- tor-relays - lists.torproject.org

Circuit creation "storms" overwhelming > Raspberry Pi?
by temp5＠tormail.org 09 Jul '13

09 Jul '13

FWIW, I did some tuning on mine (not a pi, but had similar issues) and it seems more stable now too. I added the following to my torrc (where X and Y are your rates/units): MaxOnionsPending 250 BandwidthRate X BandwidthBurst Y RelayBandwidthRate X RelayBandwidthBurst Y I had the RelayBandwidth options already in it, but I read somewhere the added Bandwidth options above should limit directory port traffic bursts. And MaxOnionsPending allows more to queue up before creating errors. It sounds like the next major version of Tor (in release candidate stage right now) has several performance improvements, so you might just want to wait for that to release and see if the problems disappear on their own thanks to the hard work of the developers! > From: Gordon Morehouse <gordon(a)morehouse.me> > > Hi, Yes. This is absolutely on my to-do list. I've had a family > medical emergency and about 2 or 3 other things recently about that > level of stress, but BELIEVE me, a strategy for getting a Raspberry Pi > to be a rock solid relay is of paramount importance to me. > > I'm hoping to figure out all the tweaks I did, and then make an alpha > version of some iptables rules to defend against the "storms," within > the next couple of weeks. > > Please don't hesitate to bug me about this at my direct email. (The old > one is no longer valid, I've dropped pseudonyms on the tor lists.) > > Thanks much, > -Gordon M. > > > Thomas Hand: >> Hi torsion, >> >> I'm also running a tor relay on a raspberry pi and keep getting these >> storm >> creation events which crash the box. You said you made some adjustments >> to >> the configs to get a more stable system? Can you please email me copies >> of >> the configs or maybe list the changes you made? >> I'm trying to get my pi stable and then perhaps role out a few more >> relay >> nodes to friends and colleagues. >> Thanks, >> >> T >> >> >> On 4 May 2013 22:07, <torsion(a)ftml.net> wrote: >> >>> I did a lot of tuning on the Raspberry Pi and it's now much, much more >>> stable as a Tor relay, but just now I had another "circuit creation >>> storm." Interestingly, the Pi remained up, and my *router* crashed. >>> I've also seen huge bursts of circuit creation on a relay I run on a >>> VPS, but as it's a much more powerful box it rarely complains (and thus >>> I rarely notice). >>> >>> This many circuits and outbound connections is highly unusual for the >>> small relay I'm running on the Pi. And this behavior definitely occurs >>> in bursts. Is this an outbound DDOS or an attack on Tor itself? If >>> the >>> former (or maybe the latter), is there some way I could perhaps use >>> iptables to temporarily "clamp" the ability to open TCP connections >>> when >>> Tor (or anything on the Pi) opens a number over some threshold in some >>> short period of time? >>> >>> Here's log output (via 'arm') from the relay after my router crashed >>> twice, I went to the admin panel and noted hundreds of outbound >>> connections from my Tor box. Time is America/Los_Angeles. >>> >>> ? 13:55:00 [ARM_NOTICE] Relay unresponsive (last heartbeat: Sat May 4 >>> 13:54:14 2013) >>> ? 13:52:25 [WARN] Your computer is too slow to handle this many >>> circuit >>> creation >>> ? requests! Please consider using the MaxAdvertisedBandwidth config >>> option or choosing >>> ? a more restricted exit policy. [404 similar message(s) suppressed >>> in last 60 seconds] >>> ? 13:51:07 [WARN] Your computer is too slow to handle this many >>> circuit >>> creation >>> ? requests! Please consider using the MaxAdvertisedBandwidth config >>> option or choosing >>> ? a more restricted exit policy. [75 similar message(s) suppressed >>> in >>> last 60 seconds] >>> ? 13:50:52 [WARN] Your computer is too slow to handle this many >>> circuit >>> creation >>> ? requests! Please consider using the MaxAdvertisedBandwidth config >>> option or choosing >>> ? a more restricted exit policy. [601 similar message(s) suppressed >>> in last 60 seconds] >>> ? 13:48:39 [WARN] Your computer is too slow to handle this many >>> circuit >>> creation >>> ? requests! Please consider using the MaxAdvertisedBandwidth config >>> option or choosing >>> ? a more restricted exit policy. [99 similar message(s) suppressed >>> in >>> last 60 seconds] >>> ? 13:47:34 [WARN] Your computer is too slow to handle this many >>> circuit >>> creation >>> ? requests! Please consider using the MaxAdvertisedBandwidth config >>> option or choosing >>> ? a more restricted exit policy. [22 similar message(s) suppressed >>> in >>> last 60 seconds] >>> ? 13:46:17 [WARN] Your computer is too slow to handle this many >>> circuit >>> creation >>> ? requests! Please consider using the MaxAdvertisedBandwidth config >>> option or choosing >>> ? a more restricted exit policy. [253 similar message(s) suppressed >>> in last 60 seconds] >>> ? 13:43:47 [WARN] Your computer is too slow to handle this many >>> circuit >>> creation >>> ? requests! Please consider using the MaxAdvertisedBandwidth config >>> option or choosing >>> ? a more restricted exit policy. [1396 similar message(s) suppressed >>> in last 60 >>> ? seconds] >>> ? 13:42:48 [WARN] Your computer is too slow to handle this many >>> circuit >>> creation >>> ? requests! Please consider using the MaxAdvertisedBandwidth config >>> option or choosing >>> ? a more restricted exit policy. [16 similar message(s) suppressed >>> in >>> last 60 seconds] >>> >>> Here's how it crashed my router (blowing ip_conntrack limits is >>> sufficient only to mess up many of my TCP connections, but eventually >>> the router runs out of memory and starts killing processes): >>> >>> May 4 13:51:24 dedmaus user.warn kernel: ip_conntrack: table full, >>> dropping packet. >>> May 4 13:51:24 dedmaus user.warn kernel: ip_conntrack: table full, >>> dropping packet. >>> May 4 13:51:24 dedmaus user.warn kernel: ip_conntrack: table full, >>> dropping packet. >>> May 4 13:51:25 dedmaus user.warn kernel: ip_conntrack: table full, >>> dropping packet. >>> May 4 13:51:29 dedmaus user.warn kernel: NET: 152 messages suppressed. >>> May 4 13:51:29 dedmaus user.warn kernel: ip_conntrack: table full, >>> dropping packet. >>> May 4 13:51:34 dedmaus user.warn kernel: NET: 193 messages suppressed. >>> May 4 13:51:34 dedmaus user.warn kernel: ip_conntrack: table full, >>> dropping packet. >>> May 4 13:51:39 dedmaus user.warn kernel: NET: 227 messages suppressed. >>> >>> ...ad infinitum with the number of messages suppressed per 5 sec >>> increasing until the router crashes. >>> >>> >>> >>> On Mon, Mar 18, 2013, at 06:18 PM, torsion(a)ftml.net wrote: >>>> I'm also seeing occasional messages like this on the Pi (it never >>>> lasts >>>> long): >>>> >>>> 18:13:24 [ARM_NOTICE] Relay resumed >>>> 18:13:18 [ARM_NOTICE] Relay unresponsive (last heartbeat: Mon Mar 18 >>>> 18:13:04 2013) >>>> 17:28:43 [ARM_NOTICE] Relay resumed >>>> 17:28:38 [ARM_NOTICE] Relay unresponsive (last heartbeat: Mon Mar 18 >>>> 17:28:25 2013) >>>> 14:12:26 [ARM_NOTICE] Relay resumed >>>> 14:12:20 [ARM_WARN] Deduplication took too long. Its current >>>> implementation has difficulty handling large logs so disabling it to >>>> keep the interface responsive. >>>> 14:12:20 [ARM_NOTICE] Relay unresponsive (last heartbeat: Mon Mar 18 >>>> 14:12:06 20 >>>> >>>> On Mon, Mar 18, 2013, at 01:00 PM, torsion(a)ftml.net wrote: >>>>> Hi there, I just joined the mailing list and apologized if this has >>> been >>>>> discussed before. I did find discussion of a similar issue in >>>>> January >>>>> 2013's archive: >>>>> >>>>> >>> https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-relays/2013-January/001809.html >>>>> >>>>> It's important to note that I believe I've seen (but didn't save >>>>> logs) >>> a >>>>> couple "circuit creation burst" events on my established relay (about >>>>> 5Mbps, stable, guard, non-exit) which was mostly able to handle it >>>>> without crashing as it has plenty of RAM and the above-mentioned >>>>> messages - "Your computer is too slow to handle this many circuit >>>>> creation requests! Please consider using the MaxAdvertisedBandwidth >>>>> config option or choosing a m ore restricted exit policy." - appear >>> only >>>>> with the relay is under load for other reasons AND a large number of >>>>> circuits are being suddenly created. >>>>> >>>>> I wondered if this was some kind of DOS attempt but didn't think much >>> of >>>>> it because my fast relay continued working fine. >>>>> >>>>> However, I've just set up a Raspberry Pi, the 512MB model, as a relay >>> on >>>>> a slower connection. Here are the relevant settings on this relay: >>>>> >>>>> RelayBandwidthRate 130 KB >>>>> RelayBandwidthBurst 340 KB >>>>> >>>>> The Pi has a fairly slow CPU, so I'd occasionally get messages about >>> log >>>>> deduplication being too slow or something, but didn't think much of >>>>> it. >>>>> I finally got the relay up and left it up for over 24 hours. When I >>>>> woke up this morning it had crashed. Here are the relevant log >>> messages >>>>> - note the huge jump in number of circuits between 22:35 and 04:35 >>>>> (maybe I got the Stable flag), then the storm of circuit open >>>>> requests >>>>> starting at 05:49. Eventually I believe the Pi ran out of memory and >>>>> killed the tor process. >>>>> >>>>> What's very interesting here is that my fast VPS relay with a >>>>> RelayBandwidthRate over 5x faster is almost never handling much more >>>>> than 1000 circuits, so why all of a sudden the demand on the Pi >>>>> that's >>>>> advertising a lower bandwidth rate? >>>>> >>>>> Mar 17 22:35:00.000 [notice] Heartbeat: Tor's uptime is 1 day 0:00 >>>>> hours, with 26 circuits open. I've sent 974.13 MB and received 969.92 >>>>> MB. >>>>> Mar 18 04:35:00.000 [notice] Heartbeat: Tor's uptime is 1 day 6:00 >>>>> hours, with 972 circuits open. I've sent 1.61 GB and received 1.59 >>>>> GB. >>>>> Mar 18 05:49:44.000 [warn] Your computer is too slow to handle this >>> many >>>>> circuit creation requests! Please consider using the >>>>> MaxAdvertisedBandwidth config option or choosing a more restricted >>>>> exit >>>>> policy. >>>>> Mar 18 05:49:44.000 [warn] Failed to hand off onionskin. Closing. >>>>> Mar 18 05:50:44.000 [warn] Your computer is too slow to handle this >>> many >>>>> circuit creation requests! Please consider using the >>>>> MaxAdvertisedBandwidth config option or choosing a more restricted >>>>> exit >>>>> policy. [5817 similar message(s) suppressed in last 60 seconds] >>>>> Mar 18 05:52:30.000 [warn] Your system clock just jumped 101 seconds >>>>> forward; assuming established circuits no longer work. >>>>> Mar 18 05:53:51.000 [warn] Your computer is too slow to handle this >>> many >>>>> circuit creation requests! Please consider using the >>>>> MaxAdvertisedBandwidth config option or choosing a more restricted >>>>> exit >>>>> policy. [1055 similar message(s) suppressed in last 60 seconds] >>>>> Mar 18 05:55:14.000 [warn] Your computer is too slow to handle this >>> many >>>>> circuit creation requests! Please consider using the >>>>> MaxAdvertisedBandwidth config option or choosing a more restricted >>>>> exit >>>>> policy. [329 similar message(s) suppressed in last 60 seconds] >>>>> >>>>> I'd like to figure out just how much the Raspberry Pi is capable of, >>>>> because it could be a cheap way to build out the relay network by >>> people >>>>> who want to donate bandwidth - but of course it needs to be stable, >>>>> and >>>>> something about my setup is not. >>>>> >>>>> Also: >>>>> >>>>> Mar 16 20:55:33.000 [notice] No AES engine found; using AES_* >>> functions. >>>>> >>>>> I have no idea if the Broadcom BCM2835 SoC (ARM1176JZF-S CPU) in the >>>>> Pi >>>>> has any AES capability, but it'd be great to find out. >>>>> >>>>> _______________________________________________ >>>>> tor-relays mailing list >>>>> tor-relays(a)lists.torproject.org >>>>> https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-relays >>> _______________________________________________ >>> tor-relays mailing list >>> tor-relays(a)lists.torproject.org >>> https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-relays >>> >> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> tor-relays mailing list >> tor-relays(a)lists.torproject.org >> https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-relays >> > >

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Relay identity
by Jochen 08 Jul '13

08 Jul '13

Hello, I want to create a Raspberry PI image with preinstalled TOR relay for some friends. I will also include a config script to customize torrc (Nickname etc.). I also need to generate a new identity key in this script, so that every node is unique. But I don't know how to generate a new identity. Is there a command to do that, or must I remove /var/lib/*tor*/keys/?

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Circuit creation "storms" overwhelming Raspberry Pi?
by torsion＠ftml.net 08 Jul '13

08 Jul '13

Hi there, I just joined the mailing list and apologized if this has been discussed before. I did find discussion of a similar issue in January 2013's archive: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-relays/2013-January/001809.html It's important to note that I believe I've seen (but didn't save logs) a couple "circuit creation burst" events on my established relay (about 5Mbps, stable, guard, non-exit) which was mostly able to handle it without crashing as it has plenty of RAM and the above-mentioned messages - "Your computer is too slow to handle this many circuit creation requests! Please consider using the MaxAdvertisedBandwidth config option or choosing a m ore restricted exit policy." - appear only with the relay is under load for other reasons AND a large number of circuits are being suddenly created. I wondered if this was some kind of DOS attempt but didn't think much of it because my fast relay continued working fine. However, I've just set up a Raspberry Pi, the 512MB model, as a relay on a slower connection. Here are the relevant settings on this relay: RelayBandwidthRate 130 KB RelayBandwidthBurst 340 KB The Pi has a fairly slow CPU, so I'd occasionally get messages about log deduplication being too slow or something, but didn't think much of it. I finally got the relay up and left it up for over 24 hours. When I woke up this morning it had crashed. Here are the relevant log messages - note the huge jump in number of circuits between 22:35 and 04:35 (maybe I got the Stable flag), then the storm of circuit open requests starting at 05:49. Eventually I believe the Pi ran out of memory and killed the tor process. What's very interesting here is that my fast VPS relay with a RelayBandwidthRate over 5x faster is almost never handling much more than 1000 circuits, so why all of a sudden the demand on the Pi that's advertising a lower bandwidth rate? Mar 17 22:35:00.000 [notice] Heartbeat: Tor's uptime is 1 day 0:00 hours, with 26 circuits open. I've sent 974.13 MB and received 969.92 MB. Mar 18 04:35:00.000 [notice] Heartbeat: Tor's uptime is 1 day 6:00 hours, with 972 circuits open. I've sent 1.61 GB and received 1.59 GB. Mar 18 05:49:44.000 [warn] Your computer is too slow to handle this many circuit creation requests! Please consider using the MaxAdvertisedBandwidth config option or choosing a more restricted exit policy. Mar 18 05:49:44.000 [warn] Failed to hand off onionskin. Closing. Mar 18 05:50:44.000 [warn] Your computer is too slow to handle this many circuit creation requests! Please consider using the MaxAdvertisedBandwidth config option or choosing a more restricted exit policy. [5817 similar message(s) suppressed in last 60 seconds] Mar 18 05:52:30.000 [warn] Your system clock just jumped 101 seconds forward; assuming established circuits no longer work. Mar 18 05:53:51.000 [warn] Your computer is too slow to handle this many circuit creation requests! Please consider using the MaxAdvertisedBandwidth config option or choosing a more restricted exit policy. [1055 similar message(s) suppressed in last 60 seconds] Mar 18 05:55:14.000 [warn] Your computer is too slow to handle this many circuit creation requests! Please consider using the MaxAdvertisedBandwidth config option or choosing a more restricted exit policy. [329 similar message(s) suppressed in last 60 seconds] I'd like to figure out just how much the Raspberry Pi is capable of, because it could be a cheap way to build out the relay network by people who want to donate bandwidth - but of course it needs to be stable, and something about my setup is not. Also: Mar 16 20:55:33.000 [notice] No AES engine found; using AES_* functions. I have no idea if the Broadcom BCM2835 SoC (ARM1176JZF-S CPU) in the Pi has any AES capability, but it'd be great to find out.

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Re: [tor-relays] stats
by Armand 07 Jul '13

07 Jul '13

Sent from my Cricket smart phone ma455(a)mykolab.com wrote: >hello, >i'm running an exit node from 2 or 3 month, in UA, on a vps, xeon 2650 >2Ghz, 128mb RAM, debian 6 >tor v0.2.3.25-1 > > >on atlas there is some stat on those days it's seem to be at max 100Kb/s > > > > > > > >//atlas.torproject.org/#details/62C3FB37C44555E55A62BBD7CDDD97FE4894F317 > >but on arm or with iftop i'm beetween 300 and 900Kb/s download and the >same in upload > >my load average is 4.74, 2.97, 2.98 >there is just tor on this server > >this append form the beguining, > >there is a problem? who is right? can you help me to verify if my node >is fine configured? > > >thanks > >PS: sorry for my english is not my first language >_______________________________________________ >tor-relays mailing list >tor-relays(a)lists.torproject.org >https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-relays

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stats
by ma455＠mykolab.com 07 Jul '13

07 Jul '13

hello, i'm running an exit node from 2 or 3 month, in UA, on a vps, xeon 2650 2Ghz, 128mb RAM, debian 6 tor v0.2.3.25-1 on atlas there is some stat on those days it's seem to be at max 100Kb/s //atlas.torproject.org/#details/62C3FB37C44555E55A62BBD7CDDD97FE4894F317 but on arm or with iftop i'm beetween 300 and 900Kb/s download and the same in upload my load average is 4.74, 2.97, 2.98 there is just tor on this server this append form the beguining, there is a problem? who is right? can you help me to verify if my node is fine configured? thanks PS: sorry for my english is not my first language

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Re: [tor-relays] stats
by Armand 07 Jul '13

07 Jul '13

Sent from my Cricket smart phone ma455(a)mykolab.com wrote: >hello, >i'm running an exit node from 2 or 3 month, in UA, on a vps, xeon 2650 >2Ghz, 128mb RAM, debian 6 >tor v0.2.3.25-1 > > >on atlas there is some stat on those days it's seem to be at max 100Kb/s > > > > > > > >//atlas.torproject.org/#details/62C3FB37C44555E55A62BBD7CDDD97FE4894F317 > >but on arm or with iftop i'm beetween 300 and 900Kb/s download and the >same in upload > >my load average is 4.74, 2.97, 2.98 >there is just tor on this server > >this append form the beguining, > >there is a problem? who is right? can you help me to verify if my node >is fine configured? > > >thanks > >PS: sorry for my english is not my first language >_______________________________________________ >tor-relays mailing list >tor-relays(a)lists.torproject.org >https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-relays

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Address mismatch on received DNS packet
by TonyXue 05 Jul '13

05 Jul '13

Hi Everyone, I've just started to run a tor relay these days. But there are many warnings like this in my log file. Jul 05 11:25:19.000 [warn] eventdns: Address mismatch on received DNS packet. Apparent source was 66.80.130.234:53Jul 05 11:25:38.000 [warn] eventdns: Address mismatch on received DNS packet. Apparent source was 66.80.130.235:53Jul 05 11:25:42.000 [warn] eventdns: Address mismatch on received DNS packet. Apparent source was 66.80.130.235:53Jul 05 11:32:18.000 [warn] eventdns: Address mismatch on received DNS packet. Apparent source was 66.80.130.235:53Jul 05 11:32:18.000 [warn] eventdns: Address mismatch on received DNS packet. Apparent source was 66.80.130.235:53Jul 05 11:32:18.000 [warn] eventdns: Address mismatch on received DNS packet. Apparent source was 66.80.130.234:53Jul 05 11:32:18.000 [warn] eventdns: Address mismatch on received DNS packet. Apparent source was 66.80.130.234:53Jul 05 11:32:23.000 [warn] eventdns: Address mismatch on received DNS packet. Apparent source was 66.80.130.236:53Jul 05 11:39:14.000 [warn] eventdns: Address mismatch on received DNS packet. Apparent source was 66.80.130.235:53Jul 05 11:39:48.000 [warn] eventdns: Address mismatch on received DNS packet. Apparent source was 66.80.130.235:53Jul 05 11:39:48.000 [warn] eventdns: Address mismatch on received DNS packet. Apparent source was 66.80.130.235:53Jul 05 11:39:48.000 [warn] eventdns: Address mismatch on received DNS packet. Apparent source was 66.80.130.235:53Jul 05 11:39:48.000 [warn] eventdns: Address mismatch on received DNS packet. Apparent source was 66.80.130.234:53Jul 05 11:39:48.000 [warn] eventdns: Address mismatch on received DNS packet. Apparent source was 66.80.130.236:53Jul 05 11:39:53.000 [warn] eventdns: Address mismatch on received DNS packet. Apparent source was 66.80.130.234:53Jul 05 11:39:53.000 [warn] eventdns: Address mismatch on received DNS packet. Apparent source was 66.80.130.234:53Jul 05 11:39:58.000 [warn] eventdns: Address mismatch on received DNS packet. Apparent source was 66.80.130.235:53 Also with some warnings: Jul 05 12:36:58.000 [warn] eventdns: All nameservers have failedJul 05 12:36:58.000 [notice] eventdns: Nameserver 64.81.45.2:53 is back up Is the nameservers mentioned above are set to be Tor's resolvers? If they are, where can I change the settings of DNS servers? Hope someone can help me with this... Thanks a lot.

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Vidalia can't open Tor after machine restart
by Shane Nagle 04 Jul '13

04 Jul '13

Hello Tor team! And thanks so much for doing what you do. I have a novice/newbie question. Perhaps you could point me to the best source of problem solving data/info you have regarding it. My problem is: after successfully downloading TBB 64bit, and having the browser work very well all day, I shut down my machine at night, then restart the next day only to find that Vidalia cannot open Tor. I've done this four times now. The 'temporary solution' each time was to uninstall, re-download and install TBB again. However the same errors would occur the following morning. I see this: in the fIrefox interface - Firefox is configured to use a proxy server that is refusing connections. And in the Vidalia pane: Vidalia was unable to connect to Tor. (Connection refused by peer.) I have sent several emails to the Tor mailing lists but so far have heard no reply or seen any posting of my inquiry. Any support would be appreciated. S

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Summary of v0.2.3.x --> v0.2.4.x changes?
by Steve Snyder 04 Jul '13

04 Jul '13

Now that Tor v0.2.4.x has reached Release Candidate status, could someone please inform those who haven't been following the development process what is new? I just mean the broad strokes. Like: What changes to a working relay are required or recommended when moving to v0.2.4.x? What are the major new features of this release? (Any benefit now to using more than 2 CPU cores? IPv6 support for non-bridge relays? That sort of thing.) Thanks.

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Re: [tor-relays] [tor-talk] Theft of Tor relay private keys?
by Mike Perry 03 Jul '13

03 Jul '13

thomas.hluchnik(a)netcologne.de: > Hello all, please help me understanding this: > > supposed, the NSA were able to break into a large scale of tor nodes, > stealing the tor private server key. At the same time they were able > to gather all traffic they can get. Wouldnt this increase the > likelihood that data from complete circuits can be decrypted and > traced back to the original sender? If their intercepts are passive, merely stealing relays' private identity key won't accomplish much because Tor uses Forward Secrecy for both the relay TLS links and for circuit setup. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_forward_secrecy However, if their intercepts are active (as in they can arbitrarily manipulate traffic in-flight), then stealing either Guard node keys or directory authority keys allows complete route capture and traffic discovery of targeted clients. So you are right to worry about this, in my opinion. I am also very concerned. I want to make some changes to Tor to make such key theft easier to detect, less damaging, and harder to make use of: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/7126 https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/5968 However, I want to do a lot of other things in 0.2.5.x though too, and there's this whole browser thing that I'm technically supposed to be paying attention to too, so I might not get to those. :/ That first one (#7126) is probably a good volunteer/student project for someone who likes Python, though. It would be easy to make a prototype with Stem, txtorcon, or even TorCtl. > Maybe this is paranoid, but this arises the question for me: what > would happen when I stop my tor node once a week, throw away my keys > and restart tor so that new server keys were generated. So NSA would > have to break into my system again, but this would make it harder for > NSA agency to decrypt circuits where my host is involved. I am in favor of regular identity key rotation for relays, and I want to work towards supporting that better by default: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/5563 I think keeping your keys on a ramdisk or encrypted filesystem with a memory-only random key (so if you experience unexplained reboots, etc they go away) is a good idea. Also, since Tor reads/creates its identity key at startup and doesn't need the file afterwords, you can even 'shred'/'wipe' it after that, so the adversary can't easily pull them off the FS while the system is running. Better still, you can load a Kernel module to disable gdb debugger support so the adversary has to actually dig through/manipulate raw memory to get the key (which will be error prone and is more likely to lead to crashes/panics/reboots): https://gist.github.com/1216637 I started describing these and related ideas here: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/doc/TorRelaySecurity But I got distracted by more pressing issues before I could finish the scripts.. Also, many of those encrypted+authenticated Tor container things probably don't make much sense without Secure Boot to authenticate the boot process up until you can start up Tor. :/ > What were the disadvantages for the tor network? Would this confuse > the tor director in any way? Sort of. Weekly identity key rotation is too frequent to recommend for people to do for a few reasons. First, it takes the bandwidth measurement servers a couple days to ramp up your capacity of your new identity key, so you will spend a lot of time below your max throughput. Second, you would also likely never get the Guard flag. Third, there are also load balancing issues with Guard nodes where as soon as you get the Guard flag, it will take 1-2 months before clients switch to your new Guard, so you will also likely spend that time at less than your full capacity. > Would it be able to keep the nickname or would it have to change also? > Would this have effect on the onion address if I had a hidden server? No and no, but your hidden server might have brief downtimes/descriptor publish times that correlate with your key rotation. Not sure how severe that is in practice. -- Mike Perry

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