The following is a page to help with GSoC coordination.

GSoC 2016

Student	Primary Mentor	Backup Mentor	IRC Nick	Passed	Project
Amogh Pradeep	Nathan	Hans	amoghbl1		Orfox
Huy Vu	Marcela (masomel)	Arlo (arlolra)	c633		CONIKS for Tor Messenger
Ismael Riahi	Juha Nurmi (numes)	George (asn)	zma		Ahmia search engine for hidden services
Mridul Malpotra	Philipp (phw)	Damian (atagar)	mtyamantau		Exitmap improvements project
Pierre Laperdrix	Georg (GeKo)	Günes Acar, Nicolas (boklm)	SuperOctopus		The Torprinter project
Sambuddha Basu	Damian (atagar)	Sebastian	sambuddhabasu1		Expand Nyx
segfault	anonym	George (asn)	segfault		Tails Server

Schedule

• 1st status update: June 3rd
• 2nd status update: June 17th
• GSoC midterms: June 20-27th
• 3rd status update: July 1st
• 4th status update: July 15th
• 5th status update: July 29th
• 6th status update: August 12th
• GSoC finals: August 23-29th

Status Reports

• Amogh Pradeep (Orfox)
  • 4/26/16 - ​introduction

• Huy Vu (CONIKS for Tor Messenger)
  • 4/23/16 - ​introduction

• Ismael Riahi (Ahmia search engine for hidden services)
  • 4/24/16 - ​introducton

• Mridul Malpotra (Exitmap improvements project)
  • 4/23/16 - ​introduction

• Pierre Laperdrix (The Torprinter project)
  • 4/24/16 - ​introduction

• Sambuddha Basu (Expand Nyx)
  • Note: starting May 1st
  • 4/25/16 - ​introduction

• segfault (Tails Server)
  • Note: starting May 5th
  • 4/22/16 - ​introduction

SoP 2015

For 2015 ran our own program instead of GSoC (​program announcement, ​selected applications).

Student	Primary Mentor	Backup Mentor	IRC Nick	Passed	Project
Donncha O'Cearbhaill	David	George	DonnchaC	yes	​Load Balancing/High Availability Onion Services
Jesse Victors	Yawning	George	kernelcorn	yes	​The Onion Name System
Israel Leiva	Sukhbir	Nima	ilv	yes	​Enhance GetTor
Cristobal Leiva	Damian	Arturo	clv	yes	​Relay Web Dashboard

Summer Schedule

The following schedule is being used by Donncha and Jesse.

• Projects officially start: May 25th
• 1st status update: June 5th
• 2st status update: June 19th
• 3st status update and midterm evaluation: July 3rd
• 4st status update: July 17th
• 5st status update: July 31th
• 6st status update: August 14th
• 7st status update: August 28th
• End-of-term evaluation: September 1st

Winter Schedule

The following schedule is being used by Israel and Cristobal.

• Projects officially start: July 6th
• 1st status update: July 17th
• 2st status update: July 31st
• 3st status update and midterm evaluation: August 14th
• 4st status update: August 28th
• 5st status update: September 11th
• 6st status update: September 25th
• 7st status update: October 9th
• End-of-term evaluation: October 13th

Status Reports

• Donncha O'Cearbhaill (Load Balancing/High Availability Onion Services)
  • 8/30/15 - ​report
  • 8/21/15 - ​report
  • 8/2/15 - ​report
  • 7/21/15 - ​report
  • 7/3/15 - ​report
  • 6/19/15 - ​report
  • 6/7/15 - ​report
  • 5/26/15 - ​introduction

• Jesse Victors (The Onion Name System)
  • 8/28/15 - ​report
  • 8/20/15 - ​report
  • 8/4/15 - ​report
  • 7/17/15 - ​report
  • 7/9/15 - ​report
  • 6/20/15 - ​report
  • 6/4/15 - ​report
  • 5/18/15 - ​introduction

• Israel Leiva (Enhance GetTor)
  • 10/14/15 - ​report
  • 9/30/15 - ​report
  • 9/14/15 - ​report
  • 9/1/15 - ​report
  • 8/17/15 - ​report
  • 8/3/15 - ​report
  • 7/17/15 - ​report
  • 7/7/15 - ​introduction

• Cristobal Leiva (Relay Web Dashboard)
  • 10/14/15 - ​report
  • 9/29/15 - ​report
  • 9/16/15 - ​report
  • 9/1/15 - ​report
  • 8/19/15 - ​report
  • 8/3/15 - ​report
  • 7/18/15 - ​report
  • 7/7/15 - ​introduction

GSoC 2014

Student	Primary Mentor	Backup Mentor	IRC Nick	Passed	Project
Juha Nurmi	George	Moritz	ahmia	yes	Ahmia.fi - Search Engine for Hidden Services
Christian Schulz	Karsten	Sathya	rndm	no	Integrating Compass into Globe
Amogh Pradeep	Nathan	Sathya	amoghbl1	yes	Orbot & Orfox
Jacob Haven	Philipp Winter	Arturo	jhaven	no	A Lightweight Censorship Analyser for Tor/OONI
Israel Leiva	Sukhbir	Nima	ilv	yes	Revamp GetTor
Noah Rahman	Vmon	Zackw	selimthegrim	no	Stegotorus security enhancement
Sreenatha Bhatlapenumarthi	Meejah	Karsten	lucyd	yes	Rewrite Tor Weather
Kostas Jakeliunas	Isis	Matthew Finkel	wfn	no	Tor BridgeDB Twitter Distributor
Marc Juarez	Mike	Yawning	mjuarezm	yes	A Framework for Website Fingerprinting Countermeasures
Quinn Jarrell	Ximin	David Fifield	RushingWookie	yes	Building a pluggable transport combiner
Daniel Martí	Nick	Sebastian	mvdan	yes	Implement consensus diffs
towelenee	Nick	Sebastian	towelenee	yes	Tor daemon optimization
Zack Mullaly	Yan	Peter	redwire	yes	A secure ruleset update mechanism for HTTPSEverywhere

Schedule

• 1st status update: June 6th
• 2nd status update: June 20th
• GSoC midterms: June 23-27th
• 3rd status update: July 4th
• 4th status update: July 18th
• 5th status update: August 1st
• 6th status update: August 15th
• GSoC finals: August 18-22nd

Status Reports

• Juha Nurmi (Ahmia.fi - Search Engine for Hidden Services)
  • 8/16/14 - ​report
  • 8/8/14 - ​report
  • 8/1/14 - ​report
  • 7/25/14 - ​report
  • 7/19/14 - ​report
  • 7/11/14 - ​report
  • 7/6/14 - ​report
  • 6/27/14 - ​report
  • 6/20/14 - ​report
  • 6/13/14 - ​report
  • 6/6/14 - ​report
  • 5/30/14 - ​report
  • 5/23/14 - ​report
  • 4/22/14 - ​introduction

• Christian Schulz (Integrating Compass into Globe)
  • Did not pass at midterm

• Amogh Pradeep (Orbot & Orfox)
  • 8/17/14 - ​report
  • 8/1/14 - ​report
  • 7/18/14- ​report
  • 7/4/14 - ​report
  • 6/20/14 - ​report
  • 6/6/14 - ​report
  • 4/22/14 - ​introduction

• Jacob Haven (A Lightweight Censorship Analyser for Tor/OONI)
  • 6/21/14 - dropped out
  • 6/6/14 - status report skipped (school finals)
  • 5/2/14 - ​introduction

• Israel Leiva (Revamp GetTor)
  • 8/15/14 - ​report
  • 8/2/14 - ​report
  • 7/19/14 - ​report
  • 7/2/14 - ​report
  • 6/21/14 - ​report
  • 6/6/14 - ​report
  • 4/22/14 - ​introduction

• Noah Rahman (Stegotorus security enhancement)
  • 8/17/14 - ​report
  • 8/4/14 - ​report
  • 7/29/14 - ​report
  • 7/5/14 - ​report
  • 6/24/14 - ​report
  • 6/7/14 - ​report
  • 5/5/14 - ​introduction

• Sreenatha Bhatlapenumarthi (Rewrite Tor Weather)
  • 8/19/14 - ​report
  • 8/3/14 - ​report
  • 7/18/14 - status report skipped (illness)
  • 7/4/14 - ​report
  • 6/20/14 - ​report
  • 6/7/14 - ​report
  • 4/23/14 - ​introduction

• Kostas Jakeliunas (Tor BridgeDB Twitter Distributor)
  • 7/26/14 - ​report
  • 7/13/14 - ​report
  • 6/21/14 - ​report
  • 6/11/14 - ​report
  • 4/22/14 - ​introduction

• Marc Juarez (A Framework for Website Fingerprinting Countermeasures)
  • 8/15/14 - ​report
  • 8/2/14 - ​report
  • 7/19/14 - ​report
  • 7/4/14 - ​report
  • 6/20/14 - ​report
  • 6/7/14 - ​report
  • 4/22/14 - ​introduction

• Quinn Jarrell (Building a pluggable transport combiner)
  • 8/19/14 - ​report
  • 8/2/14 - ​report
  • 7/19/14 - ​report
  • 7/5/14 - ​report
  • 6/21/14 - ​report
  • 6/6/14 - ​report
  • 4/26/14 - ​introduction

• Daniel Martí (Implement consensus diffs)
  • 8/17/14 - ​report
  • 8/2/14 - ​report
  • 7/20/14 - ​report
  • 7/4/14 - ​report
  • 6/19/14 - ​report
  • 6/8/14 - ​report
  • 4/22/14 - ​introduction

• towelenee (Tor daemon optimization)
  • 8/18/14 - ​report
  • 8/4/14 - ​report
  • 7/18/14 - status report skipped (unavailable due to military camp)
  • 7/4/14 - ​unavailable
  • 6/20/14 - ​report
  • 6/10/14 - ​report
  • 5/4/14 - ​introduction

• Zack Mullaly (HTTPS Everywhere ruleset update mechanism)
  • 8/19/14 - ​report
  • 8/1/14 - ​report
  • 6/22/14 - ​report
  • 6/13/14 - ​report
  • 5/20/14 - ​report
  • 5/14/14 - ​introduction

GSoC 2013

Student	Primary Mentor	Backup Mentor	IRC Nick	Passed	Project
Kostas Jakeliunas	Karsten	Damian	wfn	yes	Searchable Tor descriptor archive
Chang Lan	Steven	George	clan	no	Build Better Pluggable Transports
Hareesan	Sukhbir	Moritz	hareesh	yes	Steganography Browser Addon
Cristian Toader	Nick	Andrea	ctoader	yes	Run With Limited Capabilities Project
Lisa	Micah	Dan	lisacyao	yes	HTTPS Everywhere Mixed Content Detection and Handling
Robert	Mike	Aaron	ra	yes	Improvements on latency, bandwidth and anonymity in the Tor network
Johannes Fürmann	Arturo	Moritz	waaaaargh	yes	Create an Internet Censorship Virtual Machine Based Simulator

Schedule

• 1st status update: June 28th
• 2nd status update: July 12th
• 3rd status update: July 26th
• GSoC midterms: July 29th - August 2nd
• 4th status update: August 9th
• 5th status update: August 23th
• 6th status update: September 6th
• 7th status update: September 20th
• GSoC finals: September 23rd - 27th

Status Reports

• Kostas Jakeliunas (Searchable Tor descriptor archive)
  • 9/20/13 ​report
  • 9/6/13 - ​report
  • 8/23/13 - ​report
  • 8/10/13 - ​report
  • 7/28/13 - ​report
  • 7/22/13 - ​report
  • 6/28/13 - status report skipped (finals)
  • 5/29/13 - ​introduction

• Chang Lan (Build Better Pluggable Transports)
  • Did not pass at midterm
  • 7/27/13 - ​report
  • 7/12/13 - report missing
  • 6/28/13 - ​report
  • 5/29/13 - ​introduction

• Hareesan (Steganography Browser Addon)
  • 9/20/13 - status report skipped (finals)
  • 9/9/13 - ​report
  • 8/25/13 - ​report
  • 8/10/13 - ​report
  • 7/27/13 - ​report
  • 7/14/13 - ​report
  • 6/28/13 - ​report
  • 5/29/13 - ​introduction

• Cristian Toader (Run With Limited Capabilities Project)
  • 9/23/13 - ​report
  • 9/9/13 - ​report
  • 8/26/13 - ​report
  • 8/9/13 - ​report
  • 7/26/13 - ​report
  • 7/12/13 - ​report
  • 6/28/13 - ​report
  • 5/30/13 - ​introduction

• Robert (Improvements on latency, bandwidth and anonymity in the Tor network)
  • 9/14/13 - ​report
  • 8/26/13 - ​report
  • 8/10/13 - ​report
  • 7/26/13 - ​report
  • 7/12/13 - ​report
  • 6/28/13 - status report skipped
  • 6/7/13 - ​introduction

• Johannes Fürmann (Create an Internet Censorship Virtual Machine Based Simulator)
  • 9/20/13 - ​report
  • 9/6/13 - ​report
  • 8/23/13 - ​report
  • 8/9/13 - ​report
  • 7/26/13 - ​report
  • 7/12/13 - ​report
  • 6/27/13 - ​report
  • 6/8/13 - ​introduction

GSoC 2012

Student	Primary Mentor	Backup Mentor	IRC Nick	Passed	Project
Ravi Padmala	Damian	Sathyanarayanan	neena	yes	​Stem Improvements and Arm Port
Feroze Naina	Tomás	Sebastian	feroze	yes	​Implementing Hidden Service Configuration
Michele Orrù	Arturo	George	maker-kun	yes	Anonymous Python Application Framework
Brandon Wiley	George	Nick	blanu	yes	Pluggable Transports in Python
vmon	Zack Weinberg	Roger	vmon	yes	Stegotorus
Julien Voisin	intrigeri	anonym	jvoisin	no	Tails Server

Status Reports

• Ravi Padmala (Stem Improvements and Arm port)
  • 8/7/12 - ​report
  • 7/22/12 - missing
  • 7/16/12 - ​report
  • 7/9/12 - ​report
  • 7/2/12 - ​report
  • 6/25/12 - ​report
  • 6/17/12 - ​report
  • 6/11/12 - ​report
  • 5/28/12 - ​report

• Brandon Wiley (Python Pluggable Transports)
  • 8/1/12 - ​report
  • 7/24/12 - ​report
  • 7/2/12 - ​report
  • 6/16/12 - ​report
  • 6/1/12 - ​report

• Feroze Naina (Hidden Service Configuration)
  • 8/1/12 - ​report
  • 7/18/12 - ​report
  • 7/2/12 - ​report
  • 6/21/12 - ​report
  • 6/1/12 - ​report

• Michele Orrù (APAF)
  • 8/3/12 - ​report
  • 7/19/12 - ​report
  • 7/8/12 - ​report
  • 6/20/12 - ​report
  • 6/4/12 - ​report

• vmon (Stegotorus)
  • 8/8/12 - ​report
  • 7/16/12 - ​report
  • 7/2/12 - ​report
  • 6/17/12 - ​report
  • 6/4/12 - ​report

• Julien Voisin (Tails Server)
  • 6/19/12 - ​dropped out
  • 6/4/12 - ​report

Org Admin Checklist

The following is a cheat sheet for being an org admin for Google Summer of Code. Please add things that we're missing as we go along through the year.

• Org Application Phase
  • Revise GSoC page and project ideas
    • ​https://www.torproject.org/about/gsoc.html.en
    • ​https://www.torproject.org/getinvolved/volunteer.html.en#Coding
  • Ask potential mentors for new project ideas and to update old ones
    • Make an initial plea-of-marginal-effectiveness
    • Follow up a week later with individual nagging
    • Apply revisions and remove mentors who weren't responsive
  • Revise and submit org application to Google
• Org Acceptance
  • TODO: ​Check if mentors would care to opt for a more open model like Wikimedia
  • Blog posting (​2012 example, ​2013 example, ​2014 example)
  • Email tor-talk@, tor-dev@, and libtech@ (​2013 example, ​2014 example)
• Student Selection
  • Initial pass through applications
    • Flag spam applications
    • Make summary of the projects and assign potential primary mentor
    • Ask potential mentors to look them over and give feedback
  • Schedule meeting on IRC to discuss applications
  • Deduplication IRC meeting
• Student Acceptance
  • Welcoming email
  • Details when about to start (last year's subject: "Start of GSoC")

Org Application

Organization Name

The Tor Project and EFF

Description

The Tor Project is a free-software non-profit project to build an anonymity toolkit used by individuals, companies, governments, and law enforcement around the world. The Tor network has grown since its start in 2002 to several million active users pushing over 60 Gbps of traffic. The Tor Project has a staff of 28 developers, researchers, and advocates, plus several dozen volunteers who help out on a daily basis.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), founded in 1990, works in the public interest to protect fundamental civil liberties in the digital age. The Internet and other communication technologies can herald the most liberating era of human history---or the most regulated and controlled. The EFF works to defend our basic rights to free speech, privacy and free and open communications, and advocates for sane policies on digital copyright, software patents and electronic voting. EFF is a membership supported organization with 29 full-time staff.

This proposal is a combined submission from EFF and Tor.

Tags

c, python, security, privacy, anonymity, anti-censorship

Main Organization License

New and Simplified BSD licenses

Logo URL

Requirement in 2015 was for a 256x256 image, so used ​this (​full-sized original).

Home page

​https://www.torproject.org/

Backup Admin

arma (include seb_hahn if they allow more than one)

If you chose "veteran" in the dropdown above, please summarize your involvement and the successes and challenges of your participation. Please also list your pass/fail rate for each year.

We participated in GSoC 2007 through 2014. In 2007 we had a pretty successful group of four students. We had one student working on making Tor servers scale better (and not crash!) on Windows, one working on a library and tool to choose paths through the network according to various rules like "cross at most one ocean", one working on a fuzzing library to look for parsing problems (it's found three so far), and one working on a new way to improve scalability and privacy for Tor hidden services. All four passed and have produced useful code.

The 2008 GSoC was a success, too. One of our successful GSoC 2008 students has written a nice blog post reviewing how GSoC went for him, for the other students, and for the project in general: ​https://blog.torproject.org/blog/google-summer-code-2008-review

In 2009, we had 5 students to work on Tor, plus 1 more working for The Electronic Frontier Foundation. We had to pick these 6 out of 32 applications, which was a pretty hard process for us. In retrospect, there were at least 2 more students that we'd really have wanted to work on Tor but that we were not able to pick. Fortunately, they stuck with the project anyway, with one writing a neat relay monitor (and who is now our primary gsoc admin!) and one helping reimplement Tor in Java for mobile devices. We wrote a wrap-up report how GSoC 2009 went for us here: ​https://blog.torproject.org/blog/gsoc-wrapup-2009

In 2010 we had 4 students work on Tor and 2 more with the EFF. Unfortunately one disappeared shortly after being accepted, but all the rest were successful and greatly benefited the projects they worked on (jtor, soat, torbel, metrics, and switzerland). A couple of these students also wrote blog posts summarizing their summer:

​https://blog.torproject.org/blog/torbel-tor-bulk-exit-list-tools ​https://blog.torproject.org/blog/tor-metrics-google-summer-code-2010

In 2011 we had 6 students to work on Tor and 1 more with the EFF. Two of those students (George and Sathyanarayanan) stayed afterward and became core Tor developers. Everyone was successful and some blogged about their experiences at...

​http://inspirated.com/2011/10/04/summing-up-gsoc-2011 ​http://gsathya.in/blog/?p=107 ​https://blog.torproject.org/blog/gsoc-2011-metadata-anonymisation-toolkit ​https://blog.torproject.org/blogs/max-gsoc

In 2012 we had 6 students work with Tor. One had to leave the program soon after acceptance for personal reasons, but the rest were all successful. Starting this year we had students write bi-weekly status reports, you can find them on...

https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/doc/gsoc

In 2013 we had 7 students, 2014 had 13 students, and ran the program in a similar fashion.

Stats for the success rate in prior years is: 4/4 in 2007, 4/7 in 2008, 5/6 in 2009, 5/6 in 2010, 7/7 in 2011, 5/6 in 2012, 6/7 in 2013, and 9/13 in 2014.

Why is your organization applying to participate in GSoC 2014? What do you hope to gain by participating?

Tor has many open development tasks that are well-suited to summer projects, and also many students who are excited to work on them. GSoC can help these students work on important new free software work while also paying rent. In recent years The Tor Project has continued to grow, offering interesting new opportunities for summer projects. We expect to attract smart students as we did in prior years.

What is the URL for your Ideas list?

​https://www.torproject.org/about/gsoc.html.en

What is the main development mailing list for your organization?

​https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-dev/

What is the main IRC channel for your organization?

​irc://irc.oftc.net/tor-dev/

Twitter URL

​https://twitter.com/torproject

What criteria did you use to select your mentors for this year's program? Please be as specific as possible.

Seth Schoen, Peter Eckersley, and Micah Lee, and Dan Auerbach are EFF Staff as listed on ​http://www.eff.org/about/staff. The remaining individuals have each worked with Tor, most of them for several years, and most of them are in the "core development team" listed on ​https://www.torproject.org/about/corepeople. Each individual has been leading his or her own projects related to Tor, and they are the most suited for mentoring students working on those modules. Note that five of our mentors and two of our admins are former GSoC students.

What is your plan for dealing with disappearing students?

We hope to minimize the chances of disappearing students by picking students who have already demonstrated commitment and/or interest to our community. Further, having multiple mentors per student can hopefully give us a better shot at keeping the students' interest.

We want to learn about disappearing students as early as possible. Therefore, we are planning to require our students to write bi-weekly status updates to keep us informed of their progress.

What is your plan for dealing with disappearing mentors?

Our plan is to assign two mentors per student to provide redundancy in case anything goes wrong. In general, our chosen mentors are EFF's staff or have been working on Tor for multiple years now (and for many of them, it's their full or part time job), so they're unlikely to just disappear.

What steps will you take to encourage students to interact with your project's community before and during the program?

Tor already has an active community on IRC and the mailing lists, and there's also an active research community of scientists trying to improve security of systems like Tor. We can draw on this community---the current active Tor volunteers as well as the graduate and undergraduate students at the research institutions. Further, we require our students to introduce themselves to the community, and to make periodic status reports available in a public format.

What will you do to encourage that your accepted students stick with the project after Google Summer of Code concludes?

In past years the students that stuck around afterward were the ones most invested in their project and our development community. We plan to encourage them to actively participate in discussions and connect with the community to improve their chances of staying on after the summer has ended.