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<h1>Tor GUI Competition</h1>

<a class="on" href="index.html">Overview &amp; Goals</a>
<a href="categories.html">What to Submit</a>
<a href="submit.html">How to Submit</a>
<a href="criteria.html">Judging &amp; Timeline</a>
<a href="technotes.html">Technical Notes</a>
<a href="legal.html">Licensing</a>
<h1>&nbsp;</h1>
<a class="wiki" href="https://wiki.torproject.org/noreply/TheOnionRouter/ContestFAQ">Wiki/FAQ</a>
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<p>
Jul 2006: Phase two is over, and brought us three fine interface
projects: <a href="http://vidalia-project.net/">Vidalia</a>,
<a href="http://freehaven.net/~squires/torbutton/">Torbutton</a>, and
<a href="http://tork.sf.net/">TorK</a>. Thank you to each of you who
participated. The GUI competition is now ended &mdash; but don't let that
stop you from <a href="<page volunteer>">helping out</a>!
</p>

<p>
Feb 2006: The <a
href="https://wiki.torproject.org/noreply/TheOnionRouter/ContestEntries">first
design phase</a> is over, and we have two winners. The <a
href="http://cups.cs.cmu.edu/pubs/TorGUIContest113005.pdf">CMU
Usable Privacy and Security Laboratory</a> won "Best Overall,"
and <a href="http://www.april3rd.com/tor/">the April3rd team</a> won
"Most Aesthetically Pleasing." Feel free to use their ideas if you
like them.</p>

<p>
Dec 2005: We're excited to have just added <a href="criteria.html">Edward Tufte
and Bruce Schneier</a> to our already impressive list of judges. And don't
forget the free <a href="https://www.torproject.org/tshirt.html">Tor T-shirt</a>
for every submission!
</p>

<h2>Tor: GUI Competition Overview</h2>

<p>
Tor is a decentralized network of computers on the Internet that increases
privacy in Web browsing, instant messaging, and other applications. We
estimate there are some 200,000 Tor users currently, routing their traffic
through about 500 volunteer Tor servers on six continents. However, Tor's
current user interface approach &mdash; running as a service in the background
&mdash; does a poor job of communicating network status and security levels
to the user.
</p>

<p>
The Tor project, affiliated with the
<a href="http://www.eff.org/">Electronic Frontier Foundation</a>, is
running a <b>GUI competition</b> to develop a vision of how Tor can
work in a user's everyday anonymous browsing experience. Some of the
challenges include how to make alerts and error conditions visible on
screen; how to let the user configure Tor to use or avoid certain routes
or nodes; how to learn about the current state of a Tor connection,
including which servers it uses; and how to find out whether (and which)
applications are using Tor safely.
</p>
<br />

<h2>Goals</h2>
<p>Submitters for phase two will produce a work of <a
href="http://www.opensource.org/">Open Source Software</a>
that will provide a user interface to the Tor system, perhaps by way of the
<a href="/svn/torctl/doc/howto.txt">Tor Controller Protocol</a>.</p>

<p>We are looking for a vision of how Tor can work in a user's everyday
anonymous browsing experience.</p>

<p>Entries may:</p>
<ul>
<li>Allow the user to fully configure Tor rather than manually searching
for and opening text files.</li>
<li>Let users learn about the current state of their Tor connection
(for example, how well the current Tor connection is working),
and configure or find out whether any of their applications are using it.</li>
<li>Make alerts and error conditions visible to the user.</li>
<li>Run on at least one of Windows, Linux, and OS&nbsp;X, on a
not-unusually-configured consumer-level machine.</li>
</ul>

<p>Other ideas include:</p>
<ul>
<li>Provide detailed information about which
applications, ports, or packets are (or are not!) passing through Tor,
including accounting for both Tor- and non-Tor traffic.</li>
<li>Provide
additional statistics about the Tor connection.</li>
<li>Give users more control over how their Tor behaves at certain times
of day or in other contexts (like operating as a server).</li>
</ul>

<p>More examples of useful features include:</p>
<ul>
<li>How much bandwidth is Tor using? How does this compare
to the overall network traffic to/from the computer?</li>
<li>Is there network traffic from ports or applications that the user
intended to be anonymized?</li>
<li>What Tor servers does the user know about on the network? Where are
they? How available are they?</li>
<li>An interface for displaying or controlling Tor paths:
"show me the network from Africa by way of Asia". Think of the global
satellite map from the movie <i>Sneakers</i>.</li>
<li>Configure other running applications to use Tor (for example,
by modifying or working through the network stack, and/or by altering
application configurations).</li>
<li>Provide an elegant installer for Tor, your GUI submission, and
other supporting applications.</li>
<li>Make your GUI manage the Tor process and other supporting applications
-- start them, stop them, realize when they've died.</li>
<li>Provide meaningful defaults for a good Tor experience.</li>
<li>Provide application-level anonymity -- that is, not just paying
attention to transport anonymity on the level of Tor, but also paying
attention to the anonymity of the http headers, cookies, etc.</li>
<li>Let the user specify different Tor config option sets depending on
time of day (e.g. daytime vs. nighttime).</li>
<li>Provide useful controller functions for Tor servers too --
for example, walk the user through recommended bandwidth configurations
and exit policies.</li>
<li>Have a "minimized view" of your GUI for common use, and then a more
detailed view or set of windows when the user wants more detail.</li>
<li>Provide a button or some automatically updating interface to let
the user learn whether Tor is working currently, perhaps by accessing an
external what's-my-IP site and seeing if it thinks you're a Tor server;
and give useful messages and recommendations if it doesn't seem to
be working.</li>
<li>Provide a way to automatically configure local firewalls (ipchains,
Windows firewalls, etc) to let Tor traffic out (and in, for Tor
servers). As a bonus, configure it to prevent non-Tor traffic from
leaving (and notify when it tries).</li>
</ul>

<p>We're interested to see submissions that don't achieve all of the
above goals -- if it's useful to Tor or Tor users in any way, please
submit it!</p>

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