November 2012 - tor-dev - lists.torproject.org

Proposal 205: Remove global client-side DNS caching
by Nick Mathewson 19 Dec '12

19 Dec '12

Filename: 205-local-dnscache.txt Title: Remove global client-side DNS caching Author: Nick Mathewson Created: 20 July 2012 Status: Open 0. Overview This proposal suggests that, for reasons of security, we move client-side DNS caching from a global cache to a set of per-circuit caches. This will break some things that used to work. I'll explain how to fix them. 1. Background and Motivation Since the earliest Tor releases, we've kept a client-side DNS cache. This lets us implement exit policies and exit enclaves -- if we remember that www.mit.edu is 18.9.22.169 the first time we see it, then we can avoid making future requests for www.mit.edu via any node that blocks net 18. Also, if there happened to be a Tor node at 18.9.22.169, we could use that node as an exit enclave. But there are security issues with DNS caches. A malicious exit node or DNS server can lie. And unlike other traffic, where the effect of a lie is confined to the request in question, a malicious exit node can affect the behavior of future circuits when it gives a false DNS reply. This false reply could be used to keep a client connecting to an MITM'd target, or to make a client use a chosen node as an exit enclave for that node, or so on. With IPv6, tracking attacks will become even more possible: A hostile exit node can give every client a different IPv6 address for every hostname they want to resolve, such that every one of those addresses is under the attacker's control. And even if the exit node is honest, having a cached DNS result can cause Tor clients to build their future circuits distinguishably: the exit on any subsequent circuit can tell whether the client knew the IP for the address yet or not. Further, if the site's DNS provides different answers to clients from different parts of the world, then the client's cached choice of IP will reveal where it first learned about the website. So client-side DNS caching needs to go away. 2. Design 2.1. The basic idea I propose that clients should cache DNS results in per-circuit DNS caches, not in the global address map. 2.2. What about exit policies? Microdescriptor-based clients have already dropped the ability to track which nodes declare which exit policies, without much ill effect. As we go forward, I think that remembering the IP address of each request so that we can match it to exit policies will be even less effective, especially if proposals to allow AS-based exit policies can succeed. 2.3. What about exit enclaves? Exit enclaves are already borken. They need to move towards a cross-certification solution where a node advertises that it can exit to a hostname or domain X.Y.Z, and a signed record at X.Y.Z advertises that the node is an enclave exit for X.Y.Z. That's out-of-scope for this proposal, except to note that nothing proposed here keeps that design from working. 2.4. What about address mapping? Our current address map algorithm is, more or less: N = 0 while N < MAX_MAPPING && exists map[address]: address = map[address] N = N + 1 if N == MAX_MAPPING: Give up, it's a loop. Where 'map' is the union of all mapping entries derived from the controller, the configuration file, trackhostexits maps, virtual-address maps, DNS replies, and so on. With this design, the DNS cache will not be part of the address map. That means that entries in the address map which relied on happening after the DNS cache entries can no longer work so well. These would include: A) Mappings from an IP address to a particular exit, either manually declared or inserted by TrackHostExits. B) Mappings from IP addresses to other IP addresses. C) Mappings from IP addresses to hostnames. We can try to solve these by introducing an extra step of address mapping after the DNS cache is applied. In other words, we should apply the address map, then see if we can attach to a circuit. If we can, we try to apply that circuit's dns cache, then apply the address map again. 2.5. What about the performance impact? That all depends on application behavior. If the application continues to make all of its requests with the hostname, there shouldn't be much trouble. Exit-side DNS caches and exit-side DNS will avoid any additional round trips across the Tor network; compared to that, the time to do a DNS resolution at the exit node *should* be small. That said, this will hurt performance a little in the case where the exit node and its resolver don't have the answer cached, and it takes a long time to resolve the hostname. If the application is doing "resolve, then connect to an IP", see 2.6 below. 2.6. What about DNSPort? If the application is doing its own DNS caching, they won't get much security benefit from here. If the application is doing a resolve before each connect, there will be a performance hit when the resolver is using a circuit that hadn't previously resolved the address. Also, DNSPort users: AutomapHostsOnResolve is your friend. 3. Alternate designs and future directions 3.1. Why keep client-side DNS caching at all? A fine question! I am not sure it actually buys us anything any longer, since exits also have DNS caching. Shall we discuss that? It would sure simplify matters. 3.2. The impact of DNSSec Once we get DNSSec support, clients will be able to verify whether an exit's answers are correctly signed or not. When that happens, we could get most of the benefits of global DNS caching back, without most of the security issues, if we restrict it to DNSSec-signed answers.

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Proposal: Tuning the Parameters for the Path Bias Defense
by Mike Perry 19 Dec '12

19 Dec '12

Also exists at https://gitweb.torproject.org/user/mikeperry/torspec.git/blob/path-bias-tun… -------------------------------------------------------------------- Title: Tuning the Parameters for the Path Bias Defense Author: Mike Perry Created: 01-10-2012 Status: Open Target: 0.2.4.x+ Overview This proposal describes how we can use the results of simulations in combination with network scans to set reasonable limits for the Path Bias defense, which causes clients to be informed about and ideally rotate away from Guards that provide extremely low circuit success rates. Motivation The Path Bias defense is designed to defend against a type of route capture where malicious Guard nodes deliberately fail circuits that extend to non-colluding Exit nodes to maximize their network utilization in favor of carrying only compromised traffic. This attack was explored in the academic literature in [1], and a variant involving cryptographic tagging was posted to tor-dev[2] in March. In the extreme, the attack allows an adversary that carries c/n of the network capacity to deanonymize c/n of the network connections, breaking the O((c/n)^2) property of Tor's original threat model. Design Description The Path Bias defense is a client-side accounting mechanism in Tor that tracks the circuit failure rate for each of the client's guards. Clients maintain two integers for each of their guards: a count of the number of times a circuit was extended at least one hop through that guard, and a count of the number of circuits that successfully complete through that guard. The ratio of these two numbers is used to determine a circuit success rate for that Guard. The system should issue a notice log message when Guard success rate falls below 70%, a warn when Guard success rate falls below 50%, and should drop the Guard when the success rate falls below 30%. To ensure correctness, checks are performed to ensure that we do not count successes without also counting the first hop. Similarly, to provide a moving average of recent Guard activity while still preserving the ability to ensure correctness, we "scale" the success counts by an integer divisor (currently 2) when the counts exceed the moving average window (300) and when the division does not produce integer truncation. No log messages should be displayed, nor should any Guard be dropped until it has completed at least 150 first hops (inclusive). Analysis: Simulation To test the defense in the face of various types of malicious and non-malicious Guard behavior, I wrote a simulation program in Python[3]. The simulation confirmed that without any defense, an adversary that provides c/n of the network capacity is able to observe c/n of the network flows using circuit failure attacks. It also showed that with the defense, an adversary that wishes to evade detection has compromise rates bounded by: P(compromise) <= (c/n)^2 * (100/CUTOFF_PERCENT) circs_per_client <= circuit_attempts*(c/n) In this way, the defense restores the O((c/n)^2) compromise property, but unfortunately only over long periods of time (see Security Considerations below). The spread between the cutoff values and the normal rate of circuit success has a substantial effect on false positives. From the simulation's results, the sweet spot for the size of this spread appears to be 10%. In other words, we want to set the cutoffs such that they are 10% below the success rate we expect to see in normal usage. The simulation also demonstrates that larger "scaling window" sizes reduce false positives for instances where non-malicious guards experience some ambient rate of circuit failure. Analysis: Live Scan Preliminary Guard node scanning using the txtorcon circuit scanner[4] shows normal circuit completion rates between 80-90% for most Guard nodes. However, it also showed that CPU overload conditions can easily push success rates as low as 45%. Even more concerning is that for a brief period during the live scan, success rates dropped to 50-60% network-wide (regardless of Guard node choice). Based on these results, the notice condition should be 70%, the warn condition should be 50%, and the drop condition should be 30%. Future Analysis: Deployed Clients It's my belief that further analysis should be done by deploying loglines for all three thresholds in clients in the live network to utilize user reports on how often high rates of circuit failure are seen before we deploy changes to rotate away from failing Guards. I believe these log lines should be deployed in 0.2.3.x clients, to maximize the exposure of the code to varying network conditions, so that we have enough data to consider deploying the Guard-dropping cutoff in 0.2.4.x. Security Considerations While the scaling window does provide freshness and can help mitigate "bait-and-switch" attacks, it also creates the possibility of conditions where clients can be forced off their Guards due to temporary network-wide CPU DoS. This provides another reason beyond false positive concerns to set the scaling window as large as is reasonable. A DoS directed at specific Guard nodes is unlikely to allow an adversary to cause clients to rotate away from that Guard, because it is unlikely that the DoS can be precise enough to allow first hops to that Guard to succeed, but also cause extends to fail. This leaves network-wide DoS as the primary vector for influencing clients. Simulation results show that in order to cause clients to rotate away from a Guard node that previously succeeded 80% of its circuits, an adversary would need to induce a 25% success rate for around 350 circuit attempts before the client would reject it, or a 5% success rate for around 215 attempts, both using a scaling window of 300 circuits. Assuming one circuit per Guard per 10 minutes of active client activity, this is a sustained network-wide DoS attack of 60 hours for the 25% case, or 38 hours for the 5% case. Presumably this is enough time for the directory authorities to respond by altering the pb_disablepct consensus parameter before clients rotate, especially given that most clients are not active for even 38 hours on end, and will tend to stop building circuits while idle. If we raised the scaling window to 500 circuits, it would require 1050 circuits if the DoS brought circuit success down to 25% (175 hours), and 415 circuits if the DoS brought the circuit success down to 5% (69 hours). The tradeoff, though, is that larger scaling window values allow Guard nodes to compromise clients for duty cycles of around the size of this window (up to the (c/n)^2 * 100/CUTOFF_PERCENT limit in aggregate), so we do have to find balance between these concerns. Implementation Notes: Log Messages Log messages need to be chosen with care to avoid alarming users. I suggest: Notice: "Your Guard %s is failing more circuits than usual. Most likely this means the Tor network is overloaded. Success counts are %d/%d." Warn: "Your Guard %s is failing a very large amount of circuits. Most likely this means the Tor network is overloaded, but it could also mean an attack against you or potentially the Guard itself. Success counts are %d/%d." Drop: "Your Guard %s is failing an extremely large amount of circuits. [Tor has disabled use of this Guard.] Success counts are %d/%d." The second piece of the Drop message would not be present in 0.2.3.x, since the Guard won't actually be dropped. Implementation Notes: Consensus Parameters The following consensus parameters reflect the constants listed in the proposal. These parameters should also be available for override in torrc. pb_mincircs=150 The minimum number of first hops before we log or drop Guards. pb_noticepct=70 The threshold of circuit success below which we display a notice. pb_warnpct=50 The threshold of circuit success below which we display a warn. pb_disablepct=30 The threshold of circuit success below which we disable the guard. pb_scalecircs=300 The number of first hops at which we scale the counts down. pb_scalefactor=2 The integer divisor by which we scale. 1. http://freehaven.net/anonbib/cache/ccs07-doa.pdf 2. https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2012-March/003347.html 3. https://gitweb.torproject.org/torflow.git/tree/HEAD:/CircuitAnalysis/PathBi… 4. https://github.com/meejah/txtorcon/blob/exit_scanner/apps/exit_scanner/fail… -- Mike Perry

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Re: [tor-dev] [tor-talk] torsocks is broken and unmaintained
by Jacob Appelbaum 02 Dec '12

02 Dec '12

Matthew Finkel: > On 11/02/2012 07:36 PM, Jacob Appelbaum wrote: >> Nick Mathewson: >>> On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 1:34 PM, adrelanos <adrelanos(a)riseup.net> wrote: >>>> >>>> >>>> Could you blog it please? >>> >>> >>> I'd like to see more discussion from more people here first, and see >>> whether somebody steps up to say, "Yeah, I can maintain that" here, or >>> whether somebody else who knows more than me about the issues has something >>> to say. Otherwise I don't know whether to write a "looking for maintainer" >>> post, a "who wants to fork" post, a "don't use Torsocks, use XYZZY" post, >>> or what. >>> >> >> If Robert wants someone to maintain it, I'd be happy to do so. I had >> wanted to extend it to do some various things anyway. I think it would >> be a suitable base for a bunch of things I'd like to do in the next year. >> >> All the best, >> Jake >> > > I saw this thread earlier but didn't have a chance to reply. I was > thinking about volunteering to patch it up and maintain it if no one > else wanted to take it on, also, but if you want to take the lead on it > then I'm more than happy to help you where ever possible...assuming this > is the direction that's decided upon. > Hi, I've pushed my first branch to fix the dlopen bugs: https://gitweb.torproject.org/torsocks.git/shortlog/refs/heads/dlerror It seems to fix the issues on my Ubuntu system. I could use some testing on OS X, other GNU/Linux, and *BSD systems. I've also updated the bug: http://code.google.com/p/torsocks/issues/detail?id=3 One person has found that it fixed the issue for them as well. Also - it seems that we probably should address this issue very soon: http://code.google.com/p/torsocks/issues/detail?id=37 https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/doc/torsocks#WorkaroundforIPv… I've taken a stab at at least blocking IPv6 connect() calls: https://gitweb.torproject.org/torsocks.git/shortlog/refs/heads/ipv6 https://gitweb.torproject.org/torsocks.git/commit/95528585c1d13b0e17e9d3538… Thoughts? All the best, Jake

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Proposal 216: Improved circuit-creation key exchange
by Nick Mathewson 01 Dec '12

01 Dec '12

Hi, all. This is just the ntor proposal draft, as circulated last year, but with a proposal number assigned to it, and a closing section about how to make Tor actually work with it. Filename: 216-ntor-handshake.txt Title: Improved circuit-creation key exchange Author: Nick Mathewson Created: 11-May-2011 Status: Open Summary: This is an attempt to translate the proposed circuit handshake from "Anonymity and one-way authentication in key-exchange protocols" by Goldberg, Stebila, and Ustaoglu, into a Tor proposal format. It assumes that proposal 200 is implemented, to provide an extended CREATE cell format that can indicate what type of handshake is in use. Notation: Let a|b be the concatenation of a with b. Let H(x,t) be a tweakable hash function of output width H_LENGTH bytes. Let t_mac, t_key, and t_verify be a set of arbitrarily-chosen tweaks for the hash function. Let EXP(a,b) be a^b in some appropriate group G where the appropriate DH parameters hold. Let's say elements of this group, when represented as byte strings, are all G_LENGTH bytes long. Let's say we are using a generator g for this group. Let a,A=KEYGEN() yield a new private-public keypair in G, where a is the secret key and A = EXP(g,a). If additional checks are needed to insure a valid keypair, they should be performed. Let PROTOID be a string designating this variant of the protocol. Let KEYID be a collision-resistant (but not necessarily preimage-resistant) hash function on members of G, of output length H_LENGTH bytes. Instantiation: Let's call this PROTOID "ntor-curve25519-sha256-1" (We might want to make this shorter if it turns out to save us a block of hashing somewhere.) Set H(x,t) == HMAC_SHA256 with message x and key t. So H_LENGTH == 32. Set t_mac == PROTOID | ":mac" t_key == PROTOID | ":key" t_verify == PROTOID | ":verify" Set EXP(a,b) == curve25519(.,b,a), and g == 9 . Let KEYGEN() do the appropriate manipulations when generating the secret key (clearing the low bits, twiddling the high bits). Set KEYID(B) == B. (We don't need to use a hash function here, since our keys are already very short. It is trivially collision-resistant, since KEYID(A)==KEYID(B) iff A==B.) Protocol: Take a router with identity key digest ID. As setup, the router generates a secret key b, and a public onion key B with b, B = KEYGEN(). The router publishes B in its server descriptor. To send a create cell, the client generates a keypair x,X = KEYGEN(), and sends a CREATE cell with contents: NODEID: ID -- H_LENGTH bytes KEYID: KEYID(B) -- H_LENGTH bytes CLIENT_PK: X -- G_LENGTH bytes The server generates a keypair of y,Y = KEYGEN(), and computes secret_input = EXP(X,y) | EXP(X,b) | ID | B | X | Y | PROTOID KEY_SEED = H(secret_input, t_key) verify = H(secret_input, t_verify) auth_input = verify | ID | B | Y | X | PROTOID | "Server" The server sends a CREATED cell containing: SERVER_PK: Y -- G_LENGTH bytes AUTH: H(auth_input, t_mac) -- H_LENGTH byets The client then checks Y is in G^* [see NOTE below], and computes secret_input = EXP(Y,x) | EXP(B,x) | ID | B | X | Y | PROTOID KEY_SEED = H(secret_input, t_key) verify = H(secret_input, t_verify) auth_input = verify | ID | B | Y | X | PROTOID | "Server" The client verifies that AUTH == H(auth_input, t_mac). [NOTE: It may be adequate to check that EXP(Y,x) is not the point at infinity. See tor-dev thread.] Both parties now have a shared value for KEY_SEED. They expand this into the keys needed for the Tor relay protocol. Key expansion: Currently, the key expansion formula used by Tor here is K = SHA(K0 | [00]) | SHA(K0 | [01]) | SHA(K0 | [02]) | ... where K0==g^xy, and K is divvied up into Df, Db, Kf, and Kb portions. Instead, let's have it be K = K_0 | K_1 | K_2 | K_3 | ... Where K_0 = H(m_expand | INT8(i) , KEY_SEED ) and K_(i+1) = H(K_i | m_expand | INT8(i) , KEY_SEED ) and m_expend is an arbitrarily chosen value, and INT8(i) is a octet with the value "i". Ian says this is due to a construction from Krawczyk at http://eprint.iacr.org/2010/264 . Let m_expand be PROTOID | ":key_expand" Performance notes: In Tor's current circuit creation handshake, the client does: One RSA public-key encryption A full DH handshake in Z_p A short AES encryption Five SHA1s for key expansion And the server does: One RSA private-key decryption A full DH handshake in Z_p A short AES decryption Five SHA1s for key expansion While in the revised handshake, the client does: A full DH handshake A public-half of a DH handshake 3 H operations for the handshake 3 H operations for the key expansion and the server does: A full DH handshake A private-half of a DH handshake 3 H operations for the handshake 3 H operations for the key expansion Integrating with the rest of Tor: Add a new optional entry to router descriptors and microdescriptors: "onion-key-ntor" SP Base64Key NL where Base64Key is a base-64 encoded 32-byte value, with padding omitted. Add a new consensus method to tell servers to copy "onion-key-ntor" entries to from router descriptors to microdescriptors. Add a "UseNTorHandshake" configuration option and a corresponding consensus parameter to control whether clients use the ntor handshake. If the configuration option is "auto", clients should obey the consensus parameter. Have the configuration default be "auto" and the consensus value initially be "0". Reserve the handshake type [00 01] for this handshake in CREATE2 and EXTEND2 cells.

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Parallel relaycrypt data structures for review
by Andrea Shepard 01 Dec '12

01 Dec '12

Please review first draft proposed parallel relaycrypt structures in my parallel_relay_crypt branch. -- Andrea Shepard <andrea(a)torproject.org> PGP fingerprint: 3611 95A4 0740 ED1B 7EA5 DF7E 4191 13D9 D0CF BDA5

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questions about extending circuit
by succer110＠tiscali.it 30 Nov '12

30 Nov '12

Hi all, I need to create specific circuit, specifying the exit route. I've already found http://www.thesprawl.org/research/tor-control-protocol/ but this explain how to create circuit with nickames.Suddenly, nickname are not univoque and i think tor have problem creating circuit when the nickname of the exitroute is "Unnamed".Sometimes the creation of a new circuit fails:extendcircuit 0 hackerspaceseoul552 No such router "hackerspaceseoul"extendcircuit 0 HackerSpaceSeoul552 No such router "HackerSpaceSeoul"extendcircuit 0 HackerspaceSeoul552 No such router "HackerspaceSeoul"Even if https://atlas.torproject.org/#search/hack told me they are online. And sometimes this appends even with TorCtl.py DEBUG[Thu Nov 29 23:40:45 2012]:Extending circuit[!!!] Error creating circuit: 552 No such router "Communist" How can i fix? Thank you :) Invita i tuoi amici e Tiscali ti premia! Il consiglio di un amico vale più di uno spot in TV. Per ogni nuovo abbonato 30 € di premio per te e per lui! Un amico al mese e parli e navighi sempre gratis: http://freelosophy.tiscali.it/

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Tor Safe RSA Plugin
by Clay Graham 29 Nov '12

29 Nov '12

I am creating a twitter clone with RSA public key encryption and making it feely available. tweet from my feed: ================= new: http://grailo.org <http://t.co/M1Pbgkdn> twitter clone meets public key encryption github: http://bit.ly/UmUsxm <http://t.co/SCVAvVa4> pic: http://bit.ly/UmUdCn <http://t.co/hchO3QWL> https://twitter.com/claytantor Looking to create a Tor Browser plugin that can do client side decryption. Happy to use javascript, c or java. Clay

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Compiling tor against OpenSSL_1_0_2-stable
by Christian Kujau 29 Nov '12

29 Nov '12

Hi, while trying to compile the latest git-checkout against openssl-1.0.2, I've come across the following issues: ---- make[1]: Entering directory `/usr/local/src/tor-git' CC src/common/tortls.o cc1: warnings being treated as errors In file included from /opt/openssl/include/openssl/ssl.h:1382, from src/common/tortls.c:36: /opt/openssl/include/openssl/srtp.h:138: error: redundant redeclaration of ‘SSL_get_selected_srtp_profile’ /opt/openssl/include/openssl/srtp.h:135: note: previous declaration of ‘SSL_get_selected_srtp_profile’ was here make[1]: *** [src/common/tortls.o] Error 1 make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/local/src/tor-git' make: *** [all] Error 2 ---- There is an open ticket[0] in the openssl bugtracker for this. While the proper solution is to fix openssl/include/openssl/srtp.h, I wanted to compile without -Werror. However, when adding CFLAGS="-Wno-error" during ./configure, -Werror is still added to the ./Makefile and overriding -Wno-error. When adding CFLAGS="-Wno-error" during "make" all the other CFLAGS are gone too. Thus I ended up removing -Werror from the Makefile and tortls.o compiled. While this is really an issue with openssl, I wanted to have this documented, just in case anybody else tries the same. If someone knows of a better workaround (i.e. compiling just tortls.c with -Wno-error and everything else with -Werror), please share! :-) A bit later, compilation stops again: ---- CCLD src/or/tor src/common/libor-crypto.a(aes.o): In function `aes_crypt': aes.c:(.text+0x860): undefined reference to `CRYPTO_ctr128_encrypt' collect2: ld returned 1 exit status make[1]: *** [src/or/tor] Error 1 make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/local/src/tor-git' make: *** [all] Error 2 ---- Hm, this leaves me puzzled for now. CRYPTO_ctr128_encrypt is still included in openssl-1.0.2 and src/common/aes.o seems to be built with this function included as well, not sure why src/common/libor-crypto.a complains now: ---- $ grep -r CRYPTO_ctr128_encrypt /opt/openssl/ /opt/openssl/include/openssl/modes.h:void CRYPTO_ctr128_encrypt(const unsigned char *in, unsigned char *out, /opt/openssl/include/openssl/modes.h:void CRYPTO_ctr128_encrypt_ctr32(const unsigned char *in, unsigned char *out, Binary file /opt/openssl/bin/openssl matches Binary file /opt/openssl/lib/libcrypto.a matches $ grep -r CRYPTO_ctr128_encrypt . ./src/common/aes.c: CRYPTO_ctr128_encrypt((const unsigned char *)input, Binary file ./src/common/aes.o matches Binary file ./src/common/libor-crypto.a matches ---- Why do I (try to) build against openssl-1.0.2? I'm on Debian/stable which still ships openssl-0.9.8o and I wanted to get rid of this "use a more recent OpenSSL" message during startup :-) Otherwise, today's git-checkout of tor runs just fine when built against openssl-0.9.8 (on powerpc) - yay! Christian. [0] http://rt.openssl.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=2724 -- BOFH excuse #330: quantum decoherence

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More TBB usability challenges
by Andrew Lewman 28 Nov '12

28 Nov '12

I was asked to meet with some people doing work in dangerous areas of Latin America. In general, these people can get around and work with Microsoft Windows competently. They are all fluent in English, Spanish, and various dialects found in Latin American countries. Most of them had Spanish-language versions of Windows 7 on their laptops. # Getting TBB During the discussion, an informal usability study happened. I thought having a discussion about this may be better than simply opening a trac ticket. Here's roughly the scenario. I asked people to download Tor Browser from our website. All found Tor's website via Bing. Interestingly, some searched for "tor", others for "tor browser", and one for "tor project". They were all using Internet Explorer and Bing because that's the default for Windows 7. Thankfully, our website is the top result for all three queries at Bing. They all found the big purple "Download Tor" button on the index page. Issue #1: Running TBB from the website. When clicking the orange "Download Tor Browser Bundle" button, IE prompts them to "Run", "Save", or "Cancel". All of them chose "Run". Issue #1A: When choosing "Run", a prompt appears, "The publisher of tor-browser-2.2.39-5_en-US.exe couldn't be verified. Are you sure you want to run the program?". All of them hit "Yes" and ignored the warning. Issue #1B: When the download completed, they were prompted with the 7zip self-extractor giving them a path similar to this: "C:\Users\tor\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Temporary Internet Files\Content.IE5\T868H68M\". All of them pushed the "Extract" button and let 7zip extract TBB into that temporary directory. A few of them went to the Downloads folder to try to find TBB. However, it's not there because it's extracted into a temporary folder. This folder is not reachable by the user through File Explorer. Issue #2: Downloading TBB. After some Q&A about what happened, I asked them to "Save" rather than "Run". TBB then downloads. The user is prompted with a warning box stating, "The publisher of tor-browser-2.2.39-5_en-US.exe couldn't be verified." And the user is left to choose between "Run" and "View downloads". When clicking "Run" the user is prompted with the 7-zip self-extractor prompt and "C:\Users\tor\Downloads\" is the default path. All of them hit the "Extract" button. None of them were sure what just happened nor why TBB needs to be extracted. Issue #2A: The self-extract completes and the user is left looking at their IE window with the TBB download page. Three of them went to their Downloads folder to find Tor. The other few waited for something to happen. When I asked the waiting few why they were waiting, they said because they "ran TBB" and expected the extraction to automatically start TBB for them. Issue #3: In the Downloads folder there are two things called "tor browser", one is an application the other is a file folder. See https://people.torproject.org/~andrew/2012-11-28-tbb-usability-test/2012-11… for an example. Most of the people had hundreds of files in the Download folder, so it wasn't as clear as this example screenshot. Some people wanted to run the application, because in their mind, you run an application. When asked to go into the Tor Browser folder, they all found "Start Tor Browser" and ran it (some double-left click, some right click and choose "Open"). See https://people.torproject.org/~andrew/2012-11-28-tbb-usability-test/2012-11… for what it looks like by default. Issue #4: Once TBB was started, the users would alt-tab between applications or choose various apps in their task bar at the bottom of the screen. They kept clicking the onion icon because they thought it was TBB, when it brings up the Vidalia control panel. This is what it looks like, https://people.torproject.org/~andrew/2012-11-28-tbb-usability-test/2012-11… Issue #5: No one knew what "Startpage" was nor why it was in the top bar. Just like IE, they all wanted to search from the awesome bar by default. This does work, and they can search via startpage.com via the awesome bar. From here on out, the normal TBB issues apply, as demonstrated by Greg's HotPETS paper, https://people.torproject.org/~andrew/hotpets12-1-usability.pdf # Feedback I asked how we can improve this entire process. The consensus is that TBB needs to be a single application people can just run and get the browser going. The extraction process was confusing and was sometimes called an installation process. They felt that "running" it from the tor download site was fine, so long as everything just worked and a browser window popped up. They also felt that the Vidalia control panel was unnecessary. It just confused them. The only thing they felt was valuable was the Network Map. A caveat is that we were on a US network which didn't censor. The Message Log and bridge/obfsproxy functionality wasn't needed in this case. I suspect it will be when they try this in Latin America. -- Andrew http://tpo.is/contact pgp 0x6B4D6475

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Proposal: Tor Extended ORPort Authentication
by George Kadianakis 28 Nov '12

28 Nov '12

Greetings, I'm attaching a proposal for adding authentication to the Extended ORPort. The Extended ORPort is a yet unimplemented feature, that allows pluggable transports proxies to communicate with Tor; it's a prerequisite for pluggable transport statistics, rate limiting, and other cool things. Filename: XXX-ext-orport-auth.txt Title: Tor Extended ORPort Authentication Author: George Kadianakis Created: 28-11-2012 Status: Open Target: 0.2.5.x 1. Overview This proposal defines a scheme for Tor components to authenticate to each other using a shared-secret. 2. Motivation Proposal 196 introduced new ways for pluggable transport proxies to communicate with Tor. The communication happens using TCP in the same fashion that controllers speak to the ControlPort. To defend against cross-protocol attacks [0] on the transport ports, we need to define an authentication scheme that will restrict passage to unknown clients. Tor's ControlPort uses an authentication scheme called safe-cookie authentication [1]. Unfortunately, the design of the safe-cookie authentication was influenced by the protocol structure of the ControlPort and the need for backwards compatibility of the cookie-file and can't be easily reused in other use cases. 3. Goals The general goal of Extended ORPort authentication is to authenticate the client based on a shared-secret that only authorized clients should know. Furthermore, its implementation should be flexible and easy to reuse, so that it can be used as the authentication mechanism in front of future Tor helper ports (for example, in proposal 199). Finally, the protocol is able to support multiple authentication schemes and each of them has different goals. 4. Protocol Specification 4.1. Initial handshake When a client connects to the Extended ORPort, the server sends: AuthTypes [variable] EndAuthTypes [1 octet] Where, + AuthTypes are the authentication schemes that the server supports for this session. They are multiple concatenated 1-octet values that take values from 1 to 255. + EndAuthTypes is the special value 0. The client reads the list of supported authentication schemes and replies with the one he prefers to use: AuthType [1 octet] Where, + AuthType is the authentication scheme that the client wants to use for this session. A valid authentication type takes values from 1 to 255. A value of 0 means that the client did not like the authentication types offered by the server. If the client sent an AuthType of value 0, or an AuthType that the server does not support, the server MUST close the connection. 4.2. Authentication types 4.2.1 SAFE_COOKIE handshake Authentication type 1 is called SAFE_COOKIE. 4.2.1.1. Motivation and goals The SAFE_COOKIE scheme is pretty-much identical to the authentication scheme that was introduced for the ControlPort in proposal 193. An additional goal of the SAFE_COOKIE authentication scheme (apart from the goals of section 2), is that it should not leak the contents of the cookie-file to untrusted parties. Specifically, the SAFE_COOKIE protocol will never leak the actual contents of the file. Instead, it uses a challenge-response protocol (similar to the HTTP digest authentication of RFC2617) to ensure that both parties know the cookie without leaking it. 4.2.1.2. Cookie-file format The format of the cookie-file is: StaticHeader [32 octets] Cookie [32 octets] Where, + StaticHeader is the following string: "! Extended ORPort Auth Cookie !\x0a" + Cookie is the shared-secret. During the SAFE_COOKIE protocol, the cookie is called CookieString. Extended ORPort clients MUST make sure that the StaticHeader is present in the cookie file, before proceeding with the authentication protocol. Details on how Tor locates the cookie file can be found in section 5 of proposal 196. Details on how transport proxies locate the cookie file can be found in pt-spec.txt. 4.2.1.3. Protocol specification A client that performs the SAFE_COOKIE handshake begins by sending: ClientNonce [32 octets] Where, + ClientNonce is 32 octets of random data. Then, the server replies with: ServerHash [32 octets] ServerNonce [32 octets] Where, + ServerHash is computed as: HMAC-SHA256(CookieString, "ExtORPort authentication server-to-client hash" | ClientNonce | ServerNonce) + ServerNonce is 32 random octets. Upon receiving that data, the client computers ServerHash herself and validates it against the ServerHash provided by the server. If the server-provided ServerHash is invalid, the client MUST terminate the connection. Otherwise the client replies with: ClientHash [32 octets] Where, + ClientHash is computed as: HMAC-SHA256(CookieString, "ExtORPort authentication client-to-server hash" | ClientNonce | ServerNonce) Upon receiving that data, the server computers ClientHash herself and validates it against the ClientHash provided by the client. Finally, the server replies with: Status [1 octet] Where, + Status is 1 if the authentication was successfull. If the authentication failed, Status is 0. 4.3. Post-authentication After completing the Extended ORPort authentication successfully, the two parties should proceed with the Extended ORPort protocol on the same TCP connection. [0]: http://archives.seul.org/or/announce/Sep-2007/msg00000.html [1]: https://gitweb.torproject.org/torspec.git/blob/79f488c32c43562522e5592f2c19…

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