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running a BWauth
by starlight.2015q3＠binnacle.cx 04 Nov '15

04 Nov '15

I am considering starting up a passive BWauth in order to understand how they work and fix bugs. What is the minimum and ideal hardware configuration for a BWauth? Have my eye on an OVH config with unmetered 1G, a fuzzy promise of 500mbps minimum bandwidth and a 3.4GHz 4core/8thread AES-NI CPU: http://ark.intel.com/products/80910 The server could be turned up in any of their facilities: https://www.ovh.com/us/about-us/datacenters.xml Or is 10G a requirement? (out of my league) Is all code here https://gitweb.torproject.org/torflow.git/tree/NetworkScanners/BwAuthority or is there more? Are uncommitted fixes lying around anywhere? Thanks

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[Fwd: UX Principles]
by Mike Perry 03 Nov '15

03 Nov '15

Nima sent this to me a while ago and I completely forgot to forward it on. Note the Google docs and the PDF at the bottom. Useful food for though for Tor Messenger, Tor Browser, and other user-facing stuff. ----- Forwarded message from Nima Fatemi <nima(a)torproject.org> ----- Date: Fri, 24 Jul 2015 03:39:31 +0000 From: Nima Fatemi <nima(a)torproject.org> To: Mike Perry <mikeperry(a)torproject.org> Subject: UX Principles Hi Mike, sorry for late email. I was meaning to send you this sooner but I've had a big pile of email, I had to take care of. So the forwarded message below includes an attachment, which is the Yee's principles and then there's another paper that linda has mentioned, which is worth reading I think. Here's that talk from Google Chrome's Elisabeth Morant that I mentioned to you: https://news.yahoo.com/video/yahoo-trust-unconference-security-ux-161037378… Here are the slides: (the good stuff start from page 12) https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1i2Pwennj8PcsigACPA1oLpRNLd7BVC0oils… And here are my notes from the talk + my thoughts added to them: - 1st principle: Don't annoy users, even with updates. - People (even infosec ppl) ignore updates - users are often worried that updates would change the interface, it took them time and energy to get used to current things, they dont want it to change (even if it's a good change) - Enable auto-update by default with an option to opt out - Give devs and users tools to time permission requests - 2nd principle: allow mistakes!!! let them change their settings easily if they've changed their minds - settings windows doing similar thing should look similar and if they do the exact things, they should look identical. - make settings easy to discover - 3rd principle: combat jerks [malicious-HS_maybe?] - danger is hard to communicate - how to tell users about the danger they're facing - infrastructure for detecting and reacting to badness - how to do this in a decentralized way?! - karma! tie user engagement to resource allocation (maybe useful for HiddenServices?) (okay, right after writing this sentence, I started a conversation in #tor-project. see the backlog, you might find it interesting) - crowd consent Let me know if I can be of any help. Bests, -- Nima -------- Forwarded Message -------- Subject: Yee's principles Date: Wed, 1 Jul 2015 05:51:05 -0700 From: Linda Naeun Lee <lnl(a)berkeley.edu> To: Tor Project <nima(a)torproject.org> Nima: Here are notes. And another paper. http://zesty.ca/pubs/yee-sid-ieeesp2004.pdf -- Linda Naeun Lee Graduate Student Researcher Department of Computer Science University of California, Berkeley ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Mike Perry

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UX tag
by Nima Fatemi 02 Nov '15

02 Nov '15

Hello devs, May I encourage you to add "UX" tag (keyword) to the tickets you're filing or working on that are related to usability in any ways? This is to get a sense of how many tickets and what workload is related to usability in tor-related products. So I want to humbly ask you to use the tag regardless of the help you may or may not need for that ticket. And if you've any suggestions/ideas to measure this better, this is a great time to talk about it :) Peace ✌ -- Nima 0XC009DB191C92A77B | @mrphs "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" --Evelyn Beatrice Hall

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Re: [tor-dev] Update of prop#250: Random Number Generation During Tor Voting
by Jesse V 02 Nov '15

02 Nov '15

David, I'm in the midst of reworking my OnioNS design around prop250 (and the security analysis therein) and as far as I can tell these changes make sense. I like the 00:00 -> 24:00 change as it's more intuitive as you said. I was at first very concerned that you removed the majority requirement as that is the assumption made during consensus generation, but I think your argument for the new conflict resolution make sense. I'm excited that the implementation is nearly complete and I look forward to seeing it in Tor infrastructure! Jesse V. On 10/28/2015 10:26 AM, David Goulet wrote: > First, period have been changed from 12:00 -> 12:00 (24 hour) to 00:00 > -> 24:00 so the protocol run is not over two days. Seemed more logical > and less confusing :). > > Second, we've removed the need of having majority for a commit to be > considered for the shared random computation. Yes this sounds intense!! > so it needs your attention.

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Tor logo
by Philip Lammert 01 Nov '15

01 Nov '15

Hi, I wasn’t lucky with the Tor logo, its design qualities in general, especially its performance in small sizes and its inconsistent applications (different shades of purple and green, outlines, gradients and glossy effects …). So I made a redesign. I would offer all file types needed. I hope this mailing-list is the right place to present it and discus it. Please, have a look at the PDF-file: http://www.file-upload.net/download-11010886/_logos_overview.pdf.html The whole developing system here seems decentralised and an implementation might be a bit cumbersome, but if it doesn’t exhaust me too much, I could also offer further design advice, (re-)designing app icons, making mockups for Tor websites, apps etc. and give it a consistent and professional appearance. Regards Philip

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Pluggable Transports v1 spec rewrite.
by Yawning Angel 31 Oct '15

31 Oct '15

Hello all, In an attempt to make Pluggable Transports more accessible to other people, and to have a spec that is more applicable and useful to other projects that seek to use Pluggable Transports for circumvention, I have drafted a re-write of the spec. This is not intended to alter existing behavior, but instead make it clear that the whole "Pluggable Transports" thing isn't just for Tor. Unless people have serious objections, this will replace the existing PT spec, to serve as a stop-gap while the next revision of the PT spec (that does alter behavior) is being drafted/implemented. Regards, -- Yawning Angel

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Bridge Guards (prop#188) & Bridge ORPort Reachability Tests
by isis 30 Oct '15

30 Oct '15

Hey all, I have a working implementation of proposal #188, [0] which specifies a mechanism by which tor's (rather accidental) loose-source routing feature is utilised by Bridges in order to transparently inject a Bridge Guard into all client circuits. (See #7144. [1]) Currently, I am updating the text in proposal #188 to match my implementation, and I am trying to decide what to do about the two types of Bridge ORPort reachability testing. Here's the text I've written so far to explain the issues: (In the following, "Alice" is an OP, "Bob" is a Bridge, "Guillaume" is Bob's chosen Entry Guard, and "Charlie" is a random Middle node.) > 4.4. Bridge Reachability Testing > > Currently, a Bridge's reachability is tested both by the Bridge > itself (called "self-testing") and by the BridgeAuthority. > > 4.4.1. Bridge Reachability Self-Testing > > Before a Bridge uploads its descriptors to the BridgeAuthority, it > creates a special type of testing circuit which ends at itself: > > Bob -> Guillaume -> Charlie -> Bob > > Thus, going to all this trouble to later use loose-source routing in > order to relay Alice's traffic through Guillaume (rather than > connecting directly to Charlie, as Alice intended) is diminished by > the fact that Charlie can still passively enumerate Bridges by > waiting to be asked to connect to a node which is not > contained within the consensus. > > We could get around this option by disabling self-testing for bridges > entirely, by automatically setting "AssumeReachable 1" for all Bridge > relays… although I am not sure if this is wise. > > 4.4.2. Bridge Reachability Testing by the BridgeAuthority > > After receiving Bob's descriptors, the BridgeAuthority attempts to > connect to Bob's ORPort by making a direct TLS connection to the > Bridge's advertised ORPort. > > Should we change this behaviour? One the one hand, at least this > does not enable any random OR in the entire network to enumerate > Bridges. On the other hand, any adversary who can observe packets > from the BridgeAuthority is capable of enumeration. So, my current questions are: 1. Bridges only do reachability self-testing in order to warn their operators that the Bridge (or firewall or whatever) might be misconfigured, correct? Is there any other reason (or future reason) why self-testing is important/useful? 2. How should the self-testing be changed? 2.a. First, if there aren't any other reasons for self-testing: Is Bridge reachability self-testing actually helpful to Bridge operators in practice? Don't most Bridge operators just try to connect, as a client, to their own Bridge to see if it's working correctly? (This is what I usually do, at least…) If it's not useful to most Bridge operators, can we just disable self-testing for all Bridges? (And, should we disable it only for Bridges who are using Bridge Guards, or all of Bridges regardless?) 2.b. If it is useful to people, then the best way I can think of so far to keep it, but refactor it to be safer, would be to create a circuit like: Bridge → Guard → Middle → OtherMiddle → Guard → Bridge Clearly, that circuit is just a little bit insane… but we can't do: Bridge → Guard → Middle → Guard → Bridge because the Middle would refuse to extend back to the previous node (all ORs follow this rule). Similarly, it would be stupid to do: Bridge → Guard → Middle → OtherMiddle → Bridge because, obviously, that merely shifts the problem and accomplishes nothing. But is there something smarter I could do? 3. Should we change how the BridgeAuthority tests Bridge ORPort reachability? If so, how? 4. If I'm going to refactor all of this, are there other (future) things I should take into account? For example, if self-testing is disabled for Bridges, and, due to #7349, [2] the BridgeAuthority isn't testing reachability either, then how will the BridgeAuthority know if (any of) the Bridge's PTs are reachable? (One solution might be to, in that case, have the BridgeAuthority lie and tell BridgeDB that such Bridges were reachable, letting BridgeDB do the PT reachability testing.) Please help me brainstorm a way out of this mess! [0]: https://gitweb.torproject.org/torspec.git/tree/proposals/188-bridge-guards.… [1]: https://bugs.torproject.org/7144 [2]: https://bugs.torproject.org/7349 Best Regards, -- ♥Ⓐ isis agora lovecruft _________________________________________________________ OpenPGP: 4096R/0A6A58A14B5946ABDE18E207A3ADB67A2CDB8B35 Current Keys: https://blog.patternsinthevoid.net/isis.txt

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Tor Messenger Beta: Chat over Tor, Easily
by Sukhbir Singh 30 Oct '15

30 Oct '15

Hi, Today we are releasing a new, beta version of Tor Messenger, based on Instantbird [0], an instant messaging client developed in the Mozilla community. * What is it? Tor Messenger is a cross-platform chat program that aims to be secure by default and sends all of its traffic over Tor. It supports a wide variety of transport networks, including Jabber (XMPP), IRC, Google Talk, Facebook Chat, Twitter, Yahoo, and others; enables Off-the-Record (OTR) Messaging [1] automatically; and has an easy-to-use graphical user interface localized into multiple languages. * What it isn't... Tor Messenger builds on the networks you are familiar with, so that you can continue communicating in a way your contacts are willing and able to do. This has traditionally been in a client-server model, meaning that your metadata (specifically the relationships between contacts) can be logged by the server. However, your route to the server will be hidden because you are communicating over Tor. We are also excited about systems like Pond [2] and Ricochet [3], which try to solve this problem, and would encourage you to look at their designs and use them too. * Why Instantbird? We considered a number of messaging clients: Pidgin, Adam Langley's xmpp-client, and Instantbird. Instantbird was the pragmatic choice -- its transport protocols are written in a memory-safe language (JavaScript); it has a graphical user interface and already supports many natural languages; and it's a XUL application, which means we can leverage both the code (Tor Launcher) and in-house expertise that the Tor Project has developed working on Tor Browser with Firefox. It also has an active and vibrant software developer community that has been very responsive and understanding of our needs. The main feature it lacked was OTR support, which we have implemented [4] and hope to upstream to the main Instantbird repository for the benefit of all Instantbird (and Thunderbird) users. * Current Status Today we are releasing a beta version with which we hope to gain both usability and security related feedback. There have been three previous alpha releases to the mailing lists that have already helped smooth out some of the rougher edges. * Downloads Linux (32-bit) https://dist.torproject.org/tormessenger/0.1.0b2/tor-messenger-linux32-0.1.… Linux (64-bit) https://dist.torproject.org/tormessenger/0.1.0b2/tor-messenger-linux64-0.1.… Windows https://dist.torproject.org/tormessenger/0.1.0b2/tormessenger-install-0.1.0… OS X https://dist.torproject.org/tormessenger/0.1.0b2/TorMessenger-0.1.0b2-osx64… sha256sums https://dist.torproject.org/tormessenger/0.1.0b2/sha256sums.txt https://dist.torproject.org/tormessenger/0.1.0b2/sha256sums.txt.asc The sha256sums.txt file containing hashes of the bundles is signed with the key 0x6887935AB297B391 (fingerprint: 3A0B 3D84 3708 9613 6B84 5E82 6887 935A B297 B391). * Instructions - On Linux, extract the bundle(s) and then run: ./start-tor-messenger.desktop - On OS X, copy the Tor Messenger application from the disk image to your local disk before running it. On all platforms, Tor Messenger sets the profile folder for Firefox/Instantbird to the installation directory. - Note that as a policy, unencrypted one-to-one conversations are not allowed and your messages will not be transmitted if the person you are talking with does not have an OTR-enabled client. You can disable this option in the preferences to allow unencrypted communication but doing so is not recommended. * Source Code We are doing automated builds [5] of Tor Messenger for all platforms. The Linux builds are reproducible: anyone who builds Tor Messenger for Linux should have byte-for-byte identical binaries compared with other builds from a given source. You can build it yourself [6] and let us know if you encounter any problems or cannot match our build. The Windows and OS X builds are not completely reproducible yet but we are working on it [7]. * What's to Come Our current focus is security, robustness and user experience. We will be fixing bugs and releasing updates as appropriate, and in the future, we plan on pairing releases with Mozilla's Extended Support Release (ESR) cycle. We have some ideas on where to take Tor Messenger but we would like to hear what you have to say. Some possibilities include: - Reproducible builds for Windows and OS X (#10942) - Sandboxing (#10943) - Automatic updates (#14388) - Improved Tor support (#10950) - OTR over Twitter DMs (#13312) - Produce (and distribute) internationalized builds (#10945) - Secure multi-party communication (np1sec) [8] - Encrypted file-transfers - Usability study * How To Help Give it a try and provide feedback, requests, and file bugs [9] (choose the "Tor Messenger" component). If you are a developer, help us close all our tickets [10] or help us review our design doc [11]. As always, we are idling on IRC in #tor-dev (OFTC) (nicks: arlolra; boklm; sukhe) and subscribed to the tor-talk/dev mailing lists. Please note that this release is for users who would like to help us with testing the product but at the same time who also understand the risks involved in using beta software. Thanks and we hope you enjoy Tor Messenger! [0] - http://instantbird.com [1] - https://otr.cypherpunks.ca [2] - https://pond.imperialviolet.org [3] - https://ricochet.im [4] - https://github.com/arlolra/ctypes-otr [5] - https://gitweb.torproject.org/tor-messenger-build.git [6] - https://gitweb.torproject.org/tor-messenger-build.git/tree/README [7] - https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/10942 [8] - https://github.com/equalitie/np1sec [9] - https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/newticket [10] - https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/query?status=!closed&component=Tor… [11] - https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/doc/TorMessenger/DesignDoc

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[Applications Team] First meeting next Tuesday 19:00 UTC
by Georg Koppen 29 Oct '15

29 Oct '15

Hi, just a reminder that the applications team is starting the monthly meetings next week on Tuesday, November 3 at 19:00 UTC[0] in #tor-project on irc.oftc.net. The proposed topic is still talking about UX/internationalization issues. If there are other things worth discussing we can easily amend the agenda at the beginning of the meeting. See you there, Georg [0] Originally I had written "18:00 UTC" but I forgot to take the end of the summer time into account.

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Re: [tor-dev] Pluggable Transports v1 spec rewrite.
by Nathan Freitas 29 Oct '15

29 Oct '15

On Thu, Oct 29, 2015, at 09:19 AM, Yawning Angel wrote: > Hello all, > > In an attempt to make Pluggable Transports more accessible to other > people, and to have a spec that is more applicable and useful to other > projects that seek to use Pluggable Transports for circumvention, I have > drafted a re-write of the spec. > > This is not intended to alter existing behavior, but instead make it > clear that the whole "Pluggable Transports" thing isn't just for Tor. > > Unless people have serious objections, this will replace the existing > PT spec, to serve as a stop-gap while the next revision of the PT spec > (that does alter behavior) is being drafted/implemented. > Any small or big changes to highlight that push us to the more accessible goal?

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