ooniprobe: a network interference detection tool
OONI, the Open Observatory of Network Interference, is a global observation network which aims is to collect high quality data using open methodologies, using Free and Open Source Software (FL/OSS) to share observations and data about the various types, methods, and amounts of network tampering in the world.
- "The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it."
- John Gilmore; TIME magazine (6 December 1993)
ooniprobe is the first program that users run to probe their network and to collect data for the OONI project. Are you interested in testing your network for signs of surveillance and censorship? Do you want to collect data to share with others, so that you and others may better understand your network? If so, please read this document and we hope ooniprobe will help you to gather network data that will assist you with your endeavors!
Read this before running ooniprobe!
Running ooniprobe is a potentially risky activity. This greatly depends on the jurisdiction in which you are in and which test you are running. It is technically possible for a person observing your internet connection to be aware of the fact that you are running ooniprobe. This means that if running network measurement tests is something considered to be illegal in your country then you could be spotted.
Furthermore, ooniprobe takes no precautions to protect the install target machine from forensics analysis. If the fact that you have installed or used ooni probe is a liability for you, please be aware of this risk.
OONI in 5 minutes
The latest ooniprobe version for Debian and Ubuntu releases can be found in the deb.torproject.org package repository.
On Debian stable (jessie):
gpg --keyserver keys.gnupg.net --recv A3C4F0F979CAA22CDBA8F512EE8CBC9E886DDD89 gpg --export A3C4F0F979CAA22CDBA8F512EE8CBC9E886DDD89 | sudo apt-key add - echo 'deb http://deb.torproject.org/torproject.org jessie main' | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ooniprobe.list sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install ooniprobe deb.torproject.org-keyring
On Debian testing:
gpg --keyserver keys.gnupg.net --recv A3C4F0F979CAA22CDBA8F512EE8CBC9E886DDD89 gpg --export A3C4F0F979CAA22CDBA8F512EE8CBC9E886DDD89 | sudo apt-key add - echo 'deb http://deb.torproject.org/torproject.org testing main' | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ooniprobe.list sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install ooniprobe deb.torproject.org-keyring
On Debian unstable:
gpg --keyserver keys.gnupg.net --recv A3C4F0F979CAA22CDBA8F512EE8CBC9E886DDD89 gpg --export A3C4F0F979CAA22CDBA8F512EE8CBC9E886DDD89 | sudo apt-key add - echo 'deb http://deb.torproject.org/torproject.org unstable main' | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ooniprobe.list sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install ooniprobe deb.torproject.org-keyring
On Ubuntu 16.10 (yakkety), 16.04 (xenial) or 14.04 (trusty):
gpg --keyserver keys.gnupg.net --recv A3C4F0F979CAA22CDBA8F512EE8CBC9E886DDD89 gpg --export A3C4F0F979CAA22CDBA8F512EE8CBC9E886DDD89 | sudo apt-key add - echo 'deb http://deb.torproject.org/torproject.org $RELEASE main' | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ooniprobe.list sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install ooniprobe deb.torproject.org-keyring
Note: You'll need to swap out $RELEASE for either yakkety, xenial or
trusty. This will not happen automatically. You will also need to ensure
that you have the universe repository enabled. The universe repository
is enabled by default in a standard Ubuntu installation but may not be on some
minimal, or not standard, installations.
Installation
macOS
You can install ooniprobe on macOS if you have installed homebrew (http://brew.sh/) with:
brew install ooniprobe
Unix systems (with pip)
Make sure you have installed the following dependencies:
- build-essential
- python (>=2.7)
- python-dev
- pip
- libgeoip-dev
- libdumbnet-dev
- libpcap-dev
- libssl-dev
- libffi-dev
- tor (>=0.2.5.1 to run all the tor related tests)
Optional dependencies:
- obfs4proxy
On debian based systems this can generally be done by running:
sudo apt-get install -y build-essential libdumbnet-dev libpcap-dev libgeoip-dev libffi-dev python-dev python-pip tor libssl-dev obfs4proxy
Then you should be able to install ooniprobe by running:
sudo pip install ooniprobe
or install ooniprobe as a user:
pip install ooniprobe
Using ooniprobe
Net test is a set of measurements to assess what kind of internet censorship is occurring.
Decks are collections of ooniprobe nettests with some associated inputs.
Collector is a service used to report the results of measurements.
Test helper is a service used by a probe for successfully performing its measurements.
Bouncer is a service used to discover the addresses of test helpers and collectors.
Configuring ooniprobe
After successfully installing ooniprobe you should be able to access the web UI on your host machine at <http://localhost:8842/>.
You should now be presented with the web UI setup wizard where you can read the risks involved with running ooniprobe. Upon answering the quiz correctly you can enable or disable ooniprobe tests, set how you can connect to the measurement's collector and finally configure your privacy settings.
By default ooniprobe will not include personal identifying information in the test results, nor create a pcap file. This behavior can be personalized.
Run ooniprobe as a service (systemd)
Upon ooniprobe version 2.0.0 there is no need for cronjobs as ooniprobe-agent is responsible for the tasks scheduling.
You can ensure that ooniprobe-agent is always running by installing and enabling the systemd unit ooniprobe.service:
wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/TheTorProject/ooni-probe/master/scripts/systemd/ooniprobe.service --directory-prefix=/etc/systemd/system systemctl enable ooniprobe systemctl start ooniprobe
You should be able to see a similar output if ooniprobe (systemd) service is active and loaded by running systemctl status ooniprobe:
● ooniprobe.service - ooniprobe.service, network interference detection tool
Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/ooniprobe.service; enabled)
Active: active (running) since Thu 2016-10-20 09:17:42 UTC; 16s ago
Process: 311 ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/ooniprobe-agent start (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
Main PID: 390 (ooniprobe-agent)
CGroup: /system.slice/ooniprobe.service
└─390 /usr/bin/python /usr/local/bin/ooniprobe-agent start
Setting capabilities on your virtualenv python binary
If your distribution supports capabilities you can avoid needing to run OONI as root:
setcap cap_net_admin,cap_net_raw+eip /path/to/your/virtualenv's/python2
Reporting bugs
You can report bugs and issues you find with ooni-probe on The Tor Project issue tracker filing them under the "Ooni" component: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/newticket?component=Ooni.
You can either register an account or use the group account "cypherpunks" with password "writecode".
Contributing
You can download the code for ooniprobe from the following git repository:
git clone https://github.com/TheTorProject/ooni-probe.git
You should then submit patches for review as pull requests to this github repository:
https://github.com/TheTorProject/ooni-probe
Read this article to learn how to create a pull request on github (https://help.github.com/articles/creating-a-pull-request).
If you prefer not to use github (or don't have an account), you may also submit patches as attachments to tickets.
Be sure to format the patch (given that you are working on a feature branch that is different from master) with:
git format-patch master --stdout > my_first_ooniprobe.patch
Setting up development environment
On Debian based systems a development environment can be setup as follows: (prerequisites include build essentials, python-dev, and tor; for tor see https://www.torproject.org/docs/debian.html.en):
sudo apt-get install python-pip python-virtualenv virtualenv sudo apt-get install libgeoip-dev libffi-dev libdumbnet-dev libssl-dev libpcap-dev git clone https://github.com/TheTorProject/ooni-probe cd ooni-probe virtualenv venv
virtualenv venv will create a folder in the current directory which will contain the Python executable files, and a copy of the pip library which you can use to install other packages. To begin using the virtual environment, it needs to be activated:
source venv/bin/activate pip install -r requirements.txt pip install -r requirements-dev.txt python setup.py install
Then, you can check whether the installation went well with:
ooniprobe -s
This will explain you the risks of running ooniprobe and make sure you have understood them, afterwards it shows you the available tests.
To run the ooniprobe agent, instead, type:
ooniprobe-agent run
To execute the unit tests for ooniprobe, type:
coverage run $(which trial) ooni
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