Hi, all! When Roger was at my house the week before last, we spent
some time trying to triage currently open proposals for 0.2.3.x. I've
spent some time revising the list of proposal statuses that I sent out
in early March to reflect that conversation. Here's the current list
of proposal statuses, plus a list of those that we would like to
target for 0.2.3.
Note that this is a *tentative* list of stuff for 0.2.3, not a final
list. Given a goal of getting 0.2.3.x-stable out much more quickly
than 0.2.2.x-stable, we may need to let unfinished items wait until
0.2.4. I'll be trying to work out a release schedule over the course
of this week (to fit in with commitments we've made and time we have).
That said, the distinction between "nice to have for 0.2.3" and
"targeted for 0.2.3" is that the "targeted for 0.2.3" items are the
ones I would currently consider delaying the release a little for,
whereas the others would be neat to focus on, but great whenever they
land.
===== FINISHED SINCE MARCH 2:
These were actually implemented and merged since March 2:
158 Clients download consensus + microdescriptors
162 Publish the consensus in multiple flavors
174 Optimistic Data for Tor: Server Side [CLOSED]
These ones were implemented (in full or in part) all along:
149 Using data from NETINFO cells
163 Detecting whether a connection comes from a client
166 Including Network Statistics in Extra-Info Documents
These were superseded in full:
170 Configuration options regarding circuit building
===== TARGETED FOR 0.2.3
110 Avoiding infinite length circuits
This proposal solves a potential DoS attack.
This has been nearly completely implemented for a while. All we
need to do is verify that there are no clients that do not send
RELAY_EARLY cells correctly, and if so, turn on the code that drops
EXTEND cells not sent via RELAY_EARLY. The hard part here is
double-checking that all the clients that send EXTEND commands
inside non-RELAY_EARLY cells are really and truly obsolete.
117 IPv6 exits
This proposal describes how to transmit IPv6 traffic over Tor.
It needs updating to work properly with microdescriptors; it also
has some open questions about DNS.
We should revise this to bring it up-to-date for microdescriptors
and what we now know about DNS, and try to get it into 0.2.3.x.
147 Eliminate the need for v2 directories in generating v3 directories
This proposal explains a way that we can phase out the vestigial use
of v2 directory documents in keeping authorities well-informed
enough to generating the v3 consensus. It's still correct; somebody
should implement it before the v2 directory code rots any further.
157 Make certificate downloads specific
This proposal added cross-certification and signing-key-specific
download URLs for directory authority certificates. It is IIRC
mostly implemented; there are just some SHOULDs that we should turn
into MUSTS if all sufficiently old authority certificates are now
obsolete.
171 Separate streams across circuits by connection metadata
This proposal describes a way to prevent cross-application linking
of different anonymized sessions by isolating different kinds of
streams on different circuits based on their characteristics.
Robert Hogan did an implementation for a much earlier version of
this proposal that distinguished only based on ports; this could
serve as the basis of a new proposal, or not.
176 Proposed version-3 link handshake for Tor
Here's my proposal for how to improve our TLS handshake to eliminate
renegotiation, become less fingerprintable, and generally make the
world a better place. It needs more review by actual crypto people,
but I would like to get it into 0.2.3.x.
178 Require majority of authorities to vote for consensus parameters
This is a proposal for making it a little harder for a small number
of authorities to influence the value of a consensus parameter. It
needs more discussion; Sebastian has a draft implementation in his
"safer_params" branch.
179 TLS certificate and parameter normalization
Here's a proposal that describes better ways to come up with TLS
parameters (including DH parameter values and X.509 cetificates) to
make our protocol even harder to fingerprint.
Jacob has an implementation in progress.
180 Pluggable transports for circumvention
And this one is the sledgehammer of circumvention support: it
describes
There's Google Summer of Code student (George) planning to spend
some time working on this one.
===== NICE-TO-HAVE FOR 0.2.3
118 Advertising multiple ORPorts at once
This proposal describes how an OR can advertise more than one
address and OR port at a time. It needs to be updated to work with
microdescriptors, and to explain how much information can be
transmitted in the consensus and how (the original proposal was
written before consensus directories were really figured out).
140 Provide diffs between consensuses
This proposal describes a way to transmit less directory traffic by
sending only differences between consensuses, rather than the
consensuses themselves. It is mainly languishing for lack of an
appropriately licensed, well-written, very small, pure-C
implementation of the "diff" and "patch" algorithms. (The good
diffs seem to be GPL (which we can't use without changing Tor's
license), or spaghetti code, or not easily usable as a library, or
not written in C, or very large, or some combination of those.)
143 Improvements of Distributed Storage for Tor Hidden Service
Descriptors
Here's a proposal from Karsten about making the hidden service DHT
more reliable and secure to use. It could use more discussion and
analysis.
164 Reporting the status of server votes
This proposal explains a way for authorities to provide a slightly
more verbose document that relay operators can use to diagnose
reasons that their router was or was not listed in the consensus.
These documents would be like slightly more verbose versions of the
authorities' votes, and would explain *why* the authority voted as
it did. It wouldn't be too hard to implement, and would be a fine
project for somebody who wants to get to know the directory code.
168 Reduce default circuit window
This proposal reduces the default window for circuit sendme cells.
I think it's implemented, isn't it? If so, we should make sure
that tor-spec.txt is updated and close it.
172 GETINFO controller option for circuit information
173 GETINFO Option Expansion
These would help controllers (particularly arm) provide more useful
information about a running Tor process. They're accepted and some
parts of 173 are even implemented: somebody just needs to implement
the rest.
177 Abstaining from votes on individual flags
Here's my proposal for letting authorities have opinions about some
(flag,router) combinations without voting on whether _every_ router
should have that flag. It's simple, and I think it's basically
right. With more discussion and review, somebody could/should
build it for 0.2.3.x, I think.
===== OPEN:
145 Separate "suitable as a guard" from "suitable as a new guard"
Currently, the Guard flag means both "You can use this node as a
guard if you need to pick a new guard" and "If this node is
currently your guard, you can keep using it as a guard." This
proposal tries to separate these two concepts, so that clients can
stop picking a router once it is full of existing clients using it
as a guard, but the clients currently on it won't all drop it.
It's not clear whether this has anonymity issues, and it's not
clear whether the imagined performance gains are actually
worthwhile.
146 Add new flag to reflect losing-term stability
From time to time we get the idea of having clients ship with a
reasonably recent consensus (or a list of directory mirrors), so
instead of bootstrapping from one of the authorities, they can
bootstrap from a regular directory cache. The problem here is that
by the time the client is run, most of the directory mirrors will
be down or will have changed their IP. This proposal tries to
address that.
It needs analysis based on behavior of actual routers on the
network to see whether it could work, and what parameters might
work.
156 Tracking blocked ports on the client side
This proposal provides a way for clients to learn which ports they
are (and aren't) able to connect to, and connect to the ones that
work. It comes with a patch, too. It also lets routers track
ports that _they_ can't connect to.
I'm a little unconvinced that : most clients that have some ports
blocked will need bridges, not just restriction to a smaller set of
ports. This could be good behind restrictive firewalls, though.
The router-side part is a little iffy: routers that can't connect
to each other violate one of our network topology assumptions, and
even if we do want to track failed router->router connections, the
routers need to be sure that they aren't fooled into trying to
connect repeatedly to a series of nonexistent addresses in an
attempt to make them believe that (say) they can't reach port 443.
This one is a paradigmatic "open" proposal: it needs more
discussion. The patch probably also needs to be ported to 0.2.3.x;
it touches some code that has changed.
159 Exit Scanning
This is an overview of SoaT, with some ideas for how to integrate
it into Tor.
165 Easy migration for voting authority sets
This is a design for how to change the set of authorities without
having a flag day where the authority operators all reconfigure
their authorities at once. It needs more discussion. One
difficulty here is that we aren't talking much about changing the
set of authorities, but that may be a chicken-and-egg issue, since
changing the set is so onerous.
If anybody is interested, it would be great to move the discussion
ahead here.
===== DRAFT:
127 Relaying dirport requests to Tor download site / website
The idea here was to make it easier to fetch and learn about Tor by
making it easy for relays to automatically act as proxies to the Tor
website. It needs more discussion, and there are some significant
details to work out. It's not at all clear whether this is actually
a good idea or not.
132 A Tor Web Service For Verifying Correct Browser Configuration
This proposal was meant to give users a way to see if their browser
and privoxy (yes, it was a while ago) are correctly configured by
running a local webserver on 127.0.0.1. I'm not sure the status
here.
133 Incorporate Unreachable ORs into the Tor Network
This proposal had an idea for letting ORs that can only make
outgoing connections still relay data usefully in the network. It's
something we should keep in mind, and it's a pretty neat idea, but
it radically changes the network topology. Anybody who wants to
analyze new network topologies should definitely have a look.
141 Download server descriptors on demand
The idea of this proposal was for clients to only download the
consensus, and later ask nodes for their own server descriptors
while building the circuit through them. It would make each circuit
more time-consuming to build, but make bootstrapping much cheaper.
A microdescriptor-based version of this would be even better, and
microdescriptors would solve a lot of the problem that this was
meant to resolve. It still is not wholly superseded by the
microdescriptor system, though.
144 Increase the diversity of circuits by detecting nodes belonging
the same provider
This is a version of the good idea, "Let's do routing in a way that
tries to keep from routing traffic through the same provider too
much!" There are complex issues here that the proposal doesn't
completely address, but I think it might be a fine idea for somebody
to see how much more we know now than we did in 2008, particularly
in light of the relevant paper(s) by Matt Edmann and Paul Syverson.
175 Automatically promoting Tor clients to nodes
Here's Steven's proposal for adding a mode between "client mode" and
"relay mode" for "self-test to see if you would be a good relay, and
if so become one." It didn't get enough attention when it was
posted to the list; more people should review it.
===== NEEDS-REVISION: 131 Help users to verify they are using Tor
Here's a proposal for making a torcheck-like website more reliable.
If anybody wants to pick it up (especially somebody working on
torcheck) and see whether it should be reopened or rejected, that
would be a fine thing.
====== "IDEAS":
xxx-bwrate-algs.txt
Here's a note about better round-robin calculations for rate
limiting. Mike wrote it; I don't understand what's going on with
it.
xxx-choosing-crypto-in-tor-protocol.txt
Here's the start of a considerations document that Marian was
writing about how to pick new crypto algorithms to migrate to.
xxx-controllers-intercept-extends.txt
Here's an old idea from Geoff Goodell about letting controllers
intercept EXTEND commands. It is partially superseded by Damian's
172, though there is an additional feature that doesn't make sense
for the Tor network, but might make sense for experimental stuff
like Geoff was working on.
xxx-crypto-migration.txt
Here's the document I wrote in December about which parts of our
crypto there are to migrate, and what might be involved. This
isn't a draft or pre-draft of a design proposal; it is more of a
new category of "survey of stuff we need to design and think
about", or "proposal for proposals" or something.
xxx-crypto-requirements.txt
Here's Robert Ransom's draft for what crypto properties, exactly,
we're trying to get out of our circuit crypto. It is not a
proposal draft or pre-draft: it is again a "design considerations"
document, and one worth reading.
xxx-draft-spec-for-TLS-normalization.txt
Here's Jacob's proposal for certificate normalization. It should
get renamed, given a proposal number, and called "Open" or "Draft"
depending on how much the details are likely to change.
xxx-encrypted-services.txt
This is a start-of-a-proposal of Rogers that somebody should pick
up and finish some time: The idea is to use the hidden service
mechanism to provide a secure naming and encrypted connection
facility for hosting sites that do not actually want anonymity
themselves. There's been more interest in this topic lately. It
might also turn into "exit enclaves done right".
xxx-exit-scanning-outline.txt
Looks like this was superseded by 159?
xxx-geoip-survey-plan.txt
Here's an old document I wrote a while ago about tracking usage by
country. Probably it should go into the metrics documentation
somewhere (if we do this), or get thrown into "old" (if we won't do
this), or updated (if we might someday do this).
xxx-grand-scaling-plan.txt
Here are some notes on scaling that Roger wrote in 2008. There
might be some smart ideas here! Have a look some time.
xxx-hide-platform.txt
Here's a proposal pre-draft that says we should normalize the
platform string. Somebody could turn this into a proposal pretty
easily.
xxx-ipv6-plan.txt
Here's a survey of what we need to do for IPv6 support that I
started writing. It's not a proposal; it's a survey of proposal
and implementation statuses.
xxx-pluggable-transport.txt
Here's the thing Jacob and I have been working on for pluggable
obfuscation techniques. It should get turned into "Draft" status
asap, if not "Open". We should finish writing the missing
sections, like, yesterday.
xxx-port-knocking.txt
Here's a pre-proposal from Jacob about using port knocking to make
bridges harder to fingerprint. This could be a good idea for
somebody to do in terms of the pluggable transport spec.
xxx-rate-limit-exits.txt
Here are some notes of Roger's from 2008 claiming that we should
rate-limit stream creation at exit nodes. It could help avoid
port-scans if we do it right, but we would need to be exceedingly
careful not to disrupt useful traffic.
xxx-using-spdy.txt
Here's a document from Steven about opportunistic use of SPDY over
Tor.
This should be a "Draft" proposal IMO.
xxx-what-uses-sha1.txt
Here's the beginnings of a survey of where Tor uses SHA1, with an
eye to stopping. This really isn't a design proposal; it might
fall into a new category of "issue survey" or "information" or
something.
