On 05/28/2015 03:11 PM, Yawning Angel wrote:
Ah, this is a matter of "the feature is explained in a simple manner in the abbreviated changelog".
What the flag actually does is:
- Username set to 'torsocks-' PID ':' unixTime
Thanks for the clarification! This indeed sounds a lot better.
While not as great as 256 bit random numbers, PID reuse within the same second is rather unlikely, at least under Linux PIDs are only recycled when the pid wraps (/proc/sys/kernel/pid_max), I assume most other Unixes follow similar behavior.
Right. I wrote something about this originally, but ended up deleting it for brevity. I think we would have to come up with some pretty ridiculous scenarios for it to become a problem on Linux even without the unix timestamp (only PIDs), e.g. massively parallel runs of torsocks + other processes cycling through PIDs rapidly + an increased MaxCircuitDirtiness + lowered pid_mix, or some combination thereof.
But still, YMMV depending on your OS. :)
The identifier was chosen such that it would be blatantly obvious in circuit listings as to which torsocks instance things belong to.
Makes sense.
There is space in the username field, so appending a hexdecimal large random number or something is certainly possible and quite trivial.
It would be a welcome improvement if you have the time. And if space is an issue the unix time can of course be dropped.
Cheers!