commit 9205dc2be399befed4a0dbebdf0da850e9d8dbbd Author: Karsten Loesing karsten.loesing@gmx.net Date: Wed Aug 8 20:15:39 2012 +0200

Add better-guard-rotation-parameters blog post. --- 2011/better-guard-rotation-parameters/.gitignore | 3 + .../better-guard-rotation-parameters.bib | 33 +++++ .../better-guard-rotation-parameters.tex | 128 ++++++++++++++++++++ .../tortechrep.cls | 1 + 4 files changed, 165 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)

diff --git a/2011/better-guard-rotation-parameters/.gitignore b/2011/better-guard-rotation-parameters/.gitignore new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d688c86 --- /dev/null +++ b/2011/better-guard-rotation-parameters/.gitignore @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +better-guard-rotation-parameters.pdf +better-guard-rotation-parameters-2011-08-20.pdf + diff --git a/2011/better-guard-rotation-parameters/better-guard-rotation-parameters.bib b/2011/better-guard-rotation-parameters/better-guard-rotation-parameters.bib new file mode 100644 index 0000000..307e804 --- /dev/null +++ b/2011/better-guard-rotation-parameters/better-guard-rotation-parameters.bib @@ -0,0 +1,33 @@ +@article{Wright:2004, + title = {{The Predecessor Attack: An Analysis of a Threat to Anonymous Communications + Systems}}, + author = {Matthew Wright and Micah Adler and Brian Neil Levine and Clay Shields}, + journal = {ACM Transactions on Information and System Security (TISSEC)}, + volume = {4}, + number = {7}, + year = {2004}, + month = {November}, + pages = {489--522}, + note = {\url{http://freehaven.net/anonbib/#Wright:2004%7D%7D, +} + +@inproceedings{ccs07-doa, + title = {Denial of Service or Denial of Security? {H}ow Attacks on Reliability can + Compromise Anonymity}, + author = {Nikita Borisov and George Danezis and Prateek Mittal and Parisa Tabriz}, + booktitle = {Proceedings of CCS 2007}, + year = {2007}, + month = {October}, + note = {\url{http://freehaven.net/anonbib/#ccs07-doa%7D%7D, +} + +@techreport{dingledine2011measuring, + title = {Measuring the safety of the {Tor} network}, + author = {Roger Dingledine}, + institution = {The Tor Project}, + year = {2011}, + month = {February}, + number = {2011-02-001}, + note = {\url{https://research.torproject.org/techreports/measuring-safety-tor-network.pdf..., +} + diff --git a/2011/better-guard-rotation-parameters/better-guard-rotation-parameters.tex b/2011/better-guard-rotation-parameters/better-guard-rotation-parameters.tex new file mode 100644 index 0000000..9e5b453 --- /dev/null +++ b/2011/better-guard-rotation-parameters/better-guard-rotation-parameters.tex @@ -0,0 +1,128 @@ +\documentclass{tortechrep} +\begin{document} + +\author{Roger Dingledine} +\contact{arma@torproject.org} +\reportid{2011-08-001} +\date{August 20, 2011} +\title{Better guard rotation parameters} +\maketitle + +Tor's entry guard design% +\footnote{\url{https://www.torproject.org/docs/faq%5C#EntryGuards%7D%7D +protects users in a variety of ways. + +First, they protect against the ``predecessor attack'' \cite{Wright:2004}: +if you choose new relays for each circuit, eventually an attacker who runs +a few relays will be your first and last hop. +With entry guards, the risk of end-to-end correlation for any given +circuit is the same, but the cumulative risk for all your circuits over +time is capped. + +Second, they help to protect against the ``denial of service as denial of +anonymity'' attack \cite{ccs07-doa}, where an attacker who runs quite a +few relays fails any circuit that he's a part of and that he can't win +against, forcing Alice (the user) to generate more circuits and thus +increasing the overall chance that the attacker wins. +Entry guards greatly reduce the risk, since Alice will never choose +outside of a few nodes for her first hop. + +Third, entry guards raise the startup cost to an adversary who runs relays +in order to trace users. +Without entry guards, the attacker can sign up some relays and immediately +start having chances to observe Alice's circuits. +With them, new adversarial relays won't have the Guard flag so won't be +chosen as the first hop of any circuit; and even once they earn the Guard +flag, users who have already chosen guards won't switch away from their +current guards for quite a while. + +But how long exactly? +The first research question here examines vulnerability due to natural +churn of entry guards. +Consider an adversary who runs one entry guard with advertised capacity +$C$. +Alice maintains an ordered list of guards (chosen at random, weighted by +advertised speed, from the whole list of possible guards). +For each circuit, she chooses her first hop (uniformly at random) from the +first $G$ guards from her list that are currently running (appending a new +guard to the list as needed, but going back to earlier guards if they +reappear). +How long until Alice adds the adversary's node to her guard list? +You can use the uptime data from the directory archives% +\footnote{\url{https://metrics.torproject.org/data.html%7D%7D, +either to build a model for guard churn or just to use the churn data +directly. +Assuming $G=3$, how do the results vary by $C$? +What's the variance? + +Research question two: consider intentional churn due to load balancing +too. +Alice actually discards each guard between 30 and 60 days (uniformly +chosen) after she first picks it. +This intentional turnover prevents long-running guards from accumulating +more and more users and getting overloaded. +Another way of looking at it is that it shifts load to new guards so we +can make better use of them. +How much does this additional churn factor impact your answer from step +one above? +Or asked a different way, what fraction of Alice's vulnerability to the +adversary's entry guard comes from natural churn, and what fraction from +the proactive expiration? +How does the answer change for different expiry intervals (e.g.\ between 10 +and 30 days, or between 60 and 90)? + +Research question three: how do these answers change as we vary $G$? +Right now we choose from among the first three guards, to reduce the +variance of expected user performance---if we always picked the first +guard on the list, and some users picked a low-capacity or +highly-congested relay, none of that user's circuits would perform well. +That said, if choosing $G=1$ is a huge win for security, we should work on +other ways to reduce variance. + +Research question four: how would these answers change if we make the +cutoffs for getting the Guard flag more liberal, and/or change how we +choose what nodes become guards? +After all, Tor's anonymity is based on the diversity of entry and exit +points \cite{dingledine2011measuring}, and while it may be tough to get +around exit relay scarcity, my theory is that our artificial entry point +scarcity (because our requirements are overly strict) is needlessly +hurting the anonymity Tor can offer. + +Our current algorithm for guard selection has three requirements: + +\begin{enumerate} +\item The relay needs to have first appeared longer ago than 12.5% of the +relays, or 8 days ago, whichever is shorter. +\item The relay needs to advertise at least the median bandwidth in the +network, or 250KB/s, whichever is smaller. +\item The relay needs to have at least the median +weighted-fractional-uptime of relays in the network, or 98% WFU, +whichever is smaller. +(For WFU, the clock starts ticking when we first hear about the relay; we +track the percentage of that time the relay has been up, discounting +values by 95% every 12 hours. +\end{enumerate} + +Today's guard cutoffs in practice are ``was first sighted at least 8 days +ago, advertises 100KB/s of bandwidth, and has 98% WFU.'' + +Consider two relays, A and B. +Relay A first appeared 30 days ago, disappeared for a week, and has been +consistently up since then. +It has a WFU (after decay, give or take a fencepost) of 786460 seconds / +824195 = 95.4%, so it's not a guard. +Relay B appeared two weeks ago and has been up since then. +Its WFU is 658517 / 658517 = 100%, so it gets the Guard flag---even +though it has less uptime, and even less weighted uptime. +Based on the answers to the first three research questions, which relay +would serve Alice best as a guard? + +The big-picture tradeoff to explore is: what algorithm should we use to +assign Guard flags such that a) we assign the flag to as many relays as +possible, yet b) we minimize the chance that Alice will use the +adversary's node as a guard? + +\bibliography{better-guard-rotation-parameters} + +\end{document} + diff --git a/2011/better-guard-rotation-parameters/tortechrep.cls b/2011/better-guard-rotation-parameters/tortechrep.cls new file mode 120000 index 0000000..4c24db2 --- /dev/null +++ b/2011/better-guard-rotation-parameters/tortechrep.cls @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +../../tortechrep.cls \ No newline at end of file