16:00:21 <meskio[mds]> #startmeeting tor anti-censorship meeting
16:00:21 <MeetBot> Meeting started Thu Aug 27 16:00:21 2026 UTC.  The chair is meskio[mds]. Information about MeetBot at https://wiki.debian.org/MeetBot.
16:00:21 <MeetBot> Useful Commands: #action #agreed #help #info #idea #link #topic.
16:00:26 <meskio[mds]> hello everybody!!!
16:00:30 <meskio[mds]> here is our meeting pad: https://pad.riseup.net/p/r.9574e996bb9c0266213d38b91b56c469
16:00:31 <meskio[mds]> ask me in private to give you the link of the pad to be able to edit it if you don't have it
16:00:31 <meskio[mds]> I'll wait few minutes for everybody to add you've been working on and put items on the agenda
16:00:36 <cohosh> hi
16:01:17 <onyinyang[mds]> hihi
16:01:31 <gaba[mds]> hi
16:01:40 <unic3rn> hi
16:02:04 <Shelikhoo[mds]> hi~
16:02:18 <meskio[mds]> I think we are going to skip the next two meetings as most of us will be AFK bot September 3 and 10
16:05:25 <meskio[mds]> should we start witht he snowflake broker deployment?
16:05:37 <Shelikhoo[mds]> the broker is already deployed with the most recent version of nat type test assist(probetest) system, and there isn't an incident since its deployment
16:06:10 <Shelikhoo[mds]> which allows us to deploy the broker
16:06:41 <Shelikhoo[mds]> do we wants to deploy it next week, or after the team AFK
16:08:06 <meskio[mds]> I don't have strong opinions there
16:08:37 <meskio[mds]> I think is not a big deal to do it early next week, as we still have few days to fix things if something happens
16:08:56 <meskio[mds]> but we might not need to rush it and would be fine to do it once we are back
16:09:10 <cohosh> yeah i think it's ok
16:09:13 <cohosh> either way
16:09:49 <Shelikhoo[mds]> okay, I will try to deploy the broker next tuesday
16:10:00 <Shelikhoo[mds]> we still have the option to just rollback the deploy
16:10:11 <Shelikhoo[mds]> instead of fixing it, if something popup
16:10:19 <meskio[mds]> sounds good to me
16:10:37 <Shelikhoo[mds]> nice!
16:10:40 <cohosh> i wonder if we should make an announcement about the proxy fairness feature to tor-relays
16:10:44 <Shelikhoo[mds]> over for me on this topic
16:11:03 <cohosh> just so they aren't shocked if their usage goes down, though i don't think it will by too much
16:11:18 <meskio[mds]> good point, would be nice to send an email
16:11:34 <cohosh> ok i can draft that
16:11:45 <meskio[mds]> thanks
16:11:56 <cohosh> or i'll draft and send it
16:12:03 <cohosh> i don't think it will need review
16:12:07 <meskio[mds]> :)
16:12:18 <meskio[mds]> is just me or the pad is missbeheaving?
16:12:33 <cohosh> yeah i think riseup is down :o
16:12:44 <meskio[mds]> :(
16:12:48 <Shelikhoo[mds]> oh no....
16:12:49 <onyinyang[mds]> uh oh
16:12:54 <meskio[mds]> anyway, I have it cached, let's move to the next topic
16:13:10 <meskio[mds]> the request about snowflake-proxy in the forum
16:13:16 <meskio[mds]> unic3rn: was it you?
16:13:20 <unic3rn> yes
16:13:49 <meskio[mds]> I think cohosh said that will reply there
16:14:01 <meskio[mds]> but if you have concrete questions to discuss about it
16:14:20 <unic3rn> oh, that's cool. no, I don't have anything to add to it.
16:14:34 <meskio[mds]> thank you for pointing it out
16:14:43 <meskio[mds]> I think they have a cool dashboard :)
16:15:40 <meskio[mds]> and last topic:
16:15:42 <meskio[mds]> What happens to Tor on a whitelisted mobile network in Russia?
16:16:17 <meskio[mds]> I don't know much about whitelisted mobile networks in Russia, did I hear correctly that they can't even reach most of the things inside the country?
16:16:37 <meskio[mds]> as in they can only reach the few in-country services that are in the whitelist
16:16:43 <cohosh> thank you for the report unic3rn!
16:17:04 <meskio[mds]> oposed to what we saw during Iranian shutdown where all the country was reachable
16:17:23 <unic3rn> yes, so it's either like 100 whitelisted sites, usually big corporate ones, etc, or any internet connection, but only at 16 KB/s
16:17:46 <unic3rn> and the whitelisted sites are at full speed
16:18:24 <Shelikhoo[mds]> yeah.. I think to get around these kind of allowlisting would require a dedicated effort...
16:19:20 <Shelikhoo[mds]> like sending packets with source address of allowed ip
16:19:31 <unic3rn> so when you start a Tor connection, it bootstraps, because the Tor connection (even a bridge one) is smaller than 16KB. but web traffic doesn't get routed (throught the Tor network), I wanted to point that out. so it still looks like a +1 Tor connection that is successfull. I wanted to point that out.
16:20:05 <meskio[mds]> wow, that is painful
16:20:33 <meskio[mds]> is the connection blocked completely after the 16KBs or do you get 16KB every second?
16:20:38 <meskio[mds]> I think I missreaded
16:20:50 <unic3rn> stable 16KB/s
16:21:06 <meskio[mds]> ahh, ok, but that is too slow for most things
16:21:19 <meskio[mds]> I wonder if the allowlist is about IPs or DNSs in the SNI
16:21:33 <meskio[mds]> I guess people has tried webtunnel with SNI modification and failed
16:21:44 <unic3rn> IPs. SNI modification doesn't do anything.
16:22:30 <unic3rn> some say that it's configured on the mobile network operator's network, not roskomnadzor's DPI inspection machines, that may explain why there is such a difference
16:22:37 <cohosh> wow
16:23:42 <unic3rn> cohosh: thanks
16:24:02 <meskio[mds]> isn't people finding "creative" ways to use the allowlisted services? like moving traffic over max chats?
16:24:13 <meskio[mds]> (was it max one of the main chats?)
16:24:19 <cohosh> unic3rn: is there a source for which services are allowlisted?
16:25:34 <unic3rn> meskio[mds]: probably yes, there's a whole thread about this on ntc, also considering that the whitelist may work slightly differently for different users
16:26:18 <unic3rn> cohosh: yes, I can try to find one and dm you it
16:26:42 <cohosh> thank you!
16:27:30 <Shelikhoo[mds]> thanks!!!
16:27:33 <meskio[mds]> so the answer to you question, right now we don't have a plan, but we should work on it
16:27:37 <unic3rn> also, there's another special whitelist mode that is rarely used, but it essentially cuts off all traffic. then even the whitelisted services don't work.
16:27:46 <meskio[mds]> I think this can be a good point to discuss in person next week
16:28:06 <cohosh> there's this net4people/bbs issue as well: https://github.com/net4people/bbs/issues/650
16:28:20 <onyinyang[mds]> sounds like a good plan :)
16:28:48 <unic3rn> meskio: I understand, I think that it's pretty hard to find a workaround, I wanted to sort of make it more clear on how the whitelist operates.
16:29:48 <meskio[mds]> I know and we might not find any good solutions, but thank you for answering questions
16:30:00 <meskio[mds]> I'll keep it in mind when more questions pop up
16:30:20 <unic3rn> ok :)
16:32:30 <meskio[mds]> anything more for this meeting?
16:32:58 <Shelikhoo[mds]> eof from me!
16:33:07 <unic3rn> eof from me
16:33:19 <meskio[mds]> #endmeeting