- tor-relays - lists.torproject.org

Relay operators: help improve this hardening document?
by Nick Mathewson 07 Feb '15

07 Feb '15

Hi, all! There's a project going on to try to add instructions for hardening a Tor relay for security: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/13703 The idea is that Tor could ship with some basic recommendations, and links to places to find more advice? Recently, "mmcc" has uploaded a new draft. Do we think this is better than nothing and worth shipping with Tor, or does it need big changes? If possible, please write comments on the trac ticket above: it will help keep all the discussion in one place. best wishes, -- Nick

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Changes in network traffic pattern
by Hu Man 06 Feb '15

06 Feb '15

Hi All I have been running a tor relay for about a year and according to my munin graph It normally receives, on average, just under 2,000 incoming tcp connections on port 443 every 5 minutes. In the last few days that figure has increased to about 10,000 and spiked to about 19,000 incoming requests every 5 minutes. First thought was DDOS but traffic is not high enough to cause any problems. I did some digging and in a 5 minute period received the following requests to the port tor is listening on (number of requests and source ip address) 2722 SRC=107.167.22.79 1355 SRC=107.167.22.90 1334 SRC=104.37.244.131 1237 SRC=213.251.185.14 604 SRC=188.247.130.32 13 DST=178.200.216.58 7 SRC=92.63.110.232 6 SRC=5.196.8.208 6 SRC=200.76.82.231 6 DST=93.158.248.243 This is only the top 10 source ip addresses. I had a look and none of the top few seem to be tor relays. Just wondering if others are seeing a large number of requests from the above ip addresses or if it's just me. If it is just me then I can easily just block these ip addresses.

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Avoiding using my own Exit
by Chris Tilt 06 Feb '15

06 Feb '15

Hello, When running a relay that is configured as an Exit, do you run the risk of your own TOR browsing sessions (initiated from the same private network) using the relay and effectively short-circuiting the location randomization? Note that I don't have a relay up yet, so my question may be lacking clarity. Cheers, Chris

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TOR: Inbound, Outbound, Exit connections
by Ralph Bolliger 05 Feb '15

05 Feb '15

*Good evening ladies and gentleman* I'm running a TOR Exit for a few days now ( https://globe.torproject.org/#/relay/06BA80D9E1143CFAD835442142A3FA5A1E4FD9…) I'm also using TOR ARM in order to monitor TOR's performance, log messages and connections. When I have a look at the connections page on TOR ARM I read about «Inbound», «Outbound» or «Exit» connections. I searched the web already. But I wasn't able to find a site that explains in simple words what's the difference between «Inbound», «Outbound» or «Exit» connections. Is there anybody who is able to tell me what «Inbound», «Outbound» or «Exit» connections are? Greetings from Switzerland Information Architect

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Making your relay submit hidden service statistics
by George Kadianakis 04 Feb '15

04 Feb '15

Hello people, some days ago we sent a mail [1] asking for feedback on our patch that collects hidden service statistics from Tor relays. Specifically, we are trying to answer the questions: "Approximately how many hidden services are there?" and "Approximately how much traffic of the Tor network is going to hidden services?". For more information see my previous email and the relevant proposals. Our code [2] got merged in upstream Tor some days ago and now we are looking for more volunteers to enable it on their relays. We will collect these statistics during the next [days] weeks, and in a month we plan to publish a short report with our findings. To help us you will need to use the very latest version of Tor and also slightly edit your torrc. Here are some instructions for Debian/Ubuntu [3]: ----- Let's start by slightly editing your regular Tor torrc to enable hidden service statistics. Please append the folowing to your regular torrc (not including quotes): """ HiddenServiceStatistics 1 """ Now, we need to install a bleeding edge version of Tor that can do hidden service statistics. You can either use the git master [3], or use Tor's APT repositories. The following instructions help you with the latter approach. Please start by following "Option two" of https://www.torproject.org/docs/debian so that you add the proper APT repositories and install tor and the deb.torproject.org-keyring package. Next, add the following line to your sources.lst: deb http://deb.torproject.org/torproject.org tor-nightly-master-wheezy main (you might need to replace 'wheezy' with your distribution, like you did in the previous step) Now, do # apt-get update # apt-get install tor which should upgrade your Tor to the latest nightly version., Your system Tor should now be up-to-date and able to collect hidden service statistics! Just start Tor as you normally do, using the torrc we modified above. For example you could simply do: # tor -f torrc but feel free to use your init script if you prefer that. Now just leave your relay do its thing, and keep an eye to this mailing list around mid-January 2015 for the results of our research. --- FWIW, if you are not using Debian, you can use the master branch of the official git repository: https://git.torproject.org/tor.git You will also need to edit your torrc in the same manner as the Debian instructions. Feel free to reply with any questions you have! Thanks! George Kadianakis Karsten Loesing Aaron Johnson David Goulet [1]: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2014-December/007968.html [2]: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/13192 [3]: for example see http://tor.stackexchange.com/questions/75/how-can-i-install-tor-from-the-so…

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Long running relay keeping low bandwidth utilization
by mail＠dotjhw.pw 03 Feb '15

03 Feb '15

Dear list, I am wondering, wether it is still within what is considered a normal lifecycle, if the relay I am running is utilizing significantly less than the available bandwidth? Some background info: I set the relay up a few months ago and experienced higher utilization after a few days. around the end of 2014, I experienced hardware failure with the relay's machine and it went offline on December 21. I just managed to bring it back online on January 13. Since then, even with an available bandwidth in the range of 5-10Mbit/s, the actually used bandwidth is averaging at 8-9kbit/s, with no increase in sight. As far the bandwidths and weights graphs are concerned, it seems like the relay is not weighted as high anymore (last known consensus weight before the crash: 2.22e-5. After the crash and rebuild: 2.01e-6). Is there anything I can do to improve the relay? Best regards, .jhw

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Re: [tor-relays] Hibernating / Traffic limit and consequrnces for the network.
by Sebastian Urbach 03 Feb '15

03 Feb '15

On February 1, 2015 10:48:25 PM Markus Hitter <mah(a)jump-ing.de> wrote: > Am 01.02.2015 um 20:02 schrieb Sebastian Urbach: > > I would like to provide a good service for everyone, even at the end > > of the month. That's getting harder the more systems are not present > > at the end of the month. > > I could understand the discussion if it were about providing 500 kBit > continuously vs. 1 Mbit for 2 of 4 >weeks. But the particular case was > about providing no >less than 6 Mbit continuously, which is easily >enough > to comfortably browse the web, for doing large >downloads and probably > exhausts most internet >connections in unfree countries. Accordingly it's > >unlikely a single connection is hobbled by such a >bandwidth limitation. Ah, thats a misunderstanding. This is not part 2 of the discussion from a few days ago. I brought it up because i see this for quite a while right now and observed it again within the last days. I thought it was time for a broader discussion. -- Sincerely yours / Sincères salutations / M.f.G. Sebastian Urbach ----------------------------------------- Religion is fundamentally opposed to everything I hold in veneration - courage, clear thinking, honesty, fairness, and, above all, love of the truth. ----------------------------------------- Henry Louis Mencken (1880 - 1956), American journalist, essayist, magazine editor, satirist and critic.

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Stats [was: freenode]
by grarpamp 03 Feb '15

03 Feb '15

On Sat, Jan 24, 2015 at 3:16 PM, cacahuatl <cacahuatl(a)autistici.org> wrote: > Most of the network is under-utilised guards and middle nodes, hidden > services don't stress exits, which are the limited resource. Exits can and do serve in all the other node roles too. I don't think there has yet been a study to determine the actual unused capacity of the relays as grouped by flag permutations. Nor has compass been enhanced to support that selection matrix. > Triples? A HS doubles vs exit.

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two questions about bridge
by jchase 02 Feb '15

02 Feb '15

Hello, I have a bridge up and running for about 6 months. I have two questions. According to arm my fingerprint is 72DB4EE86C65856E3131A32D8E30EC8A2B72A73D . But if I look up rasptorholland in globe.torproject.org I find that my fingerprint is 1BCD3EBEFE17EEB86EEDE21D5E2DB8468E2864CF . And again according to globe.torproject.org my pool assignment is blank (the empty set). Are these related to each other and is something wrong? Thanks, J Chase

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Hibernating / Traffic limit and consequrnces for the network.
by Sebastian Urbach 02 Feb '15

02 Feb '15

Dear list, I would like to discuss hibernating and the consequences for the network. As someone running unmetered GBit systems i like to point out that there is a downside for the network when it comes to hibernating. Usually a few days before the end of every month my systems are getting slammed with traffic / directory requests. I thought about that and came up with the theory that a lot of systems with traffic limitations are dropping out a few days before the end of the month. This means more pressure on the remaining systems in the network. If the trend that more systems with limitations are participating increases we are going to see a serious imbalance in the network at some point. I know, poor unmetered systems ;-) I would like everybody to bear this in mind when it comes to the decision "Adjust the Rate or just open the gates and burn it as fast as possible". I'm in the fortunate position to be able to tribute a nice amount of money / traffic, but even systems with unmetered traffic can just help until the bandwidth / hardware limits are reached. It would be awesome if i could conbince some of you to take a step back and take a moment to look at the bigger picture. I would like to provide a good service for everyone, even at the end of the month. That's getting harder the more systems are not present at the end of the month. At this point i like to quote G. K. Chesterton: “We are all in the same boat in a stormy sea, and we owe each other a terrible loyalty.” Thank you for reading this and my best wishes for all of you. -- Sincerely yours / Sincères salutations / M.f.G. Sebastian Urbach ----------------------------------------- Religion is fundamentally opposed to everything I hold in veneration - courage, clear thinking, honesty, fairness, and, above all, love of the truth. ----------------------------------------- Henry Louis Mencken (1880 - 1956), American journalist, essayist, magazine editor, satirist and critic.

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