April 2025 - tor-dev - lists.torproject.org

[GSoC 2025] Graph-Based Relay Partitioning – Proposal and Repository
by Valentina Schiavon 21 Apr '25

21 Apr '25

Dear Tor team, I recently submitted a proposal to Google Summer of Code 2025 titled "Graph-Based Analysis of Relay Partitioning in the Tor Network", focused on detecting partitioning patterns through graph data science techniques. Although the project is still in its proposal phase, I have already created a GitHub repository( https://github.com/valentinaschiavon99/tor-relay-partitioning-gsoc2025) where I’m documenting the structure, early diagrams, and test notebooks. I'm reaching out in case any of you have suggestions or would like to point me toward related work, potential pitfalls, or early contributions I could start working on (e.g., documentation or testing). Thank you very much for your time and for the opportunity to contribute to such an impactful project. Best regards, Valentina Schiavon Business Informatics student @ AAU Klagenfurt ,Austria https://www.linkedin.com/in/valentinaschiavon1/ https://github.com/valentinaschiavon99 valentinaschiavon99(a)gmail.com

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Proposal 360: Limiting HSDesc size and amplification
by Nick Mathewson 09 Apr '25

09 Apr '25

https://spec.torproject.org/proposals/360-hsdesc-len-limit.html This proposal describes a mechanism for preventing some kinds of traffic-flooding attacks by HSDirs. It's based on some of Mike Perry's work on Proposal 349. Please feel free to open tickets on gitlab, or to discuss here. Discussion on the forum is also okay! best wishes, -- Nick

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Proposal 359: Counter Galois Onion, Updated
by Nick Mathewson 09 Apr '25

09 Apr '25

https://spec.torproject.org/proposals/359-cgo-redux.html This proposal instantiates a new approach for encrypting relay cells on circuits, to prevent certain kinds of tagging attacks, to improve forward secrecy, and more. It is based on research by Jean Paul Degabriele, Alessandro Melloni, Jean-Pierre Münch, and Martijn Stam. You can read their paper at https://eprint.iacr.org/2025/583 This is important and subtle; I'd appreciate any feedback, especially from cryptographers. I plan to start implementing this quite soon, on the theory that, even if there _are_ flaws, it is very unlikely to be _worse_ than our current malleable relay encryption. Please feel free to open tickets on gitlab, or to discuss here. Discussion on the forum is also okay! cheers, -- Nick

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can tor use secondary groups to read FamilyKeyDirectory?
by nusenu 09 Apr '25

09 Apr '25

Hi, given the following example, tor fails to access the familykeydir folder. familykeydir has the following permissions: drwxr-x--- 2 root tor_reader id _tor uid=996(_tor) gid=993(_tor) groups=993(_tor),994(tor_reader) Is tor able to use secondary groups? When using sudo to switch to user _tor manually, it is possible to read files in that folder without problems. The problem does not happen when _tor's primary group is set to 'tor_reader'. Tested on debian. kind regards, nusenu -- https://nusenu.github.io

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Call for comments on proposals 346, 354, and 358.
by Nick Mathewson 08 Apr '25

08 Apr '25

Hi, all! We're hoping to implement these proposals soon: https://spec.torproject.org/proposals/346-protovers-again.html https://spec.torproject.org/proposals/354-relaxed-restrictions.html https://spec.torproject.org/proposals/358-unified-handshake-extensions.html Barring major objections, we're going to change their state from "Open" to "Accepted" in about a week. If anybody would like to comment, either here or on the bugtracker (https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/core/torspec/) that would be great! best wishes, -- Nick

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