Dear Tor App Developers,
Just a heads' up that tor 0.2.8 includes a fallback directory mirrors feature, where tor clients bootstrap from a set of hard-coded long-lived directory mirrors. This makes bootstrap more reliable, and makes it harder to block tor. The wiki has an entry with more details. [0]
We're currently trying to finalise a list of around 100 fallback directory mirrors by the time tor 0.2.8-stable is released. [1]
If we have this many mirrors, I am confident we won't overwhelm any of the mirrors when an app like Orbot, Tor Browser, or Tails switches to tor 0.2.8. (Are there any other tor apps with millions of users that I've missed?)
If this feature does cause problems, or if your app needs to bootstrap only from the authorities (Tails time syncing? [2]), the fallback directory mirrors feature can be disabled using the tor config option "UseDefaultFallbackDirs 0".
Tim
[0]: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/doc/FallbackDirectoryMirrors https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/doc/FallbackDirectoryMirrors [1]: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/17158 https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/17158 [2]: https://tails.boum.org/contribute/design/Time_syncing/ https://tails.boum.org/contribute/design/Time_syncing/
Tim Wilson-Brown (teor)
teor2345 at gmail dot com PGP 968F094B
teor at blah dot im OTR CAD08081 9755866D 89E2A06F E3558B7F B5A9D14F
Hi,
Tim Wilson-Brown - teor wrote (21 Mar 2016 18:16:46 GMT) :
If this feature does cause problems, or if your app needs to bootstrap only from the authorities (Tails time syncing? [2]), the fallback directory mirrors feature can be disabled using the tor config option "UseDefaultFallbackDirs 0".
Thanks for the heads up!
(This is now tracked there on Tails side: https://labs.riseup.net/code/issues/11285)
Cheers, -- intrigeri
On 26 Mar 2016, at 21:36, intrigeri intrigeri@boum.org wrote:
Hi,
Tim Wilson-Brown - teor wrote (21 Mar 2016 18:16:46 GMT) :
If this feature does cause problems, or if your app needs to bootstrap only from the authorities (Tails time syncing? [2]), the fallback directory mirrors feature can be disabled using the tor config option "UseDefaultFallbackDirs 0".
Thanks for the heads up!
(This is now tracked there on Tails side: https://labs.riseup.net/code/issues/11285)
Thanks for letting us know the Tails issue number.
For completeness, very-power-users can use the following torrc options to select their own fallback directories: UseDefaultFallbackDirs 0 FallbackDir <details> FallbackDir <details> FallbackDir <details>
As discussed already, if they don't add any FallbackDir lines, they will bootstrap from the authorities.
Tim
Tim Wilson-Brown (teor)
teor2345 at gmail dot com PGP 968F094B
teor at blah dot im OTR CAD08081 9755866D 89E2A06F E3558B7F B5A9D14F
-
intrigeri -
Tim Wilson-Brown - teor