tor-dev February 2018

tor-dev@lists.torproject.org

24 participants
31 discussions

UX improvement proposal: Onion auto-redirects using Alt-Svc HTTP header
by George Kadianakis 26 Oct '18

26 Oct '18

UX improvement proposal: Onion auto-redirects using Alt-Svc HTTP header ======================================================================== 1. Motivation: Lots of high-profile websites have onion addresses these days (e.g. Tor , NYT, blockchain, ProPublica). All those websites seem confused on what's the right way to inform their users about their onion addresses. Here are some confusion examples: a) torproject.org does not even advertise their onion address to Tor users (!!!) b) blockchain.info throws an ugly ASCII page to Tor users mentioning their onion address and completely wrecking the UX (loses URL params, etc.) c) ProPublica has a "Browse via Tor" section which redirects to the onion site. Ideally there would be a consistent way for websites to inform their users about their onion counterpart. This would provide the following positives: + Tor users would use onions more often. That's important for user education and user perception, and also to partially dispell the darkweb myth. + Website operators wouldn't have to come up with ad-hoc ways to advertise their onion services, which sometimes results in complete breakage of the user experience (particularly with blockchain) This proposal specifies a simple way forward here that's far from perfect, but can still provide benefits and also improve user-education around onions so that in the future we could employ more advanced techniques. Also see Tor ticket #21952 for more discussion on this: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/21952 2. Proposal Websites use the Alt-Svc HTTP header to specify their onion counterpart: http://httpwg.org/http-extensions/alt-svc.html The Tor Browser intercepts that header (if any) and auto-redirects the user to the onion site. Tor Browser only does so if the header is served over HTTPS. (That's it.) 3. Improvements 3.1. User education through notifications To minimize the probability of users freaking out about auto-redirects Tor Browser could inform the user that the auto-redirect is happening. This could happen with a small notification bar [*] below the URL bar informing users that "Tor Browser is auto-redirecting you to the secure onion site". The notification bar could also have a question mark button that provides the user with additional information on the merits of onion sites and why they should like them. [*]: like this one: http://www.topdreamweaverextensions.com/UserFiles/Image/firefox-bar.jpg 3.2. Auto-redirects too intrusive? Make them optional. If we think that auto redirects are too intrusive, we should consider making them optional, or letting the website specify the desired behavior. If a website wants to specify an onion address but doesn't like auto-redirects, it could specify that as part of Alt-Svc and we could still inform the user that an onion is available using a notification bar again. 4. Drawbacks This proposal is far from the perfect solution of course. Here are a few reasons why: 4.1. Auto-redirects are scary Novice users or paranoid users might freak out with auto-redirects since it's unexpected. They might think they are under attack or they got hacked. An argument against that is that we are already using HTTPS-everywhere which is basically a redirection layer, and while its redirection technique is simpler, sometimes the derivative URL is not similar to the original URL, and we still don't see people freaking out. I think that's because people trust Tor Browser to do the right thing. Combining this knowledge with section 3.1 might solve this problem. 4.2. No security/performance benefits While we could come up with auto-redirect proposals that provide security and performance benefits, this proposal does not actually provide any of those. As a matter of fact, the security remains the same as connecting to normal websites (since we trust its HTTP headers), and the performance gets worse since we first need to connect to the website, get its headers, and then also connect to the onion. Still _all_ the website approaches mentioned in the "Motivation" section suffer from the above drawbacks, and sysadmins still come up with ad-hoc ways to inform users abou their onions. So this simple proposal will still help those websites and also pave the way forward for future auto-redirect techniques. 4.3. Alt-Svc does not do exactly what we want I read in a blog post [*] that using Alt-Svc header "doesn’t change the URL in the location bar, document.location or any other indication of where the resource is; this is a “layer below” the URL.". IIUC, this is not exactly what we want because users will not notice the onion address, they will not get the user education part of the proposal and their connection will still be slowed down. I think we could perhaps change this in Tor Browser so that it rewrites the onion address to make it clear to people that they are now surfing the onionspace. [*]: https://www.mnot.net/blog/2016/03/09/alt-svc 5. The future As I said this is just a simple proposal to introduce the auto-redirect concept to people, and also to help some sysadmins who are currently coming up with weird ways to inform people about their onions. It's not the best way to do this, but it's definitely one of the simplest ways. In the future we could implement with more advanced auto-redirect proposals like: a) Have a "domains to onions" map into HTTPS-everywhere and have it do the autoredirects for us (performance benefits, and security benefits under many threat models). b) Bake onion addresses into SSL certificates and Let's Encrypt as suggested by comment:42 in #21952. But both of the designs above require non-trivial engineering/policy work and would still confuse people. So I think starting with a simple approach that will educate users and then moving to more advanced designs is a more normative way to go. ====================================================================== Let me know what you think :) (Should this be part of torspec?)

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Proposal: Expose raw bwauth votes
by Tom Ritter 16 Jul '18

16 Jul '18

I'm not sure, but I think https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/21377 needed a proposal so I tried to write one up. -tom

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BandwidthRate minimal values (was: Re: [tor-relays] Report on the FOSDEM relays meetup)
by nusenu 13 May '18

13 May '18

(from tor-relays) >> Content-wise, there were some pretty fruitful discussion, but we spent quite a bit >> of time on questions that recurr at other meetups too: >> >> - What's the most useful thing I can bring to the network? >> (TL;DR: Ideally, fast relays (if possible exits); if you can't contribute >> more than 1MB/s, make it a bridge) > > I like 1MByte/s (8MBit/s) as the "limit" between relay vs. bridge, currently we mention > 16MBit/s and 2MBit/s in the documentation: > > https://www.torproject.org/docs/faq.html.en#HowDoIDecide > https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/TorRelayGuide#RelayRequiremen… > > I'll go ahead and make 8 MBit/s the lower limit (and keep "It is recommended that a relay have at least 16 MBit/s (Mbps)") > unless there are strong opinions against it. Hi, to have all places consistent, are you open to increase the minimal values in the tor man page for relays to 8 MBit/s (and bridges to 1 MBit/s) or other greater than the current values? currently it says: BandwidthRate N [...] If you want to run a relay in the public network, this needs to be at the very least 75 KBytes for a relay (that is, 600 kbits) or 50 KBytes for a bridge (400 kbits) but of course, more is better; we recommend at least 250 KBytes (2 mbits) if possible. If you are open to it I'll submit a patch via trac. -- https://mastodon.social/@nusenu twitter: @nusenu_

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Proposal Waterfilling
by Florentin Rochet 09 Mar '18

09 Mar '18

Hello everyone, In order that our paper does not fall into the list of "yet another seems-to-be-cool-feature is that never going to be discussed because researchers moved on another topic", here is an attached proposal in which we summarize our work published in the last PETS event and how it can be implemented. And, if you find this interesting, I would be glad to submit a patch :) Any kind of feedbacks is more than welcome! Cheers! Florentin

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Proposal 290: Continuously update consensus methods
by Nick Mathewson 03 Mar '18

03 Mar '18

Filename: 290-deprecate-consensus-methods.txt Title: Continuously update consensus methods Author: Nick Mathewson Created: 2018-02-21 Status: Open 1. Background Directory authorities use the "consensus method" mechanism to achieve forward compatibility during voting. When each authority publishes its vote, it includes a list of numbered consensus methods that it supports. Each authority chooses to calculate the consensus according to the highest consensus method it knows supported by more than 2/3 of the voting authorities. So long as all the authorities have a method in common, they will all reach the same consensus. Consensus method 1 was first introduced in the Tor 0.2.0 series around 2008. But by 2012, we realized that we had a problem: we were stuck documenting and supporting old consensus methods indefinitely. With proposal 215, we deprecated and removed support for all consensus methods before method 13. That was good as far as it went, but it didn't solve the problem going forward: the latest consensus methods is now 28. This proposal describes a policy for removing older consensus methods going forward, so we won't have to keep supporting them forever. 2. Proposal I propose that from time to time, old consensus methods should be deprecated. Specifically, I propose that we deprecate all methods older than the highest method supported in first stable release of the oldest LTS (long-term support) release series. For example, the current oldest LTS series is 0.2.5.x. The first stable release in that series was 0.2.5.10. The highest consensus method listed by 0.2.5.10 is 18. Therefore, we should currently consider ourselves free to deprecate all methods before 18. Once 0.2.5.x is deprecated, 0.2.9.x will become the oldest LTS series. The first stable release in that series was 0.2.9.8. The highest consensus method listed by 0.2.9.8 is 25. Therefore, once 0.2.5.x is deprecated (in May 2018), we may deprecate all methods before 25. When a consensus method is deprecated, it should no longer be listed or implemented by the latest Tor releases. (It's okay for older authorities to keep advertising it.) Most consensus methods add a feature that is used in "method M or later". Deprecating method M-1 means that the feature is used in all supported consensus methods. Therefore, we can remove any code that makes the feature conditional on a consensus method, and any code for previous implementations of the feature. Some consensus methods remove a feature that was used up to method N. Deprecating method M means that the feature is no longer used by any supported consensus methods. Therefore, we can remove any code that implements the feature. A. Acknowledgments Thanks to isis and teor for the discussion that led to this proposal. I believe that teor first suggested the policy described in section 2 above. B. Client and relay compatibility notes Dear reader: you may be worrying that this proposal will cause old clients or relays to stop working prematurely. That is not the case. Consensus methods determine how the authorities behave, but they do not represent backward-incompatible changes in how they generate their consensuses.

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New link on Tor Metrics: download data as CSV
by Karsten Loesing 28 Feb '18

28 Feb '18

Hi tor-dev! Today we added a small, but potentially quite useful feature to Tor Metrics. The data that is displayed in a graph can now be downloaded as CSV file by clicking on "download data as CSV". This is different from before, where we provided the larger CSV file that a graph is based on. Getting the relevant data out of that would still require some data wrangling. This has become a lot easier now. Want to try it out? Go to any graph on Tor Metrics, for example: https://metrics.torproject.org/relays-ipv6.html?start=2013-02-28&end=2018-0… Click on "download data as CSV" and you'll get just the values that are plotted in the graph. Want to learn more and maybe help us make this feature more useful? There's more about it in tickets #25282 (closed), #25383, and #25387. All the best, Karsten

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DocTor Check for <3 bw auth votes available
by nusenu 28 Feb '18

28 Feb '18

Hi Damian, would be great to have a check in DocTor that sends out an email for "there are less than 3 bw auth voting auths available" thanks, nusenu -- https://mastodon.social/@nusenu twitter: @nusenu_

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[release] CollecTor 1.5.0, metrics-lib 2.2.0
by iwakeh 26 Feb '18

26 Feb '18

Hi there! two new releases are available: https://dist.torproject.org/collector/1.5.0/ https://dist.torproject.org/metrics-lib/2.2.0/ These releases will be deployed on tp.o instances after several weeks of testing, and provide Tor's web server access logs that are currently available on [0] through CollecTor. All possibly privacy impacting data is removed from the logs prior publishing. What exactly is done to ensure privacy can be found in the specification doc [1]. The additions to metrics-lib's API can be read in its Javadoc pages [2]. Other details can be found in the respective change logs [3] and [4]. Please direct comments and questions to the metrics-team mailing list [5]. Cheers, iwakeh [0] https://webstats.torproject.org/ [1] https://metrics.torproject.org/web-server-logs.html [2] https://metrics.torproject.org/metrics-lib/ https://metrics.torproject.org/metrics-lib/index.html?org/torproject/descri… https://metrics.torproject.org/metrics-lib/index.html?org/torproject/descri… [3] https://gitweb.torproject.org/collector.git/tree/CHANGELOG.md?h=collector-1… [4] https://gitweb.torproject.org/metrics-lib.git/tree/CHANGELOG.md?h=metrics-l… [5] https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/metrics-team

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Creating custom Tor Browser settings profile
by procmem 26 Feb '18

26 Feb '18

Hi I was wondering if Tor Broswer supports environment variables to customize about:config settings. The idea is to ship an explicitly labelled, custom profile one day to allow users seamless access to localhost daemons (like zeronet) by changing network.proxy.no_proxies_on to 0 - so they don't have to jump thru hoops or install foreign code like foxyproxy. At the same time, a separate browser profile affords regular users protection by keeping these fingerprinatble, non default settings contained and only used when the user needs them. Any way to do this?

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txtorcon 0.20.0
by meejah 23 Feb '18

23 Feb '18

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 I'm very happy to release txtorcon 0.20.0. This includes a few minor new features and an important bug fix if you're using a Tor new enough to have all the *PortLines changes (anything after 0.3.0.6; see Tor issue #20956). Full list of changes: * doc fixes (from hotelzululima) * Issue 246: fix endpoints so .connect on them works properly more than once (from Brian Warner) * allow a CertificateOptions to be passed as tls= to endpoints * PR 252: add method txtorcon.Tor.is_ready * PR 252: add method txtorcon.Tor.become_ready * PR 253: fix handling of certain defaults (*PortLines and friends) * fix last router (usually) missing with (new) `MicroDescriptorParser` * use OnionOO via Onion service tgel7v4rpcllsrk2.onion for txtorcon.Router.get_onionoo_details * fix parsing of Router started-times * Issue 255: removed routers always deleted following NEWCONSENSUS * Issue 279: remember proxy endpoint if it was Deferred You can download the release from PyPI or GitHub (or of course "pip install txtorcon"): https://pypi.python.org/pypi/txtorcon/0.20.0 https://github.com/meejah/txtorcon/releases/tag/v0.20.0 Releases are also available from the hidden service: http://timaq4ygg2iegci7.onion/txtorcon-0.20.0.tar.gz http://timaq4ygg2iegci7.onion/txtorcon-0.20.0.tar.gz.asc You can verify the sha256sum of both by running the following 4 lines in a shell wherever you have the files downloaded: cat <<EOF | sha256sum --check dc80cb76b3ddacef6d671c0a088cb1a45274c0858554c32ce55d0f41421c740e txtorcon-0.20.0.tar.gz a957b3dc10f0b2b882ef6ad46d2932fa7731d5eeee6d52ba9d736d2bc4f1385f txtorcon-0.20.0-py2.py3-none-any.whl EOF thanks, meejah -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJaj2AIAAoJEMJgKAMSgGmnnGUIANXkNIF8c98nwCa4Q9Xws3Hv 9zAJSWsDst/58lHka6bE5d1JWYz78fTubTC2ofOFH0MOkjeSyEtgTO58xlKY9wTC w7ohePwcV+md1wPOpciHVZMBVhqUhKGqNhMYehTXjcCEwppgXhiINgGFLaF0XSUM aJzY7laEvg2E/1p+gH0e4tkJuSVKVOK+5MWBali8YlOZY28R6w/X0Q0n8su1ntl2 bKsxpTrv+p8J+K7WvpeaXIuZnC/fRwVFZ0vtwzKtrTKimAE60yPfOi5hLUyW2PGx FkpH6B0bgl5FMiY+Y0PV8rP2DXikCibpwsipBh4AHpTYGSdMkSogjiRupkJxeeQ= =GsVt -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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tor-dev February 2018