US102 - Community and outreach

[U039b]

Description: Given the success of events, webinars and demos with members of the civil society, NGOs and security researchers, we continue with our outreach plan. We organize trainings and demonstration sessions as well as creating spaces for the community to share feedback and request new features via our mailing list, GitHub issues or Discord server.
We analyze one Android app that has received the community's interest (ex COP28 app) per month. The application to be analyzed is chosen by the community. The analysis report is first privately shared with the community and one month later it is publicly released.

We organize monthly calls open to all members of the community to share project updates and get the community’s feedback.

[CyrilBrulebois]

This month

We have identified various communication channels that we can leverage to enhance our outreach efforts.

Each month, we will analyze one Android app that has received the community's interest. We have set up all the tools we need to share the analysis report we will share with our community.

Each month, we will facilitate an online call open to the members of our community. We have set up all the tools we need to facilitate it.

Four work sessions were live-streamed through Twitch:

• Deploying PTS on a Raspberry Pi 4, and trying to virtualize it.
• Introducing pirogue-admin.
• Reworking PTS image generation, and adding initial support for Raspberry Pi 5.
• Solving intermittent network failures (dhcpcd), and improving Raspberry Pi 5 support.

Live at https://www.twitch.tv/CyrilBrulebois, every Friday at 12:00 UTC.

Next month

We will analyze the first Android app chosen by the community.

We will facilitate the first community monthly call.

Likely more live sessions around pirogue-admin (to support more than just Raspberry Pi devices), plus VPN/WireGuard at some point.

Challenges

None.

[CyrilBrulebois]

This month

As Khadija recently joined the team, a significant portion of the time was dedicated to help her get a better understanding of PTS intricacies, particularly focusing on Colander.

We initiated the planning process for a comprehensive strategic communication plan (thinking of a content calendar, new social media platforms and new outreach plan). This plan will guide our messaging and outreach efforts to ensure continuity of regular use of social media, given that there were no dedicated resources for communication.

As part of the communication activities, two work sessions were live-streamed through Twitch:

• Resuming automated Frida packaging
• More packaging: raspi-firmware, firmware-brcm80211, and Frida

Next month

We plan to finalize the strategic communication plan and begin its implementation. We will distribute the feedback form to current users and begin analyzing the responses. The insights gained will be used to refine our communication strategies and improve user engagement. This will inform future activities for finding new users and reaching out to new organizations to start using PTS.

Two major events for us will take place next month:

• We will be facilitating a workshop with the European DPAs. The goal it to explain the DPAs can use PiRogue to perform regulatory compliance audit of mobile applications.
• We will be attending the Global Gathering in Estoril. We booked a booth to demo the PiRogue Tool Suite project. Attendees will be able to test the PiRogue, ask questions about its usage and features, or get the network traffic of their mobile phone being analyzed.

More live sessions are expected, in particular around pirogue-admin, demonstrating and testing support for various use cases: Raspberry Pi 3, Pi 4, and Pi 5 as usual (ACCESS POINT mode), virtual machine with a single interface (VPN mode, using WireGuard), but also generic machines with several network interfaces, none of which is a wireless one (APPLIANCE mode).

Challenges

None.

[U039b]

This month

We have been facilitating a 3-hour training for the European Data Protection Authorities during the bootcamp organized by the European Data Protection Board. This training was focusing on the regulatory compliance audit of mobile applications with PiRogue Tool Suite. We have received very positive feedbacks.

The following topics have been covered:

• The installation procedure of the PiRogue
• The theory of network traffic interception and decryption
• The auditing procedure and methodology
• The analysis of the decrypted traffic
• The identification of the data processed and transmitted by the application to be audited

We have analyzed the application NetGuard, the analysis report will be shared with community at the beginning of October.

The PTS community meeting took place at the Global Gathering.

Next month

We will continue with our recurring activities.

Challenges

None.

[U039b]

This month

We have publicly released the analysis report of the NetGuard Android application.

The PTS community meeting took place on Oct. 25. This was a good opportunity to announce the second major release of PiRogue. The next community meeting will happen on Nov. 29 at 2pm CET.

The release of the new version of PiRogue has been announced on our different communication channels such as Discord, mailing list and CiviCERT Mattermost.

We continue working on refining the way we collect user feedbacks on the usability of PTS, the way they use and the use cases they would like to see addressed in the future.

Next month

We will continue with our recurring activities.

Challenges

None.

[U039b]

This month

We have publicly released the analysis report of the Turaco Android application.

The PTS community meeting took place on Nov. 29. This was a good opportunity to present the latest improvements of PTS. The next community meeting will happen on Dec. 27 at 2pm CET.

We continue working on refining the way we collect user feedbacks on the usability of PTS, the way they use and the use cases they would like to see addressed in the future. Furthermore, we organize meetings with each of the organizations that use PTS. The objective is to facilitate the sharing of feedback, the description of use cases, and the expression of their needs.

Next month

We will continue with our recurring activities.

Challenges

None.

[U039b]

This month

The PTS community meeting has been postponed to a later date, since it was originally planned during Christmas holidays. The publication of the next analysis report has been postponed for the same reason. January's community meeting will happen on Jan. 31 at 2pm CET.

To supplement the traditional feedback form, we are scheduling meetings with each organization utilizing PTS. This approach aims to foster a more interactive and efficient feedback collection process, enabling us to better understand user needs and implement relevant improvements.
During the early adoption phase of PiRogue VPN, we directly supported early adopters in Asia and Latin America. It was crucial to assist them during this phase, as they are deploying PiRogue VPN across a diverse range of hosting providers that we hadn’t tested. This phase revealed that PiRogue VPN is incompatible with DigitalOcean.

Next month

We will continue with our recurring activities.

Challenges

None.

[U039b]

This month

We have publicly released the analysis report of the MOI - Jordanian Ministry Of Interior Android application.

The PTS community meeting took place on Jan. 31. This was a good opportunity to present the latest improvements of PTS. The next one will happen on Feb. 28 at 2pm CET.

Next month

We will continue with our recurring activities.

Challenges

None.

[U039b]

This month

The analysis report of the Sham Cash Android application will be published in a few days because its analysis is more complex than anticipated.

The PTS community meeting took place on Feb. 28. The next one will happen on Mar. 28 at 2pm CET.

Due to a bug in PiRogue, we’ve noticed an increase in support requests. We’re actively working on resolving the issue that arises when the PiRogue’s IP address changes.

Next month

We will continue with our recurring activities.

[U039b]

This month

The analysis report of the Istanbul Senin Android application will be published in a few days because its analysis is more complex than anticipated.

The PTS community meeting took place on Mar. 28. The next one will happen online on Apr. 25 at 2pm CET.

Due to a bug in PiRogue, we’ve noticed an increase in support requests. We’re actively working on resolving the issue that arises when the PiRogue’s IP address changes. This issue is now fixed, and a patch has been released.

Next month

We will continue with our recurring activities.

[U039b]

This month

The analysis report of the APNA Tunnel Lite v27 Android application has been published.

The PTS community meeting took place on Apr. 25. The next one will happen online on May 30 at 2pm CET.

This month, more than 40 virtual PiRogues have been deployed.

Next month

We will continue with our recurring activities.

[U039b]

This month

The analysis report of the Botim v3.38.1 Android application has been published.

The PTS community meeting took place on May 30. It was a great opportunity to present the latest release of Colander. The next one will happen online on Jun. 27 at 2pm CET.

To expand our reach, we began announcing community meetings on other platforms like IFF Mattermost.

Next month

We will continue with our recurring activities.