml   60) <a id="Coding"></a>

en/volunteer.wml   61) <a id="Summer"></a>
en/volunteer.wml   62) <a id="Projects"></a>

en/volunteer.wml   63) <h2><a class="anchor" href="#Projects">Good Coding Projects</a></h2>

en/volunteer.wml   64) 
en/volunteer.wml   65) <p>

en/volunteer.wml   66) You may find some of these projects to be good <a href="<page

en/volunteer.wml   67) gsoc>">Google Summer of Code 2010</a> ideas. We have labelled each idea

en/volunteer.wml   68) with how useful it would be to the overall Tor project (priority), how
en/volunteer.wml   69) much work we expect it would be (effort level), how much clue you should
en/volunteer.wml   70) start with (skill level), and which of our <a href="<page
en/volunteer.wml   71) people>#Core">core developers</a> would be good mentors.
en/volunteer.wml   72) If one or more of these ideas looks promising to you, please <a
en/volunteer.wml   73) href="<page contact>">contact us</a> to discuss your plans rather than
en/volunteer.wml   74) sending blind applications. You may also want to propose your own project

en/volunteer.wml   75) idea — which often results in the best applications.

en/volunteer.wml   76) </p>
en/volunteer.wml   77) 

en/volunteer.wml   78) <ol>
en/volunteer.wml   79) 

en/volunteer.wml   80) <li>

en/volunteer.wml   81) <b>Tor Browser Bundle for Mac OS X</b>

en/volunteer.wml   82) <br />

en/volunteer.wml   83) Priority: <i>High</i>

en/volunteer.wml   84) <br />

en/volunteer.wml   85) Effort Level: <i>High</i>
en/volunteer.wml   86) <br />
en/volunteer.wml   87) Skill Level: <i>Medium</i>
en/volunteer.wml   88) <br />

en/volunteer.wml   89) Likely Mentors: <i>Steven, Erinn, Jacob, Andrew</i>

en/volunteer.wml   90) <br />

en/volunteer.wml   91) The Tor Browser Bundle incorporates Tor, Firefox, Polipo, and the Vidalia
en/volunteer.wml   92) user interface (and optionally the <a href="http://pidgin.im/">Pidgin</a>
en/volunteer.wml   93) Instant Messaging client). Components are pre-configured to operate in a
en/volunteer.wml   94) secure way, and it has very few dependencies on the installed operating
en/volunteer.wml   95) system. It has therefore become one of the most easy to use, and popular,
en/volunteer.wml   96) ways to use Tor on Windows.

en/volunteer.wml   97) <br />

en/volunteer.wml   98) However, there is currently no released package for Mac OS X, so this project
en/volunteer.wml   99) would be to implement Tor Browser Bundle for OS X. This will involve
en/volunteer.wml  100) modifications to Vidalia (C++), possibly Firefox (C) then creating and testing
en/volunteer.wml  101) the launcher on a range of operating system versions and configurations to
en/volunteer.wml  102) verify portability.  Some work on this was completed as part of the Google
en/volunteer.wml  103) Summer of Code 2009. Another part of this project is to identify all of the
en/volunteer.wml  104) traces left behind by using a Tor Browser Bundle on Mac OS X or Linux.
en/volunteer.wml  105) Developing ways to stop, counter, or remove these traces is a final step.

en/volunteer.wml  106) <br />
en/volunteer.wml  107) Students should be familiar with application development on one or
en/volunteer.wml  108) preferably both of Linux and Mac OS X, and be comfortable with C/C++
en/volunteer.wml  109) and shell scripting.
en/volunteer.wml  110) <br />
en/volunteer.wml  111) Part of this project could be usability testing of Tor Browser Bundle,

en/volunteer.wml  112) ideally amongst our target demographic.  That would help a lot in knowing
en/volunteer.wml  113) what needs to be done in terms of bug fixes or new features. We get this
en/volunteer.wml  114) informally at the moment, but a more structured process would be better.

en/volunteer.wml  115) <br />
en/volunteer.wml  116) A beta version of the Tor Browser Bundle has been released for GNU/Linux, but
en/volunteer.wml  117) work is still required for the Tor IM Browser bundle. Work is currently being
en/volunteer.wml  118) done on the Mac OS X version as well. If you would like to help extend or do
en/volunteer.wml  119) security auditing for either (or both) of these, please contact Erinn.

en/volunteer.wml  120) </li>
en/volunteer.wml  121) 

en/volunteer.wml  122) <li>
en/volunteer.wml  123) <b>Help track the overall Tor Network status</b>

en/volunteer.wml  124) <br />

en/volunteer.wml  125) Priority: <i>Medium to High</i>
en/volunteer.wml  126) <br />
en/volunteer.wml  127) Effort Level: <i>Medium</i>
en/volunteer.wml  128) <br />
en/volunteer.wml  129) Skill Level: <i>Medium</i>
en/volunteer.wml  130) <br />

en/volunteer.wml  131) Likely Mentors: <i>Karsten, Roger</i>

en/volunteer.wml  132) <br />

en/volunteer.wml  133) It would be great to set up an automated system for tracking network
en/volunteer.wml  134) health over time, graphing it, etc. Part of this project would involve
en/volunteer.wml  135) inventing better metrics for assessing network health and growth. Is the
en/volunteer.wml  136) average uptime of the network increasing? How many relays are qualifying
en/volunteer.wml  137) for Guard status this month compared to last month? What's the turnover
en/volunteer.wml  138) in terms of new relays showing up and relays shutting off? Periodically
en/volunteer.wml  139) people collect brief snapshots, but where it gets really interesting is
en/volunteer.wml  140) when we start tracking data points over time.
en/volunteer.wml  141) <br />

en/volunteer.wml  142) Data could be collected from the Tor Network Scanners in <a
en/volunteer.wml  143) href="https://svn.torproject.org/svn/torflow/trunk/README">TorFlow</a>, from

en/volunteer.wml  144) the server descriptors that each relay publishes, and from other
en/volunteer.wml  145) sources. Results over time could be integrated into one of the <a
en/volunteer.wml  146) href="https://torstatus.blutmagie.de/">Tor Status</a> web pages, or be
en/volunteer.wml  147) kept separate. Speaking of the Tor Status pages, take a look at Roger's
en/volunteer.wml  148) <a href="http://archives.seul.org/or/talk/Jan-2008/msg00300.html">Tor
en/volunteer.wml  149) Status wish list</a>.
en/volunteer.wml  150) </li>
en/volunteer.wml  151) 

en/volunteer.wml  152) <li>
en/volunteer.wml  153) <b>Rewrite TorDNSEL, this time with a spec!</b>
en/volunteer.wml  154) <br />
en/volunteer.wml  155) Priority: <i>High</i>
en/volunteer.wml  156) <br />
en/volunteer.wml  157) Effort Level: <i>Medium</i>
en/volunteer.wml  158) <br />
en/volunteer.wml  159) Skill Level: <i>Medium</i>
en/volunteer.wml  160) <br />
en/volunteer.wml  161) Likely Mentors: <i>Mike, Roger, Sebastian</i>
en/volunteer.wml  162) <br />

en/volunteer.wml  163) The <a href="<page tordnsel/index>">Tor DNS Exit List</a> is an
en/volunteer.wml  164) unmaintained Haskell

en/volunteer.wml  165) program that serves three purposes. First, it provides an rbl-style DNS
en/volunteer.wml  166) interface for people to look up whether a given IP address is (or has
en/volunteer.wml  167) recently been) a Tor exit relay. Second, it actively builds circuits over
en/volunteer.wml  168) the Tor network and connects back to itself, to learn the actual exit
en/volunteer.wml  169) IP address of each relay — some Tor relays exit from a different
en/volunteer.wml  170) address than they advertise in their descriptor. Third, it exports a <a
en/volunteer.wml  171) href="http://exitlist.torproject.org/exitAddresses">set of conclusions</a>
en/volunteer.wml  172) so that <a href="https://check.torproject.org/">check.torproject.org</a>
en/volunteer.wml  173) can guess for you whether your browser is configured to point to Tor.
en/volunteer.wml  174) <br />
en/volunteer.wml  175) This project would make use of <a
en/volunteer.wml  176) href="https://svn.torproject.org/svn/torflow/trunk/README">TorFlow</a>,

en/volunteer.wml  177) a set of Python scripts to interact with Tor,

en/volunteer.wml  178) to figure out how our Tor Exit Checker should actually work, and then
en/volunteer.wml  179) build it — probably in Python since Torflow is in Python. The main
en/volunteer.wml  180) goal is to reduce false positives as much as possible, by making sure
en/volunteer.wml  181) that it learns about new relays as soon as possible, making sure that
en/volunteer.wml  182) the testing phase concludes quickly, and making sure the answers get
en/volunteer.wml  183) passed to the Check script quickly. As a bonus, we should standardize
en/volunteer.wml  184) (specify) the format of the exitAddresses file, and rewrite the <a
en/volunteer.wml  185) href="https://svn.torproject.org/svn/check/trunk/cgi-bin/TorBulkExitList.py">Tor

en/volunteer.wml  186) Bulk Exit List</a> script to use that file rather than its current <a
en/volunteer.wml  187) href="https://bugs.torproject.org/flyspray/index.php?do=details&id=1019">horrible
en/volunteer.wml  188) DNS hacks</a>. As an extra bonus, we should work with Freenode, OFTC,
en/volunteer.wml  189) and/or other IRC networks to make sure that the scripts we offer are
en/volunteer.wml  190) actually the scripts they want, in terms of accurately identifying which
en/volunteer.wml  191) of their users are coming from the Tor network.

en/volunteer.wml  192) <br />
en/volunteer.wml  193) You can fetch the <a href="git://git.torproject.org/git/tordnsel">latest
en/volunteer.wml  194) tordnsel</a> via git.
en/volunteer.wml  195) </li>
en/volunteer.wml  196) 

en/volunteer.wml  197) <li>
en/volunteer.wml  198) <b>Improving Tor's ability to resist censorship</b>
en/volunteer.wml  199) <br />

en/volunteer.wml  200) Priority: <i>Medium to High</i>

en/volunteer.wml  201) <br />

en/volunteer.wml  202) Effort Level: <i>Medium to High</i>

en/volunteer.wml  203) <br />
en/volunteer.wml  204) Skill Level: <i>High</i>
en/volunteer.wml  205) <br />

en/volunteer.wml  206) Likely Mentors: <i>Roger, Nick, Steven</i>

en/volunteer.wml  207) <br />

en/volunteer.wml  208) The Tor 0.2.1.x series makes <a

en/volunteer.wml  209) href="<svnprojects>design-paper/blocking.html">significant

en/volunteer.wml  210) improvements</a> in resisting national and organizational censorship.
en/volunteer.wml  211) But Tor still needs better mechanisms for some parts of its

en/volunteer.wml  212) anti-censorship design.
en/volunteer.wml  213) <br />
en/volunteer.wml  214) One huge category of work is adding features to our <a
en/volunteer.wml  215) href="http://gitweb.torproject.org//bridgedb.git?a=tree">bridgedb</a>
en/volunteer.wml  216) service (Python). Tor aims to give out <a href="<page bridges>">bridge
en/volunteer.wml  217) relay addresses</a> to users that can't reach the Tor network
en/volunteer.wml  218) directly, but there's an arms race between algorithms for distributing
en/volunteer.wml  219) addresses and algorithms for gathering and blocking them. See <a
en/volunteer.wml  220) href="https://blog.torproject.org/blog/bridge-distribution-strategies">our
en/volunteer.wml  221) blog post on the topic</a> as an overview, and then look at <a
en/volunteer.wml  222) href="http://archives.seul.org/or/dev/Dec-2009/msg00000.html">Roger's
en/volunteer.wml  223) or-dev post</a> from December for more recent thoughts &mdash; lots of
en/volunteer.wml  224) design work remains.
en/volunteer.wml  225) <br />

en/volunteer.wml  226) If you want to get more into the guts of Tor itself (C), a more minor problem

en/volunteer.wml  227) we should address is that current Tors can only listen on a single
en/volunteer.wml  228) address/port combination at a time. There's

en/volunteer.wml  229) <a href="<gitblob>doc/spec/proposals/118-multiple-orports.txt">a

en/volunteer.wml  230) proposal to address this limitation</a> and allow clients to connect
en/volunteer.wml  231) to any given Tor on multiple addresses and ports, but it needs more

en/volunteer.wml  232) work.
en/volunteer.wml  233) <br />

en/volunteer.wml  234) This project could involve a lot of research and design. One of the big

en/volunteer.wml  235) challenges will be identifying and crafting approaches that can still
en/volunteer.wml  236) resist an adversary even after the adversary knows the design, and
en/volunteer.wml  237) then trading off censorship resistance with usability and robustness.
en/volunteer.wml  238) </li>
en/volunteer.wml  239) 

en/volunteer.wml  240) <!--<li>

en/volunteer.wml  241) <b>Tuneup Tor!</b>

en/volunteer.wml  242) <br />

en/volunteer.wml  243) Priority: <i>Medium to High</i>

en/volunteer.wml  244) <br />

en/volunteer.wml  245) Effort Level: <i>Medium to High</i>

en/volunteer.wml  246) <br />

en/volunteer.wml  247) Skill Level: <i>High</i>
en/volunteer.wml  248) <br />
en/volunteer.wml  249) Likely Mentors: <i>Nick, Roger, Mike, Karsten</i>
en/volunteer.wml  250) <br />
en/volunteer.wml  251) Right now, Tor relays measure and report their own bandwidth, and Tor
en/volunteer.wml  252) clients choose which relays to use in part based on that bandwidth.
en/volunteer.wml  253) This approach is vulnerable to
en/volunteer.wml  254) <a href="http://freehaven.net/anonbib/#bauer:wpes2007">attacks where
en/volunteer.wml  255) relays lie about their bandwidth</a>;
en/volunteer.wml  256) to address this, Tor currently caps the maximum bandwidth
en/volunteer.wml  257) it's willing to believe any relay provides.  This is a limited fix, and
en/volunteer.wml  258) a waste of bandwidth capacity to boot.  Instead,
en/volunteer.wml  259) Tor should possibly measure bandwidth in a more distributed way, perhaps
en/volunteer.wml  260) as described in the
en/volunteer.wml  261) <a href="http://freehaven.net/anonbib/author.html#snader08">"A Tune-up for
en/volunteer.wml  262) Tor"</a> paper
en/volunteer.wml  263) by Snader and Borisov. One could use current testing code to
en/volunteer.wml  264) double-check this paper's findings and verify the extent to which they
en/volunteer.wml  265) dovetail with Tor as deployed in the wild, and determine good ways to
en/volunteer.wml  266) incorporate them into their suggestions Tor network without adding too
en/volunteer.wml  267) much communications overhead between relays and directory
en/volunteer.wml  268) authorities.

en/volunteer.wml  269) </li>-->

en/volunteer.wml  270) 
en/volunteer.wml  271) <li>

en/volunteer.wml  272) <b>Improving Polipo on Windows</b>

en/volunteer.wml  273) <br />

en/volunteer.wml  274) Priority: <i>Medium to High</i>

en/volunteer.wml  275) <br />
en/volunteer.wml  276) Effort Level: <i>Medium</i>
en/volunteer.wml  277) <br />
en/volunteer.wml  278) Skill Level: <i>Medium</i>
en/volunteer.wml  279) <br />

en/volunteer.wml  280) Likely Mentors: <i>Chris</i>

en/volunteer.wml  281) <br />

en/volunteer.wml  282) Help port <a
en/volunteer.wml  283) href="http://www.pps.jussieu.fr/~jch/software/polipo/">Polipo</a> to
en/volunteer.wml  284) Windows. Example topics to tackle include:

en/volunteer.wml  285) <ol><li> the ability to asynchronously query name servers, find the
en/volunteer.wml  286) system nameservers, and manage netbios and dns queries.</li>
en/volunteer.wml  287) <li> manage events and buffers natively (i.e. in Unix-like OSes,
en/volunteer.wml  288) Polipo defaults to 25% of ram, in Windows it's whatever the config
en/volunteer.wml  289) specifies).</li>
en/volunteer.wml  290) <li> some sort of GUI config and reporting tool, bonus if it has a
en/volunteer.wml  291) systray icon with right clickable menu options. Double bonus if it's
en/volunteer.wml  292) cross-platform compatible.</li>
en/volunteer.wml  293) <li> allow the software to use the Windows Registry and handle proper
en/volunteer.wml  294) Windows directory locations, such as "C:\Program Files\Polipo"</li>
en/volunteer.wml  295) </ol>

en/volunteer.wml  296) </li>
en/volunteer.wml  297) 

en/volunteer.wml  298) <li>

en/volunteer.wml  299) <b>Tor Controller Status Event Interface for Vidalia</b>

en/volunteer.wml  300) <br />

en/volunteer.wml  301) Priority: <i>Medium</i>
en/volunteer.wml  302) <br />
en/volunteer.wml  303) Effort Level: <i>Medium</i>
en/volunteer.wml  304) <br />

en/volunteer.wml  305) Skill Level: <i>Low to Medium</i>

en/volunteer.wml  306) <br />
en/volunteer.wml  307) Likely Mentors: <i>Matt</i>
en/volunteer.wml  308) <br />

en/volunteer.wml  309) There are a number of status changes inside Tor of which the user may need

en/volunteer.wml  310) to be informed. For example, if the user is trying to set up his Tor as a
en/volunteer.wml  311) relay and Tor decides that its ports are not reachable from outside

en/volunteer.wml  312) the user's network, we should alert the user. Currently, all the user

en/volunteer.wml  313) gets is a couple log messages in Vidalia's 'message log' window, which they

en/volunteer.wml  314) likely never see since they don't receive a notification that something
en/volunteer.wml  315) has gone wrong. Even if the user does actually look at the message log,
en/volunteer.wml  316) most of the messages make little sense to the novice user.
en/volunteer.wml  317) <br />
en/volunteer.wml  318) Tor has the ability to inform Vidalia of many such status changes, and
en/volunteer.wml  319) we recently implemented support for a couple of these events. Still,
en/volunteer.wml  320) there are many more status events the user should be informed of and we
en/volunteer.wml  321) need a better UI for actually displaying them to the user.
en/volunteer.wml  322) <br />
en/volunteer.wml  323) The goal of this project then is to design and implement a UI for
en/volunteer.wml  324) displaying Tor status events to the user. For example, we might put a
en/volunteer.wml  325) little badge on Vidalia's tray icon that alerts the user to new status
en/volunteer.wml  326) events they should look at. Double-clicking the icon could bring up a
en/volunteer.wml  327) dialog that summarizes recent status events in simple terms and maybe

en/volunteer.wml  328) suggests a remedy for any negative events if they can be corrected by

en/volunteer.wml  329) the user. Of course, this is just an example and one is free to

en/volunteer.wml  330) suggest another approach.
en/volunteer.wml  331) <br />

en/volunteer.wml  332) A person undertaking this project should have good UI design and layout

en/volunteer.wml  333) and some C++ development experience. Previous experience with Qt and

en/volunteer.wml  334) Qt's Designer will be very helpful, but are not required. Some

en/volunteer.wml  335) English writing ability will also be useful, since this project will
en/volunteer.wml  336) likely involve writing small amounts of help documentation that should
en/volunteer.wml  337) be understandable by non-technical users. Bonus points for some graphic
en/volunteer.wml  338) design/Photoshop fu, since we might want/need some shiny new icons too.
en/volunteer.wml  339) </li>
en/volunteer.wml  340) 

en/volunteer.wml  341) <li>

en/volunteer.wml  342) <b>Improve our unit testing process</b>

en/volunteer.wml  343) <br />

en/volunteer.wml  344) Priority: <i>Medium</i>

en/volunteer.wml  345) <br />

en/volunteer.wml  346) Effort Level: <i>Medium</i>
en/volunteer.wml  347) <br />
en/volunteer.wml  348) Skill Level: <i>Medium</i>
en/volunteer.wml  349) <br />

en/volunteer.wml  350) Likely Mentors: <i>Nick, Erinn</i>

en/volunteer.wml  351) <br />
en/volunteer.wml  352) Tor needs to be far more tested. This is a multi-part effort. To start
en/volunteer.wml  353) with, our unit test coverage should rise substantially, especially in
en/volunteer.wml  354) the areas outside the utility functions. This will require significant
en/volunteer.wml  355) refactoring of some parts of Tor, in order to dissociate as much logic
en/volunteer.wml  356) as possible from globals.
en/volunteer.wml  357) <br />
en/volunteer.wml  358) Additionally, we need to automate our performance testing. We've got
en/volunteer.wml  359) buildbot to automate our regular integration and compile testing already
en/volunteer.wml  360) (though we need somebody to set it up on Windows),
en/volunteer.wml  361) but we need to get our network simulation tests (as built in <a
en/volunteer.wml  362) href="https://svn.torproject.org/svn/torflow/trunk/README">TorFlow</a>)
en/volunteer.wml  363) updated for more recent versions of Tor, and designed to launch a test
en/volunteer.wml  364) network either on a single machine, or across several, so we can test
en/volunteer.wml  365) changes in performance on machines in different roles automatically.
en/volunteer.wml  366) </li>
en/volunteer.wml  367) 
en/volunteer.wml  368) <li>

en/volunteer.wml  369) <b>Help with independent Tor client implementations</b>

en/volunteer.wml  370) <br />
en/volunteer.wml  371) Priority: <i>Medium</i>
en/volunteer.wml  372) <br />
en/volunteer.wml  373) Effort Level: <i>High</i>
en/volunteer.wml  374) <br />
en/volunteer.wml  375) Skill Level: <i>Medium to High</i>
en/volunteer.wml  376) <br />

en/volunteer.wml  377) Likely Mentors: <i>Bruce, Nathan</i>

en/volunteer.wml  378) <br />

en/volunteer.wml  379) Others are currently working on Tor clients for Java, Android, and Maemo

en/volunteer.wml  380) environments.  The first step is to get a handle on the current state of

en/volunteer.wml  381) the project in which you are interested in helping; <a

en/volunteer.wml  382) href="http://github.com/brl/JTor">Tor for Java</a>,
en/volunteer.wml  383) <a href="https://svn.torproject.org/svn/projects/android/trunk/">Android/Orbot</a>

en/volunteer.wml  384) , or <a href="<page docs/N900>">Tor for Maemo</a>. Check out the
en/volunteer.wml  385) repository and familiarize yourself

en/volunteer.wml  386) with the source code.  Further, support for requesting or even providing
en/volunteer.wml  387) Tor hidden services would be neat, but not required.

en/volunteer.wml  388) <br />
en/volunteer.wml  389) A prospective developer should be able to understand and write new Java

en/volunteer.wml  390) code, including a Java cryptography API. Being able to read C code would be helpful,

en/volunteer.wml  391) too. One should be willing to read the existing documentation,
en/volunteer.wml  392) implement code based on it, and refine the documentation
en/volunteer.wml  393) when things are underdocumented. This project is mostly about coding and
en/volunteer.wml  394) to a small degree about design.
en/volunteer.wml  395) </li>
en/volunteer.wml  396) 

en/volunteer.wml  397) <!--<li>

en/volunteer.wml  398) <b>New Torbutton Features</b>
en/volunteer.wml  399) <br />
en/volunteer.wml  400) Priority: <i>Medium</i>
en/volunteer.wml  401) <br />
en/volunteer.wml  402) Effort Level: <i>High</i>
en/volunteer.wml  403) <br />
en/volunteer.wml  404) Skill Level: <i>High</i>
en/volunteer.wml  405) <br />
en/volunteer.wml  406) Likely Mentors: <i>Mike</i>
en/volunteer.wml  407) <br/>
en/volunteer.wml  408) There are several <a
en/volunteer.wml  409) href="https://bugs.torproject.org/flyspray/index.php?tasks=all&amp;project=5&amp;type=2">good
en/volunteer.wml  410) feature requests</a> on the Torbutton Flyspray section. In particular, <a
en/volunteer.wml  411) href="https://bugs.torproject.org/flyspray/index.php?do=details&amp;id=523">Integrating
en/volunteer.wml  412) 'New Identity' with Vidalia</a>,
en/volunteer.wml  413) <a href="https://bugs.torproject.org/flyspray/index.php?do=details&amp;id=940">ways of
en/volunteer.wml  414) managing multiple cookie jars/identities</a>, <a
en/volunteer.wml  415) href="https://bugs.torproject.org/flyspray/index.php?do=details&amp;id=637">preserving
en/volunteer.wml  416) specific cookies</a> when cookies are cleared,
en/volunteer.wml  417) <a
en/volunteer.wml  418) href="https://bugs.torproject.org/flyspray/index.php?do=details&amp;id=524">better
en/volunteer.wml  419) referrer spoofing</a>, <a
en/volunteer.wml  420) href="https://bugs.torproject.org/flyspray/index.php?do=details&amp;id=564">correct
en/volunteer.wml  421) Tor status reporting</a>, and <a
en/volunteer.wml  422) href="https://bugs.torproject.org/flyspray/index.php?do=details&amp;id=462">"tor://"
en/volunteer.wml  423) and "tors://" urls</a> are all interesting
en/volunteer.wml  424) features that could be added.
en/volunteer.wml  425) <br />
en/volunteer.wml  426) This work would be independent coding in Javascript and the fun world of <a
en/volunteer.wml  427) href="http://www.mozilla.org/keymaster/gatekeeper/there.is.only.xul">XUL</a>,
en/volunteer.wml  428) with not too much involvement in the Tor internals.

en/volunteer.wml  429) </li>-->

en/volunteer.wml  430) 

en/volunteer.wml  431) <!-- <li>

en/volunteer.wml  432) <b>New Thandy Features</b>
en/volunteer.wml  433) <br />
en/volunteer.wml  434) Priority: <i>Medium</i>
en/volunteer.wml  435) <br />
en/volunteer.wml  436) Effort Level: <i>Medium</i>
en/volunteer.wml  437) <br />
en/volunteer.wml  438) Skill Level: <i>Medium to High</i>
en/volunteer.wml  439) <br />
en/volunteer.wml  440) Likely Mentors: <i>Martin</i>
en/volunteer.wml  441) <br />
en/volunteer.wml  442) Additional capabilities are needed for assisted updates of all the Tor
en/volunteer.wml  443) related software for Windows and other operating systems. Some of the
en/volunteer.wml  444) features to consider include:

en/volunteer.wml  445) <ol>
en/volunteer.wml  446) <li> Integration of the <a

en/volunteer.wml  447) href="http://chandlerproject.org/Projects/MeTooCrypto">MeTooCrypto
en/volunteer.wml  448) Python library</a>

en/volunteer.wml  449) for authenticated HTTPS downloads.</li>
en/volunteer.wml  450) <li> Adding a level of indirection

en/volunteer.wml  451) between the timestamp signatures and the package files included in an

en/volunteer.wml  452) update. See the "Thandy attacks / suggestions" thread on or-dev.</li>
en/volunteer.wml  453) <li> Support locale specific installation and configuration of assisted

en/volunteer.wml  454) updates based on preference, host, or user account language settings.
en/volunteer.wml  455) Familiarity with Windows codepages, unicode, and other character sets
en/volunteer.wml  456) is helpful in addition to general win32 and posix API experience and

en/volunteer.wml  457) Python proficiency.</li>
en/volunteer.wml  458) </ol>

en/volunteer.wml  459) </li> -->

en/volunteer.wml  460) 
en/volunteer.wml  461) <li>
en/volunteer.wml  462) <b>Simulator for slow Internet connections</b>
en/volunteer.wml  463) <br />
en/volunteer.wml  464) Priority: <i>Medium</i>
en/volunteer.wml  465) <br />
en/volunteer.wml  466) Effort Level: <i>Medium</i>
en/volunteer.wml  467) <br />
en/volunteer.wml  468) Skill Level: <i>Medium</i>
en/volunteer.wml  469) <br />
en/volunteer.wml  470) Likely Mentors: <i>Steven</i>
en/volunteer.wml  471) <br />
en/volunteer.wml  472) Many users of Tor have poor-quality Internet connections, giving low
en/volunteer.wml  473) bandwidth, high latency, and high packet loss/re-ordering. User
en/volunteer.wml  474) experience is that Tor reacts badly to these conditions, but it is
en/volunteer.wml  475) difficult to improve the situation without being able to repeat the
en/volunteer.wml  476) problems in the lab.
en/volunteer.wml  477) <br />
en/volunteer.wml  478) This project would be to build a simulation environment which
en/volunteer.wml  479) replicates the poor connectivity so that the effect on Tor performance
en/volunteer.wml  480) can be measured. Other components would be a testing utility to
en/volunteer.wml  481) establish what are the properties of connections available, and to
en/volunteer.wml  482) measure the effect of performance-improving modifications to Tor.
en/volunteer.wml  483) <br />
en/volunteer.wml  484) The tools used would be up to the student, but dummynet (for FreeBSD)
en/volunteer.wml  485) and nistnet (for Linux) are two potential components on which this
en/volunteer.wml  486) project could be built. Students should be experienced with network
en/volunteer.wml  487) programming/debugging and TCP/IP, and preferably familiar with C and a
en/volunteer.wml  488) scripting language.
en/volunteer.wml  489) </li>
en/volunteer.wml  490) 
en/volunteer.wml  491) <li>
en/volunteer.wml  492) <b>An Improved and More Usable Network Map in Vidalia</b>
en/volunteer.wml  493) <br />
en/volunteer.wml  494) Priority: <i>Low to Medium</i>
en/volunteer.wml  495) <br />
en/volunteer.wml  496) Effort Level: <i>Medium</i>
en/volunteer.wml  497) <br />
en/volunteer.wml  498) Skill Level: <i>Medium</i>
en/volunteer.wml  499) <br />
en/volunteer.wml  500) Likely Mentors: <i>Matt</i>
en/volunteer.wml  501) <br />
en/volunteer.wml  502) One of Vidalia's existing features is a network map that shows the user
en/volunteer.wml  503) the approximate geographic location of relays in the Tor network and
en/volunteer.wml  504) plots the paths the user's traffic takes as it is tunneled through the
en/volunteer.wml  505) Tor network. The map is currently not very interactive and has rather
en/volunteer.wml  506) poor graphics. Instead, we implemented KDE's Marble widget such
en/volunteer.wml  507) that it gives us a better quality map and enables improved interactivity,
en/volunteer.wml  508) such as allowing the user to click on individual relays or circuits to
en/volunteer.wml  509) display additional information. We want to add the ability
en/volunteer.wml  510) for users to click on a particular relay or a country containing one or
en/volunteer.wml  511) more Tor exit relays and say, "I want my connections to exit
en/volunteer.wml  512) from here."
en/volunteer.wml  513) <br />
en/volunteer.wml  514) This project will first involve getting familiar with Vidalia
en/volunteer.wml  515) and the Marble widget's API. One will then integrate the widget
en/volunteer.wml  516) into Vidalia and customize Marble to be better suited for our application,
en/volunteer.wml  517) such as making circuits clickable, storing cached map data in Vidalia's
en/volunteer.wml  518) own data directory, and customizing some of the widget's dialogs.
en/volunteer.wml  519) <br />
en/volunteer.wml  520) A person undertaking this project should have good C++ development
en/volunteer.wml  521) experience. Previous experience with Qt and CMake is helpful, but not
en/volunteer.wml  522) required.
en/volunteer.wml  523) </li>
en/volunteer.wml  524) 
en/volunteer.wml  525) <li>
en/volunteer.wml  526) <b>Torbutton equivalent for Thunderbird</b>
en/volunteer.wml  527) <br />

en/volunteer.wml  528) Priority: <i>Medium</i>

en/volunteer.wml  529) <br />
en/volunteer.wml  530) Effort Level: <i>High</i>
en/volunteer.wml  531) <br />
en/volunteer.wml  532) Skill Level: <i>High</i>
en/volunteer.wml  533) <br />
en/volunteer.wml  534) Likely Mentors: <i>Mike</i>
en/volunteer.wml  535) <br />
en/volunteer.wml  536) We're hearing from an increasing number of users that they want to use
en/volunteer.wml  537) Thunderbird with Tor. However, there are plenty of application-level
en/volunteer.wml  538) concerns, for example, by default Thunderbird will put your hostname in
en/volunteer.wml  539) the outgoing mail that it sends. At some point we should start a new
en/volunteer.wml  540) push to build a Thunderbird extension similar to Torbutton.
en/volunteer.wml  541) </li>
en/volunteer.wml  542) 

en/volunteer.wml  543) <!--<li>

en/volunteer.wml  544) <b>Intermediate Level Network Device Driver</b>
en/volunteer.wml  545) <br />
en/volunteer.wml  546) Priority: <i>Low</i>
en/volunteer.wml  547) <br />
en/volunteer.wml  548) Effort Level: <i>High</i>
en/volunteer.wml  549) <br />
en/volunteer.wml  550) Skill Level: <i>High</i>
en/volunteer.wml  551) <br />
en/volunteer.wml  552) Likely Mentors: <i>Martin</i>
en/volunteer.wml  553) <br />
en/volunteer.wml  554) The WinPCAP device driver used by Tor VM for bridged networking does
en/volunteer.wml  555) not support a number of wireless and non-Ethernet network adapters.
en/volunteer.wml  556) Implementation of a intermediate level network device driver for win32
en/volunteer.wml  557) and 64bit would provide a way to intercept and route traffic over such
en/volunteer.wml  558) networks. This project will require knowledge of and experience with
en/volunteer.wml  559) Windows kernel device driver development and testing. Familiarity with
en/volunteer.wml  560) Winsock and Qemu would also be helpful.

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

en/volunteer.wml  562) 

en/volunteer.wml  563) <li>
en/volunteer.wml  564) <b>Improve Tor Weather</b>
en/volunteer.wml  565) <br />
en/volunteer.wml  566) Priority: <i>Medium</i>
en/volunteer.wml  567) <br />
en/volunteer.wml  568) Effort Level: <i>Medium</i>
en/volunteer.wml  569) <br />
en/volunteer.wml  570) Skill Level: <i>Medium</i>
en/volunteer.wml  571) <br />

en/volunteer.wml  572) Likely Mentors: <i>Christian, Roger</i>

en/volunteer.wml  573) <br />
en/volunteer.wml  574) <a href="https://weather.torproject.org/">Tor weather</a> is a tool
en/volunteer.wml  575) that allows signing up to receive notifications via email when the
en/volunteer.wml  576) tracked Tor relay is down. Currently, it isn't really useful for
en/volunteer.wml  577) people who use the hibernation feature of Tor, or for those who
en/volunteer.wml  578) have to shut down their relay regularly. During the project, Tor

en/volunteer.wml  579) weather could be extended to allow more flexible configurations.

en/volunteer.wml  580) Other enhancements are also possible: Weather could send out warnings

en/volunteer.wml  581) when your relay runs an out-of-date version of Tor, or when its

en/volunteer.wml  582) observed bandwith drops below a certain value. It might also be a
en/volunteer.wml  583) nice tool that allows for checking whether your relay has earned

en/volunteer.wml  584) you a <a href="<page tshirt>">T-Shirt</a>, or sending reminders to
en/volunteer.wml  585) directory authorities that
en/volunteer.wml  586) their keys are about to expire. Be creative, and consider how the
en/volunteer.wml  587) above project to track overall network status can help you get your job
en/volunteer.wml  588) done more quickly! See also its
en/volunteer.wml  589) <a href="https://svn.torproject.org/svn/weather/trunk/README">README</a>
en/volunteer.wml  590) and <a href="https://svn.torproject.org/svn/weather/trunk/TODO">TODO</a>.

en/volunteer.wml  591) </li>
en/volunteer.wml  592) 

en/volunteer.wml  593) <li>
en/volunteer.wml  594) <b>Better Debian/Ubuntu Packaging for Tor+Vidalia</b>
en/volunteer.wml  595) <br />

en/volunteer.wml  596) Priority: <i>Medium</i>
en/volunteer.wml  597) <br />
en/volunteer.wml  598) Effort Level: <i>Medium</i>
en/volunteer.wml  599) <br />
en/volunteer.wml  600) Skill Level: <i>Medium</i>
en/volunteer.wml  601) <br />
en/volunteer.wml  602) Likely Mentors: <i>Erinn, Peter</i>
en/volunteer.wml  603) <br />

en/volunteer.wml  604) Vidalia currently doesn't play nicely on Debian and Ubuntu with the
en/volunteer.wml  605) default Tor packages. The current Tor packages automatically start Tor
en/volunteer.wml  606) as a daemon running as the debian-tor user and (sensibly) do not have a

en/volunteer.wml  607) <a href="<gitblob>doc/spec/control-spec.txt">ControlPort</a> defined

en/volunteer.wml  608) in the default torrc. Consequently, Vidalia will try
en/volunteer.wml  609) to start its own Tor process since it could not connect to the existing
en/volunteer.wml  610) Tor, and Vidalia's Tor process will then exit with an error message
en/volunteer.wml  611) the user likely doesn't understand since Tor cannot bind its listening
en/volunteer.wml  612) ports — they're already in use by the original Tor daemon.
en/volunteer.wml  613) <br />
en/volunteer.wml  614) The current solution involves either telling the user to stop the
en/volunteer.wml  615) existing Tor daemon and let Vidalia start its own Tor process, or
en/volunteer.wml  616) explaining to the user how to set a control port and password in their
en/volunteer.wml  617) torrc. A better solution on Debian would be to use Tor's ControlSocket,
en/volunteer.wml  618) which allows Vidalia to talk to Tor via a Unix domain socket, and could
en/volunteer.wml  619) possibly be enabled by default in Tor's Debian packages. Vidalia can
en/volunteer.wml  620) then authenticate to Tor using filesystem-based (cookie) authentication
en/volunteer.wml  621) if the user running Vidalia is also in the debian-tor group.
en/volunteer.wml  622) <br />
en/volunteer.wml  623) This project will first involve adding support for Tor's ControlSocket
en/volunteer.wml  624) to Vidalia. The student will then develop and test Debian and Ubuntu
en/volunteer.wml  625) packages for Vidalia that conform to Debian's packaging standards and
en/volunteer.wml  626) make sure they work well with the existing Tor packages. We can also
en/volunteer.wml  627) set up an apt repository to host the new Vidalia packages.
en/volunteer.wml  628) <br />
en/volunteer.wml  629) The next challenge would be to find an intuitive usable way for Vidalia
en/volunteer.wml  630) to be able to change Tor's configuration (torrc) even though it is
en/volunteer.wml  631) located in <code>/etc/tor/torrc</code> and thus immutable. The best
en/volunteer.wml  632) idea we've come up with so far is to feed Tor a new configuration via
en/volunteer.wml  633) the ControlSocket when Vidalia starts, but that's bad because Tor starts
en/volunteer.wml  634) each boot with a different configuration than the user wants. The second
en/volunteer.wml  635) best idea
en/volunteer.wml  636) we've come up with is for Vidalia to write out a temporary torrc file
en/volunteer.wml  637) and ask the user to manually move it to <code>/etc/tor/torrc</code>,
en/volunteer.wml  638) but that's bad because users shouldn't have to mess with files directly.
en/volunteer.wml  639) <br />
en/volunteer.wml  640) A person undertaking this project should have prior knowledge of
en/volunteer.wml  641) Debian package management and some C++ development experience. Previous
en/volunteer.wml  642) experience with Qt is helpful, but not required.
en/volunteer.wml  643) </li>
en/volunteer.wml  644) 

en/volunteer.wml  645) <!--<li>

en/volunteer.wml  646) <b>Tor/Polipo/Vidalia Auto-Update Framework</b>
en/volunteer.wml  647) <br />
en/volunteer.wml  648) We're in need of a good authenticated-update framework.
en/volunteer.wml  649) Vidalia already has the ability to notice when the user is running an
en/volunteer.wml  650) outdated or unrecommended version of Tor, using signed statements inside
en/volunteer.wml  651) the Tor directory information. Currently, Vidalia simply pops
en/volunteer.wml  652) up a little message box that lets the user know they should manually
en/volunteer.wml  653) upgrade. The goal of this project would be to extend Vidalia with the
en/volunteer.wml  654) ability to also fetch and install the updated Tor software for the
en/volunteer.wml  655) user. We should do the fetches via Tor when possible, but also fall back
en/volunteer.wml  656) to direct fetches in a smart way. Time permitting, we would also like
en/volunteer.wml  657) to be able to update other
en/volunteer.wml  658) applications included in the bundled installers, such as Polipo and
en/volunteer.wml  659) Vidalia itself.
en/volunteer.wml  660) <br />
en/volunteer.wml  661) To complete this project, the student will first need to first investigate
en/volunteer.wml  662) the existing auto-update frameworks (e.g., Sparkle on OS X) to evaluate
en/volunteer.wml  663) their strengths, weaknesses, security properties, and ability to be
en/volunteer.wml  664) integrated into Vidalia. If none are found to be suitable, the student
en/volunteer.wml  665) will design their own auto-update framework, document the design, and
en/volunteer.wml  666) then discuss the design with other developers to assess any security
en/volunteer.wml  667) issues. The student will then implement their framework (or integrate
en/volunteer.wml  668) an existing one) and test it.
en/volunteer.wml  669) <br />
en/volunteer.wml  670) A person undertaking this project should have good C++ development
en/volunteer.wml  671) experience. Previous experience with Qt is helpful, but not required. One
en/volunteer.wml  672) should also have a good understanding of common security
en/volunteer.wml  673) practices, such as package signature verification. Good writing ability
en/volunteer.wml  674) is also important for this project, since a vital step of the project
en/volunteer.wml  675) will be producing a design document to review and discuss
en/volunteer.wml  676) with others prior to implementation.

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

en/volunteer.wml  678) 

en/volunteer.wml  679) <li>

en/volunteer.wml  680) <b>Improving the Tor QA process: Continuous Integration for builds</b>

en/volunteer.wml  681) <br />

en/volunteer.wml  682) Priority: <i>Medium</i>
en/volunteer.wml  683) <br />
en/volunteer.wml  684) Effort Level: <i>Medium</i>
en/volunteer.wml  685) <br />
en/volunteer.wml  686) Skill Level: <i>Medium</i>
en/volunteer.wml  687) <br />
en/volunteer.wml  688) Likely Mentors: <i>Erinn</i>
en/volunteer.wml  689) <br />

en/volunteer.wml  690) It would be useful to have automated build processes for Windows and
en/volunteer.wml  691) probably other platforms. The purpose of having a continuous integration
en/volunteer.wml  692) build environment is to ensure that Windows isn't left behind for any of
en/volunteer.wml  693) the software projects used in the Tor project or its accompanying.<br />
en/volunteer.wml  694) Buildbot may be a good choice for this as it appears to support all of

en/volunteer.wml  695) the platforms Tor does. See the

en/volunteer.wml  696) <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BuildBot">wikipedia entry for

en/volunteer.wml  697) buildbot</a>.<br />
en/volunteer.wml  698) There may be better options and the person undertaking this task should

en/volunteer.wml  699) evaluate other options. Any person working on this automatic build
en/volunteer.wml  700) process should have experience or be willing to learn how to build all
en/volunteer.wml  701) of the respective Tor related code bases from scratch. Furthermore, the
en/volunteer.wml  702) person should have some experience building software in Windows
en/volunteer.wml  703) environments as this is the target audience we want to ensure we do not
en/volunteer.wml  704) leave behind. It would require close work with the Tor source code but
en/volunteer.wml  705) probably only in the form of building, not authoring.<br />
en/volunteer.wml  706) Additionally, we need to automate our performance testing for all platforms.
en/volunteer.wml  707) We've got buildbot (except on Windows &mdash; as noted above) to automate
en/volunteer.wml  708) our regular integration and compile testing already,
en/volunteer.wml  709) but we need to get our network simulation tests (as built in torflow)
en/volunteer.wml  710) updated for more recent versions of Tor, and designed to launch a test
en/volunteer.wml  711) network either on a single machine, or across several, so we can test
en/volunteer.wml  712) changes in performance on machines in different roles automatically.

en/volunteer.wml  713) </li>
en/volunteer.wml  714) 

en/volunteer.wml  715) <!--<li>

en/volunteer.wml  716) <b>Usability testing of Tor</b>
en/volunteer.wml  717) <br />

en/volunteer.wml  718) Priority: <i>Medium</i>
en/volunteer.wml  719) <br />
en/volunteer.wml  720) Effort Level: <i>Medium</i>
en/volunteer.wml  721) <br />
en/volunteer.wml  722) Skill Level: <i>Low to Medium</i>
en/volunteer.wml  723) <br />
en/volunteer.wml  724) Likely Mentors: <i>Andrew</i>
en/volunteer.wml  725) <br />

en/volunteer.wml  726) Especially the browser bundle, ideally amongst our target demographic.
en/volunteer.wml  727) That would help a lot in knowing what needs to be done in terms of bug
en/volunteer.wml  728) fixes or new features. We get this informally at the moment, but a more
en/volunteer.wml  729) structured process would be better.

en/volunteer.wml  730) </li>-->

en/volunteer.wml  731) 
en/volunteer.wml  732) <li>
en/volunteer.wml  733) <b>An authenticating IRC proxy</b>
en/volunteer.wml  734) <br />

en/volunteer.wml  735) Priority: <i>Low</i>

en/volunteer.wml  736) <br />
en/volunteer.wml  737) Effort Level: <i>Medium to High</i>
en/volunteer.wml  738) <br />
en/volunteer.wml  739) Skill Level: <i>Medium to High</i>
en/volunteer.wml  740) <br />
en/volunteer.wml  741) Likely Mentors: <i>Sebastian, Weasel, Roger</i>
en/volunteer.wml  742) <br />
en/volunteer.wml  743) The world needs an authenticating irc proxy. As we're periodically
en/volunteer.wml  744) reminded from the Penny Arcade web comic, "Internet user + anonymity =
en/volunteer.wml  745) jerk". With respect to websites we're actually doing ok, since websites
en/volunteer.wml  746) can make their users log in and use other application-level authentication
en/volunteer.wml  747) approaches. But IRC servers are much worse off, because most IRC server
en/volunteer.wml  748) code is poorly written: hard to maintain, and harder to modify. Many
en/volunteer.wml  749) IRC networks now block connections from Tor, and we're basically down to
en/volunteer.wml  750) two holdouts (OFTC and Freenode). This state of affairs means that a lot
en/volunteer.wml  751) of people around the world are thinking "I told you so" about anonymity
en/volunteer.wml  752) online, when in fact the problem is simply lack of technology to make the
en/volunteer.wml  753) problem manageable. We need some way to let the IRC networks distinguish
en/volunteer.wml  754) which users have developed a reputation as not being jerks, so they can
en/volunteer.wml  755) treat the two groups separately. There are some really cool research
en/volunteer.wml  756) designs like <a href="http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~nymble/">Nymble</a>,
en/volunteer.wml  757) which aim to let websites blacklist users without needing to learn who
en/volunteer.wml  758) they are.  But Nymble is designed around web interactions. We need to
en/volunteer.wml  759) build the glue around the IRC protocol that would let us plug in a project
en/volunteer.wml  760) like Nymble (or a simpler one to start, as a proof-of-concept). One way
en/volunteer.wml  761) to do that would be to build an IRC proxy that knows how to hear from
en/volunteer.wml  762) IRC clients, knows how to talk to IRC servers, and has an additional

en/volunteer.wml  763) layer that requires the users to authenticate.  Some work on this has
en/volunteer.wml  764) begun by other volunteers, see their progress at <a
en/volunteer.wml  765) href="http://github.com/anonirc/orc">http://github.com/anonirc/orc</a>.

en/volunteer.wml  766) </li>
en/volunteer.wml  767) 

en/volunteer.wml  768) <li>
en/volunteer.wml  769) <b>Make torsocks/dsocks work on OS X</b>
en/volunteer.wml  770) <br />
en/volunteer.wml  771) Priority: <i>Medium</i>
en/volunteer.wml  772) <br />
en/volunteer.wml  773) Effort Level: <i>Medium</i>
en/volunteer.wml  774) <br />
en/volunteer.wml  775) Skill Level: <i>Medium</i>
en/volunteer.wml  776) <br />
en/volunteer.wml  777) Likely Mentors: <i>?</i>
en/volunteer.wml  778) <br />
en/volunteer.wml  779) <a href="http://code.google.com/p/torsocks/">Torsocks</a> and <a
en/volunteer.wml  780) href="http://code.google.com/p/dsocks/">dsocks</a> are wrappers that will
en/volunteer.wml  781) run applications, intercept their outgoing network connections, and push
en/volunteer.wml  782) those connections through Tor. The goal is to handle applications that
en/volunteer.wml  783) don't support proxies (or don't supporting them well). To get it right,
en/volunteer.wml  784) they need to intercept many system calls. The syscalls you need to
en/volunteer.wml  785) intercept on Linux differ dramatically from those on BSD. So Torsocks
en/volunteer.wml  786) works fine on Linux, dsocks works ok on BSD (though it may be less
en/volunteer.wml  787) maintained and thus might miss more syscalls), and nothing works well
en/volunteer.wml  788) on both. First, we should patch dsocks to use Tor's <i>mapaddress</i>
en/volunteer.wml  789) commands from the controller interface, so we don't waste a whole
en/volunteer.wml  790) round-trip inside Tor doing the resolve before connecting. Second,
en/volunteer.wml  791) we should make our <i>torify</i> script detect which of torsocks or
en/volunteer.wml  792) dsocks is installed, and call them appropriately. This probably means
en/volunteer.wml  793) unifying their interfaces, and might involve sharing code between them
en/volunteer.wml  794) or discarding one entirely.
en/volunteer.wml  795) </li>
en/volunteer.wml  796) 

en/volunteer.wml  797) <li>
en/volunteer.wml  798) <b>Bring up new ideas!</b>
en/volunteer.wml  799) <br />
en/volunteer.wml  800) Don't like any of these? Look at the <a
en/volunteer.wml  801) href="<gitblob>doc/roadmaps/2008-12-19-roadmap-full.pdf">Tor development

en/volunteer.wml  802) roadmap</a> for more ideas, or just try out Tor, Vidalia, and Torbutton,
en/volunteer.wml  803) and find out what you think needs fixing.

en/volunteer.wml  804) Some of the <a href="<gittree>doc/spec/proposals">current proposals</a>
en/volunteer.wml  805) might also be short on developers.
en/volunteer.wml  806) </li>
en/volunteer.wml  807) 

en/volunteer.wml  808) </ol>
en/volunteer.wml  809) 

en/volunteer.wml  810) <a id="OtherCoding"></a>
en/volunteer.wml  811) <h2><a class="anchor" href="#OtherCoding">Other Coding and Design related ideas</a></h2>

volunteer.html    812) <ol>

en/volunteer.wml  813) <li>Tor relays don't work well on Windows XP. On

en/volunteer.wml  814) Windows, Tor uses the standard <tt>select()</tt> system

en/volunteer.wml  815) call, which uses space in the non-page pool. This means

en/volunteer.wml  816) that a medium sized Tor relay will empty the non-page pool, <a

en/volunteer.wml  817) href="https://wiki.torproject.org/noreply/TheOnionRouter/WindowsBufferProblems">causing

en/volunteer.wml  818) havoc and system crashes</a>. We should probably be using overlapped IO

en/volunteer.wml  819) instead. One solution would be to teach <a
en/volunteer.wml  820) href="http://www.monkey.org/~provos/libevent/">libevent</a> how to use
en/volunteer.wml  821) overlapped IO rather than select() on Windows, and then adapt Tor to

en/volunteer.wml  822) the new libevent interface. Christian King made a

en/volunteer.wml  823) <a href="https://svn.torproject.org/svn/libevent-urz/trunk/">good

en/volunteer.wml  824) start</a> on this in the summer of 2007.</li>

en/volunteer.wml  825) 

en/volunteer.wml  826) <li>We need to actually start building our <a href="<page
en/volunteer.wml  827) documentation>#DesignDoc">blocking-resistance design</a>. This involves

en/volunteer.wml  828) fleshing out the design, modifying many different pieces of Tor, adapting

en/volunteer.wml  829) <a href="<page vidalia/index>">Vidalia</a> so it supports the

en/volunteer.wml  830) new features, and planning for deployment.</li>

en/volunteer.wml  831) 

en/volunteer.wml  832) <li>We need a flexible simulator framework for studying end-to-end
en/volunteer.wml  833) traffic confirmation attacks. Many researchers have whipped up ad hoc
en/volunteer.wml  834) simulators to support their intuition either that the attacks work
en/volunteer.wml  835) really well or that some defense works great. Can we build a simulator
en/volunteer.wml  836) that's clearly documented and open enough that everybody knows it's
en/volunteer.wml  837) giving a reasonable answer? This will spur a lot of new research.
en/volunteer.wml  838) See the entry <a href="#Research">below</a> on confirmation attacks for
en/volunteer.wml  839) details on the research side of this task &mdash; who knows, when it's
en/volunteer.wml  840) done maybe you can help write a paper or three also.</li>

en/volunteer.wml  841) 

en/volunteer.wml  842) <li>Tor 0.1.1.x and later include support for hardware crypto accelerators

en/volunteer.wml  843) 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  844) 

volunteer.html    845) <li>Perform a security analysis of Tor with <a
volunteer.html    846) href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuzz_testing">"fuzz"</a>. Determine

en/volunteer.wml  847) if there are good fuzzing libraries out there for what we want. Win fame by

volunteer.html    848) getting credit when we put out a new release because of you!</li>

en/volunteer.wml  849) 

volunteer.html    850) <li>Tor uses TCP for transport and TLS for link
volunteer.html    851) encryption. This is nice and simple, but it means all cells
volunteer.html    852) on a link are delayed when a single packet gets dropped, and
volunteer.html    853) it means we can only reasonably support TCP streams. We have a <a

en/volunteer.wml  854) href="https://wiki.torproject.org/noreply/TheOnionRouter/TorFAQ#TransportIPnotTCP">list

en/volunteer.wml  855) of reasons why we haven't shifted to UDP transport</a>, but it would
en/volunteer.wml  856) be great to see that list get shorter. We also have a proposed <a

en/volunteer.wml  857) href="<gitblob>doc/spec/proposals/100-tor-spec-udp.txt">specification

en/volunteer.wml  858) for Tor and

en/volunteer.wml  859) UDP</a> &mdash; please let us know what's wrong with it.</li>

en/volunteer.wml  860) 

volunteer.html    861) <li>We're not that far from having IPv6 support for destination addresses
volunteer.html    862) (at exit nodes). If you care strongly about IPv6, that's probably the
volunteer.html    863) first place to start.</li>

en/volunteer.wml  864) 
en/volunteer.wml  865) <li>We need a way to generate the website diagrams (for example, the "How
en/volunteer.wml  866) Tor Works" pictures on the <a href="<page overview>">overview page</a>
en/volunteer.wml  867) from source, so we can translate them as UTF-8 text rather than edit
en/volunteer.wml  868) them by hand with Gimp. We might want to
en/volunteer.wml  869) integrate this as an wml file so translations are easy and images are
en/volunteer.wml  870) generated in multiple languages whenever we build the website.</li>
en/volunteer.wml  871) 

en/volunteer.wml  872) <li>How can we make the various LiveCD/USB systems easier
en/volunteer.wml  873) to maintain, improve, and document?  Some examples are <a

en/volunteer.wml  874) href="http://amnesia.boum.org/">amnesia LiveCD/USB</a> and the <a

en/volunteer.wml  875) href="http://anonymityanywhere.com/incognito/">Incognito LiveCD</a>

en/volunteer.wml  876) </li>

en/volunteer.wml  877) 
en/volunteer.wml  878) <li>
en/volunteer.wml  879) Another anti-censorship project is to try to make Tor
en/volunteer.wml  880) more scanning-resistant.  Right now, an adversary can identify <a
en/volunteer.wml  881) href="<gitblob>doc/spec/proposals/125-bridges.txt">Tor bridges</a>
en/volunteer.wml  882) just by trying to connect to them, following the Tor protocol,
en/volunteer.wml  883) and seeing if they respond.  To solve this, bridges could <a

en/volunteer.wml  884) href="<svnprojects>design-paper/blocking.html#tth_sEc9.3">act like

en/volunteer.wml  885) webservers</a> (HTTP or HTTPS) when contacted by port-scanning tools,
en/volunteer.wml  886) and not act like bridges until the user provides a bridge-specific key.
en/volunteer.wml  887) To start, check out Shane Pope's <a
en/volunteer.wml  888) href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/37735/index.html">thesis and prototype</a>.
en/volunteer.wml  889) </li>
en/volunteer.wml  890) 

volunteer.html    891) </ol>
volunteer.html    892) 

en/volunteer.wml  893) <a id="Research"></a>
en/volunteer.wml  894) <h2><a class="anchor" href="#Research">Research</a></h2>

volunteer.html    895) <ol>

volunteer.html    896) <li>The "website fingerprinting attack": make a list of a few
volunteer.html    897) hundred popular websites, download their pages, and make a set of
volunteer.html    898) "signatures" for each site. Then observe a Tor client's traffic. As
volunteer.html    899) you watch him receive data, you quickly approach a guess about which
volunteer.html    900) (if any) of those sites he is visiting. First, how effective is
volunteer.html    901) this attack on the deployed Tor codebase? Then start exploring
volunteer.html    902) defenses: for example, we could change Tor's cell size from 512
volunteer.html    903) bytes to 1024 bytes, we could employ padding techniques like <a
volunteer.html    904) href="http://freehaven.net/anonbib/#timing-fc2004">defensive dropping</a>,
volunteer.html    905) or we could add traffic delays. How much of an impact do these have,
volunteer.html    906) and how much usability impact (using some suitable metric) is there from
volunteer.html    907) a successful defense in each case?</li>

volunteer.html    908) <li>The "end-to-end traffic confirmation attack":
volunteer.html    909) by watching traffic at Alice and at Bob, we can <a
volunteer.html    910) href="http://freehaven.net/anonbib/#danezis:pet2004">compare
volunteer.html    911) traffic signatures and become convinced that we're watching the same
volunteer.html    912) stream</a>. So far Tor accepts this as a fact of life and assumes this
volunteer.html    913) attack is trivial in all cases. First of all, is that actually true? How
volunteer.html    914) much traffic of what sort of distribution is needed before the adversary
volunteer.html    915) is confident he has won? Are there scenarios (e.g. not transmitting much)
volunteer.html    916) that slow down the attack? Do some traffic padding or traffic shaping
volunteer.html    917) schemes work better than others?</li>

en/volunteer.wml  918) <li>A related question is: Does running a relay/bridge provide additional
en/volunteer.wml  919) protection against these timing attacks? Can an external adversary that can't

en/volunteer.wml  920) see inside TLS links still recognize individual streams reliably?

en/volunteer.wml  921) Does the amount of traffic carried degrade this ability any? What if the
en/volunteer.wml  922) client-relay deliberately delayed upstream relayed traffic to create a queue
en/volunteer.wml  923) that could be used to mimic timings of client downstream traffic to make it
en/volunteer.wml  924) look like it was also relayed? This same queue could also be used for masking
en/volunteer.wml  925) timings in client upstream traffic with the techniques from <a
en/volunteer.wml  926) href="http://www.freehaven.net/anonbib/#ShWa-Timing06">adaptive padding</a>,
en/volunteer.wml  927) but without the need for additional traffic. Would such an interleaving of
en/volunteer.wml  928) client upstream traffic obscure timings for external adversaries? Would the
en/volunteer.wml  929) strategies need to be adjusted for asymmetric links? For example, on
en/volunteer.wml  930) asymmetric links, is it actually possible to differentiate client traffic from
en/volunteer.wml  931) natural bursts due to their asymmetric capacity? Or is it easier than
en/volunteer.wml  932) symmetric links for some other reason?</li>

en/volunteer.wml  933) <li>Repeat Murdoch and Danezis's <a
en/volunteer.wml  934) href="http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~sjm217/projects/anon/#torta">attack from
en/volunteer.wml  935) Oakland 05</a> on the current Tor network. See if you can learn why it
en/volunteer.wml  936) works well on some nodes and not well on others. (My theory is that the
en/volunteer.wml  937) fast nodes with spare capacity resist the attack better.) If that's true,
en/volunteer.wml  938) then experiment with the RelayBandwidthRate and RelayBandwidthBurst
en/volunteer.wml  939) options to run a relay that is used as a client while relaying the
en/volunteer.wml  940) attacker's traffic: as we crank down the RelayBandwidthRate, does the
en/volunteer.wml  941) attack get harder? What's the right ratio of RelayBandwidthRate to
en/volunteer.wml  942) actually capacity? Or is it a ratio at all? While we're at it, does a
en/volunteer.wml  943) much larger set of candidate relays increase the false positive rate
en/volunteer.wml  944) or other complexity for the attack? (The Tor network is now almost two
en/volunteer.wml  945) orders of magnitude larger than it was when they wrote their paper.) Be
en/volunteer.wml  946) sure to read <a href="http://freehaven.net/anonbib/#clog-the-queue">Don't
en/volunteer.wml  947) Clog the Queue</a> too.</li>

volunteer.html    948) <li>The "routing zones attack": most of the literature thinks of
volunteer.html    949) the network path between Alice and her entry node (and between the
volunteer.html    950) exit node and Bob) as a single link on some graph. In practice,
volunteer.html    951) though, the path traverses many autonomous systems (ASes), and <a
volunteer.html    952) href="http://freehaven.net/anonbib/#feamster:wpes2004">it's not uncommon
volunteer.html    953) that the same AS appears on both the entry path and the exit path</a>.
volunteer.html    954) Unfortunately, to accurately predict whether a given Alice, entry,
volunteer.html    955) exit, Bob quad will be dangerous, we need to download an entire Internet
volunteer.html    956) routing zone and perform expensive operations on it. Are there practical
volunteer.html    957) approximations, such as avoiding IP addresses in the same /8 network?</li>

en/volunteer.wml  958) <li>Other research questions regarding geographic diversity consider
en/volunteer.wml  959) the tradeoff between choosing an efficient circuit and choosing a random

en/volunteer.wml  960) circuit. Look at Stephen Rollyson's <a

en/volunteer.wml  961) href="http://swiki.cc.gatech.edu:8080/ugResearch/uploads/7/ImprovingTor.pdf">position
en/volunteer.wml  962) paper</a> on how to discard particularly slow choices without hurting

en/volunteer.wml  963) anonymity "too much". This line of reasoning needs more work and more
en/volunteer.wml  964) thinking, but it looks very promising.</li>

en/volunteer.wml  965) <li>Tor doesn't work very well when relays have asymmetric bandwidth

volunteer.html    966) (e.g. cable or DSL). Because Tor has separate TCP connections between
volunteer.html    967) each hop, if the incoming bytes are arriving just fine and the outgoing
volunteer.html    968) bytes are all getting dropped on the floor, the TCP push-back mechanisms
volunteer.html    969) don't really transmit this information back to the incoming streams.
volunteer.html    970) Perhaps Tor should detect when it's dropping a lot of outgoing packets,
volunteer.html    971) and rate-limit incoming streams to regulate this itself? I can imagine
volunteer.html    972) a build-up and drop-off scheme where we pick a conservative rate-limit,
volunteer.html    973) slowly increase it until we get lost packets, back off, repeat. We
volunteer.html    974) need somebody who's good with networks to simulate this and help design
volunteer.html    975) solutions; and/or we need to understand the extent of the performance
volunteer.html    976) degradation, and use this as motivation to reconsider UDP transport.</li>
volunteer.html    977) <li>A related topic is congestion control. Is our
volunteer.html    978) current design sufficient once we have heavy use? Maybe
volunteer.html    979) we should experiment with variable-sized windows rather
volunteer.html    980) than fixed-size windows? That seemed to go well in an <a
volunteer.html    981) href="http://www.psc.edu/networking/projects/hpn-ssh/theory.php">ssh
volunteer.html    982) throughput experiment</a>. We'll need to measure and tweak, and maybe
volunteer.html    983) overhaul if the results are good.</li>

en/volunteer.wml  984) <li>Our censorship-resistance goals include preventing
en/volunteer.wml  985) an attacker who's looking at Tor traffic on the wire from <a

en/volunteer.wml  986) href="<svnprojects>design-paper/blocking.html#sec:network-fingerprint">distinguishing

en/volunteer.wml  987) it from normal SSL traffic</a>. Obviously we can't achieve perfect
en/volunteer.wml  988) steganography and still remain usable, but for a first step we'd like to
en/volunteer.wml  989) block any attacks that can win by observing only a few packets. One of
en/volunteer.wml  990) the remaining attacks we haven't examined much is that Tor cells are 512
en/volunteer.wml  991) bytes, so the traffic on the wire may well be a multiple of 512 bytes.
en/volunteer.wml  992) How much does the batching and overhead in TLS records blur this on the
en/volunteer.wml  993) wire? Do different buffer flushing strategies in Tor affect this? Could
en/volunteer.wml  994) a bit of padding help a lot, or is this an attack we must accept?</li>

volunteer.html    995) <li>Tor circuits are built one hop at a time, so in theory we have the
volunteer.html    996) ability to make some streams exit from the second hop, some from the
volunteer.html    997) third, and so on. This seems nice because it breaks up the set of exiting

en/volunteer.wml  998) streams that a given relay can see. But if we want each stream to be safe,

volunteer.html    999) the "shortest" path should be at least 3 hops long by our current logic, so
volunteer.html   1000) the rest will be even longer. We need to examine this performance / security
volunteer.html   1001) tradeoff.</li>

en/volunteer.wml 1002) <li>It's not that hard to DoS Tor relays or directory authorities. Are client

volunteer.html   1003) puzzles the right answer? What other practical approaches are there? Bonus
volunteer.html   1004) if they're backward-compatible with the current Tor protocol.</li>

en/volunteer.wml 1005) <li>Programs like <a

en/volunteer.wml 1006) href="<page torbutton/index>">Torbutton</a> aim to hide

en/volunteer.wml 1007) your browser's UserAgent string by replacing it with a uniform answer for
en/volunteer.wml 1008) every Tor user. That way the attacker can't splinter Tor's anonymity set
en/volunteer.wml 1009) by looking at that header. It tries to pick a string that is commonly used
en/volunteer.wml 1010) by non-Tor users too, so it doesn't stand out. Question one: how badly
en/volunteer.wml 1011) do we hurt ourselves by periodically updating the version of Firefox
en/volunteer.wml 1012) that Torbutton claims to be? If we update it too often, we splinter the
en/volunteer.wml 1013) anonymity sets ourselves. If we don't update it often enough, then all the
en/volunteer.wml 1014) Tor users stand out because they claim to be running a quite old version
en/volunteer.wml 1015) of Firefox. The answer here probably depends on the Firefox versions seen
en/volunteer.wml 1016) in the wild. Question two: periodically people ask us to cycle through N
en/volunteer.wml 1017) UserAgent strings rather than stick with one. Does this approach help,
en/volunteer.wml 1018) hurt, or not matter? Consider: cookies and recognizing Torbutton users
en/volunteer.wml 1019) by their rotating UserAgents; malicious websites who only attack certain
en/volunteer.wml 1020) browsers; and whether the answers to question one impact this answer.
en/volunteer.wml 1021) </li>

en/volunteer.wml 1022) <li>Right now Tor clients are willing to reuse a given circuit for ten
en/volunteer.wml 1023) minutes after it's first used. The goal is to avoid loading down the
en/volunteer.wml 1024) network with too many circuit extend operations, yet to also avoid having
en/volunteer.wml 1025) clients use the same circuit for so long that the exit node can build a
en/volunteer.wml 1026) useful pseudonymous profile of them. Alas, ten minutes is probably way
en/volunteer.wml 1027) too long, especially if connections from multiple protocols (e.g. IM and
en/volunteer.wml 1028) web browsing) are put on the same circuit. If we keep fixed the overall
en/volunteer.wml 1029) number of circuit extends that the network needs to do, are there more
en/volunteer.wml 1030) efficient and/or safer ways for clients to allocate streams to circuits,
en/volunteer.wml 1031) or for clients to build preemptive circuits? Perhaps this research item
en/volunteer.wml 1032) needs to start with gathering some traces of what connections typical
en/volunteer.wml 1033) clients try to launch, so you have something realistic to try to optimize.
en/volunteer.wml 1034) </li>
en/volunteer.wml 1035) <li>How many bridge relays do you need to know to maintain
en/volunteer.wml 1036) reachability? We should measure the churn in our bridges. If there is
en/volunteer.wml 1037) lots of churn, are there ways to keep bridge users more likely to stay
en/volunteer.wml 1038) connected?
en/volunteer.wml 1039) </li>

volunteer.html   1040) </ol>
volunteer.html   1041) 

en/volunteer.wml 1042) <p>

en/volunteer.wml 1043) <a href="<page contact>">Let us know</a> if you've made progress on any
en/volunteer.wml 1044) of these!

en/volunteer.wml 1045) </p>

volunteer.html   1046) 

en/volunteer.wml 1047)   </div><!-- #main -->

volunteer.html   1048)