The Onion Report (HOPE XI live blog)

Submitted by Ed on Fri, 07/22/2016 - 16:45

Notes taken at HOPE XI.

Presenters:
asn
Nima Fatemi
David Goblet

Nima gives some basic stats. New board, 6 members. 8 employees, 12 contractors. 40 volunteers. 7000 relay operators. 3000 bridge operators. Dip in relay operators around April 2016 with corresponding spike in bridge operators.

Five teams work on TOR. The Network team is working on better crytography (Ed25519 and SHA3). TOR depends on 8 trusted computers around the world that maintain consensus, which are sometimes attacked with DDoS. There is now a backup list that can be used when no consensus is reached.

Application team doing ongoing development on the TOR browser. Porting the browser to mobile platforms. Doing research and development on sandboxing and usability. Also working on TorBirdy (email) and Tor Messenger (XMPP, OTR).

The UX team collaborating with security usability researchers. Can’t collect usage data because of privacy. Running user studies. Now have a security “slider.” Now display routing chain.

Community team drafting social contracts, membership guidelines, etc. Doing outreach, including the Library Freedom Project.

Measurement team received $152,500 grant from Mozilla. Revamping entire metrics interface.

Ahmia is a search engine for onion services. TOR now gives badges to relays.

Tags:

tor