Bridge bundles

Abstract: How about a new bundle with Tor, obfsproxy and a new Tor controller based on Stem to make it super easy to run bridges? With an added “feel good factor” UI stating things like “you have helped around 10 people from .ir last week”. Refine the idea as a possible GSoC?

Minutes

Why we need it

• Vidalia cannot use obfs bridges, so cannot build on top of existing
• better thing for volunteers than "run a relay"
• group everything into a funding proposal

Simple interface

• pause/play
• how many users from where yesterday
• don't need to be as complex as vidalia
• based on STEM
• underlying code already written
• work with karsten to extract "feel good" data

Market as "bridge bundle" new shiny and partly fund BridgeDB

• running as system service
  • bundling is not too complex
• dashboard / localhost webinterface
• small UI activated from tray
  • focus on simplicity
• build on top of STEM, (plus tor plus config file)
• throttle button, like transmission (bittorrent client)

NAT punching on bridge side, maybe a problem

• not as important, more important for client side
• test that bridges are reachable
  • TODO item for BridgeDB
  • BridgeDB has ongoing performance/hardware issues
• tor-fw-helper to work better

Update mechanism (for later)

• that of TBB is tightly-coupled to firefox
• other ideas...?
• python wrapper for restarting (on windows), needs a developer

Determinstic server-side PT builds too

• (TBB only does client-side at the moment)
• python sandboxing

Future, use BridgeDB to predict PTs / PT combinations that might be blocked in certain places,

• e.g. obfs3 confirmation attack to block scramblesuit on the same IP
• if we detect no connections to obfs3+scramblesuit IPs, we can avoid recommending this