Hello people!
As you might have noticed at our roadmap [0] we have the following task:
* Initial ticket triage + schedule for 0.2.7(due by March 20th)
At the last Core Tor weekly IRC meeting we asked people to add the label
0.2.7 to the work they want to see done for the release. The only
guideline so far is to also look at other's roadmap and keep their needs
in mind as you decide what should go on the next release.
We plan to start triaging this at the end of the next weekly meeting
(Wed 3/18) and will probably need another meeting to finish this initial
ticket triage.
I am trying to figure out when is a good time to have the 'second round'
of triage and that is why I am sending this note.
Please look at the poll and let us know when is a good time for you:
http://doodle.com/3e9223rb3q7uffd9
Thanks,
Isabela
[0] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/roadmaps/CoreTor
(Trying to get these back onto a regular schedule now that dev-meeting
madness is over.)
Just wanted to remind you that the regular biweekly pluggable transports
meeting is going to occur tomorrow at 16:00 UTC. Place is the #tor-dev
IRC channel in the OFTC network.
https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/doc/PluggableTransports#Plugg…
--
Yawning Angel
ps: UTC does not do daylight savings. Those of you that have had
clocks change, please double check the time and let me know if we need
to change the time.
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Hi,
I'm currently preparing/testing a systemd unit file (#14995) for
debian (wheezy-backports/systemd 204) based on the one shipped by tor [1].
It does not work yet, and although the 'fix' would be easy - simply
remove:
NoNewPrivileges = yes
I'd like to hear from you before removing such a security feature.
Does tor require new privileges to work?
It actually fails in two instances:
1) before actually starting the tor daemon (--verify-config):
Process: 2844 ExecStartPre=/usr/bin/tor -f /etc/tor/torrc
- --verify-config (code=exited, status=227/NO_NEW_PRIVILEGES)
2) and when actually starting the daemon
thanks,
Nusenu
I'm testing with
0.2.5.10-1~d70.wheezy
minimal test torrc used:
User debian-tor
DataDirectory /var/lib/tor
Log debug file /var/log/tor/log
[1]
https://gitweb.torproject.org/tor.git/tree/contrib/dist/tor.service.in#n25
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All,
Our team at Princeton has been working on "Raptor: routing attacks on
privacy in Tor". These attacks can be launched by Autonomous System
(AS)-level adversaries, and exploit the dynamics of inter-domain routing.
We show that by exploiting routing asymmetry, routing churn, and routing
vulnerabilities (such as BGP hijacks and BGP interceptions), user anonymity
can be compromised much more effectively than previously thought. We
evaluated these attacks using historical BGP and Traceroute data, as well
as by performing real-world attacks on the live-Tor network, without
harming real Tor users.
Our technical report is available at: http://arxiv.org/abs/1503.03940,
feedback is most welcome.
While all of our attacks have consequences for user anonymity, attacks
based on BGP interceptions are particularly dangerous for the Tor network.
These attacks allow an adversary to intercept Tor traffic "on demand",
regardless of the adversary's network location. Our work demonstrates such
an attack -- with success, on the live Tor network. We find that 90% of the
Tor relays have a BGP prefix shorter than /24, enabling an adversary to
advertise a more specific prefix for them, which is propagated *globally*.
Countermeasures against interception attacks are challenging: we outline a
number of ideas including advertising Tor relays with /24 prefixes,
building frameworks to monitor the control plane and dataplane of Tor
relays to detect such attacks (we have started to build such monitoring
frameworks at Princeton), and in the long term -- aiming to speed up the
deployment of secure inter-domain routing protocols in the Internet.
Thanks,
Prateek
--
Prateek Mittal
Assistant Professor
Princeton University
http://www.princeton.edu/~pmittal/
On #tor-dev on IRC, I noticed Nick and Mark discussing trying to sync
the release schedules of Tor and TBB. I replied to Nick there with more
info, but it may be lost in scrollback. So I'm restarting the discussion
here. This email should give everyone on the tor-core side more info
than they ever wanted to know about the Tor Browser release schedule.
For Tor Browser, we are rather tightly bound to Mozilla's release
schedule on two timescales: a 6 week point release cycle, as well as a
42 week Extended Support Release cycle. You can see this release
schedule here:
https://wiki.mozilla.org/RapidRelease/Calendar#Future_branch_dates.
Note that schedule only lists the Rapid Releases, but there are Firefox
31-ESR point releases (with security fixes) on the same day as all Rapid
Releases. This is where our 6 week cycle comes from for Tor Browser, and
it is why we will always have a release on the same day as those Rapid
Release dates.
In terms of merge deadlines for our releases, Mozilla tags the all
releases one week prior to the actual release date. This means we
typically code freeze both TBB stable and alpha one week prior to
release, and begin building off of their new tags at that point. This
also means that the deadline for Tor Browser picking up a new Tor or PT
version is also roughly 1 week prior to those release dates.
The 42 week cycle comes from the Extended Support Release switch-over.
Every 7 Rapid Releases, Mozilla creates a new Extended Support Release
(ESR) series. We are currently on Firefox 31-ESR. The next ESR is
38-ESR. Note that the release calendar page lists Firefox 38 beta as due
on March 31st, and Firefox 38 as due on May 12th. We then have 2 more
rapid release cycles until Firefox 31-ESR is officially end of life.
This means we have until August 11th to rebase all of our patches, audit
and review Firefox 38, and write more patches for any issues we
discover.
So, how do these releases map to our upcoming TBB releases in terms of
our versioning and stabilization? Well, our plan for 4.5-alpha is to
freeze on March 26th, and then release TBB 4.5a5 on March 31st. We hope
to declare 4.5 stable soon after that (~2 weeks). It seems by
coincidence, Tor 0.2.6.x should be stable roughly around that time as
well. The reason why we are releasing 4.5-stable out-of-cycle is to
provide a 1 month grace period for people to still be able to run TBB
4.0 in case there are any catastrophes hiding in 4.5.
After that (in mid-April), we will branch a new alpha series
(5.0-alpha), which will target the next Firefox ESR release, based on
Firefox 38.
This means that from April until Aug 11th, the TBB team will be mostly
focused on the switch to FF38-ESR (reviewing changes, updating patches,
fixing tests, notifying Mozilla of patches they might like, etc).
On https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/roadmaps/CoreTor, I
notice that we currently have Tor 0.2.7 scheduled to be stable by
mid-Sept, which is slightly out of sync with a goal of shipping the
FF38ESR-based Tor browser and Tor 0.2.7.x-stable together on August
11th.
This may place us in the weird position of shipping a TBB 5.0-alpha with
0.2.7 and FF38 for most of the FF38ESR stabilization period (April-Aug
11), and then having to decide if we want to just roll the dice on
0.2.7, or roll back to 0.2.6. Obviously both options will carry some
risk of instability.
As fair warning, I am very likely to decide that it will be better to
ship 0.2.7.x in TBB 5.0-stable on Aug 11th, as I suspect that the risk
from things like PT compatibility and control port compatibility issues
will actually make a rollback to 0.2.6 more risky on balance than
sticking with 0.2.7.x.
--
Mike Perry
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[Cc'ing tor-dev@, because why not.]
On 11/03/15 19:13, Karsten Loesing wrote:
> Please let me know if I can help *reduce* confusion somehow. :)
Looking forward, hidden-service statistics are now available on Metrics:
https://metrics.torproject.org/hidserv-data.html
I also started making some very quick graphs here:
https://people.torproject.org/~karsten/volatile/hidserv-stats-2015-03-11.pdf
The question is, what graphs do we want on Metrics? How about:
- Total hidden-service traffic in Mbit/s (per day, using weighted
interquartile mean, like lower graph on page 1 of the PDF)
- Unique .onion addresses (per day, using weighted interquartile
mean, like upper graph on page 1 of the PDF)
- Fraction of relays reporting hidden-service statistics (containing
both dir-onions-seen and rend-relayed-cells, like page 3 of the PDF)
Note that I left out "fraction of traffic", because we can't guarantee
that our many assumptions we made for the blog post will hold in the
future. Happy to be convinced otherwise.
Also note that more is not necessarily better. All graphs we put on
Metrics should be easy to comprehend for non-researchers and
non-developers. If there's a graph that you care about but that not
many other people would care about, it's easier to write a graphing
script to plot what's in hidserv.csv rather than add yet one more
thing to Metrics.
By the way, I decided against using onion service terminology, because
I wasn't sure when we were planning to switch. I'm not sure if
Metrics should be one of the first Tor websites to switch, or whether
people will just wonder what crazy Tor-unrelated stuff Metrics has
statistics for. I don't feel strongly though. Thoughts?
Thanks!
All the best,
Karsten
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On 12/03/15 17:08, A. Johnson wrote:
>> Looking forward, hidden-service statistics are now available on
>> Metrics:
>>
>> https://metrics.torproject.org/hidserv-data.html
>
> Looks great!
>
>> - Total hidden-service traffic in Mbit/s (per day, using
>> weighted interquartile mean, like lower graph on page 1 of the
>> PDF)
>>
>> - Unique .onion addresses (per day, using weighted interquartile
>> mean, like upper graph on page 1 of the PDF)
>
> These seem like a good idea.
Great! I started with the second graph, because it seems least disputed:
https://metrics.torproject.org/hidserv-dir-onions-seen.html
>> - Fraction of relays reporting hidden-service statistics
>> (containing both dir-onions-seen and rend-relayed-cells, like
>> page 3 of the PDF)
>
> This is probably less interesting to most people, but it is
> important to people serious about understanding the meaning of the
> data. So I could take this or leave it.
Agreed. I'll leave this graph out for the moment.
>> Note that I left out "fraction of traffic", because we can't
>> guarantee that our many assumptions we made for the blog post
>> will hold in the future. Happy to be convinced otherwise.
>
> The calculation of client traffic fraction assumed that most
> traffic from exit relays was in fact exit traffic. The validity of
> that assumption may indeed change in the future, depending
> especially on how the consensus position weights change. So I agree
> that it is not a great idea to include a graph of this number on
> the Metrics page.
I wonder if we can simplify the calculation somehow, so that we don't
have to worry (as much) that it will break in the future. Hmm.
> The calculation of traffic fraction at relays only relied on (i)
> rendezvous circuits being six hops (not a shaky assumption) and
> (ii) that the Metrics numbers for total network traffic was
> accurate (also seems like a good assumption). So it seems that we
> could include this number, although it is the less interesting of
> the two numbers.
True. Let's keep this in mind as plan B.
>> By the way, I decided against using onion service terminology,
>> because I wasn't sure when we were planning to switch. I'm not
>> sure if Metrics should be one of the first Tor websites to
>> switch, or whether people will just wonder what crazy
>> Tor-unrelated stuff Metrics has statistics for. I don't feel
>> strongly though. Thoughts?
>
> You could use the new terminology, with a footnote on the page
> explaining that "onion service" is the same as "hidden service".
I think I'd rather want to wait until documentation on Tor's website
and in tools is updated.
All the best,
Karsten
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Here's the summary of meek's CDN fees for February 2015. Earlier reports:
https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2014-August/007429.htmlhttps://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2014-October/007576.htmlhttps://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2014-November/007716.htmlhttps://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2014-December/007916.htmlhttps://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2015-January/008082.htmlhttps://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2015-February/008235.html
App Engine + Amazon + Azure = total by month
February 2014 $0.09 + -- + -- = $0.09
March 2014 $0.00 + -- + -- = $0.00
April 2014 $0.73 + -- + -- = $0.73
May 2014 $0.69 + -- + -- = $0.69
June 2014 $0.65 + -- + -- = $0.65
July 2014 $0.56 + $0.00 + -- = $0.56
August 2014 $1.56 + $3.10 + -- = $4.66
September 2014 $4.02 + $4.59 + $0.00 = $8.61
October 2014 $40.85 + $130.29 + $0.00 = $171.14
November 2014 $224.67 + $362.60 + $0.00 = $587.27
December 2014 $326.81 + $417.31 + $0.00 = $744.12
January 2015 $464.37 + $669.02 + $0.00 = $1133.39
February 2015 $650.53 + $604.83 + $0.00 = $1255.36
--
total by CDN $1715.53 + $2191.74 + $0.00 = $3907.27 grand total
My motivation behind making these reports is to provide transparency and
to contribute to the body of scientific knowledge. I think it's useful
to document these kinds of numbers, for the benefit of others who want
to experiment with this kind of system.
The number of simultaneous users was up a little bit in February
relative to December, hovering around 1250.
https://metrics.torproject.org/userstats-bridge-transport.html?graph=userst…
The bill for Amazon actually went down last month, for the first time
ever. Okay, that is partially because February is about 10% shorter than
January. Actually, if you account for the shorter month, the bill is
eerily almost exactly the same:
$669.02 * 28/31 = $604.28 ≈ $604.83 (actual Feb. cost)
== App Engine a.k.a. meek-google ==
Bandwidth was up about 30% and instance hours were up about 45%.
At the end of February, I tried tweaking some performance parameters as
an experiment to cause fewer instances to be created. This is to reduce
costs, and also because I guess that extra instances don't really help
much with performance in this case. The creation of instances is
triggered by the application's response latency, which for us is usually
caused by some temporary network issue, rather than a lack of CPU or
something like that. We'll see next month whether it has an effect.
Here is how the Google costs broke down:
4114 GB $492.71
3226 instance hours $157.82
Compared to the previous month:
2944 GB $353.31
2221 instance hours $111.06
https://globe.torproject.org/#/bridge/88F745840F47CE0C6A4FE61D827950B06F9E4…
== Amazon a.k.a. meek-amazon ==
meek-amazon was pretty much the same as last month.
I am thinking about disabling the public Amazon backend, just because
it's a bit more expensive and I haven't been able to get free credits
for it. And when I say "disabling," I mean just removing it as a default
option in Tor Browser; it wouldn't just stop working immediately. My
idea is that we could publish a guide on setting up your own Amazon
CloudFront instance, if CloudFront is a backend that works for you.
Asia Pacific (Singapore) 115M requests $138.07 1018 GB $147.04
Asia Pacific (Sydney) 76K requests $0.10 1 GB $0.06
Asia Pacific (Tokyo) 29M requests $34.26 193 GB $24.99
EU (Ireland) 111M requests $133.22 868 GB $68.23
South America (Sao Paulo) 2M requests $4.25 11 GB $2.61
US East (Northern Virginia) 30M requests $29.90 278 GB $22.12
--
total 363M requests $339.80 2369 GB $265.05
https://globe.torproject.org/#/bridge/3FD131B74D9A96190B1EE5D31E91757FADA1A…
== Azure a.k.a. meek-azure ==
I haven't been able to get estimated costs out of Azure. I didn't get a
reply to my request last month to be added to whatever plan lets you see
usage data.
I did, however, recover the bandwidth history for the meek-azure bridge
from Onionoo, so we can estimate what the cost would be. If we estimate
a traffic mix similar to that of meek-amazon, with 40% coming from North
America and Europe, and 60% coming from elsewhere, then the costs would
be:
https://onionoo.torproject.org/bandwidth?fingerprint=AA033EEB61601B2B7312D8…
2014-09 47 GB $5.53
2014-10 298 GB $35.04
2014-11 500 GB $58.80
2014-12 512 GB $60.21
2015-01 638 GB $75.03
2015-02 614 GB $72.21
https://globe.torproject.org/#/bridge/AA033EEB61601B2B7312D89B62AAA23DC3ED8…
David Fifield