Tor GUI Contest


DRAFT IN PROGRESS -- ALL OF THIS STUFF IS IN FLUX AND SHOULD BE CONSIDERED WRONG.


Overview

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 20,000 Tor users currently, routing their traffic through about 150 volunteer Tor servers on five continents. However, Tor's current user interface approach --- running as a daemon in the background --- does a poor job of communicating network status and security levels to the user. The Tor project, affiliated with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, is running a UI contest 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 certain paths or avoid certain paths; 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.


Goals

Contestants will produce a work of Free software that will provide a user interface to the Tor system by way of the Tor Controller Protocol.

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

Successful entries will:

In addition, entries may a) 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; and b) Provide additional statistics about the Tor connection.

Examples include:


Contest categories

Three categories of interface will be awarded:

We may decide to award other awards as the entries deserve.


Judging criteria

Awards will be granted on the basis of (in rough preference order):


Testing criteria

To check for basic acceptability, the contest will be judged with several major tests. For example, the system designer should expect:


Submissions

Submissions should come as:


Judges

Judging will be led by a panel of five prominent specialists in usability and security (to be announced).


Prizes

TBA, hopefully including a Squeezebox for top winners.


Timeline

The contest will be announced on or around June 1, 2005. We expect the contest deadline to be on or around January 15, 2006, with judging complete by March 15, 2006.


Technical notes

Shortly before the contest begins, Tor will release a canonical code version. This is the version that will be used for judging the contest; please ensure that you use this version. Bugfixes to this version will be announced to the contest web site.

Tor will also release test rigs in both Java and Python that demonstrate Tor's controller protocol. It is acceptable to build entrants using this code as a skeleton.

The test rig will show all of the basic functionality that is necessary for the minimal features of the contest.


Questions and clarifications

We will have a public website and wiki up shortly for FAQ entries, clarifications, etc.

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