- tor-relays - lists.torproject.org

How do I set up a conjure Bridge?
by Poojith Bestha 01 Aug '23

01 Aug '23

I have a question. How do I set up a conjure bridge? Is the process hard? What hardware do I need to use? Regards, Poojith

2 1

Receiving abuse reports for Non-Exit Relay
by admin＠prsv.ch 01 Aug '23

01 Aug '23

Hello all, In the past 24 hrs, I have been receiving complaints from my hosting provider that they're receiving hundreds of abuse reports related to port scanning. I have no clue why I'm all of the sudden receiving abuse reports when this non-exit relay has been online for months without issues. In addition, I have other non-exit relays hosted by the same provider with no issues and more across other providers. I proceeded to reinstall the OS and reconfigure Tor. I was then quickly notified by my hosting provider again of more abuse reports all showing port 22 as target port. I have not changed my torrc at all and it's still setup as a non-exit relay. No other applications/services were installed alongside Tor. Tor Metrics does not show the relay as Exit either. It feels like Tor Exit Traffic is leaking through my non-exit relay? Has anyone else experienced any behavior similar to this? Any ideas on how to fix or prevent this? prsv admin

7 7

Re: [tor-relays] tor-relays Digest, Vol 150, Issue 13
by amanyaz Amangeldiyew 01 Aug '23

01 Aug '23

Hi. Everybody. In Turkmenistan these IPs are open: 96.233.128.72 167.62.193.195 108.50.165.220 71.33.251.73 99.232.152.8 108.184.202.115 108.34.184.5 99.230.178.2 108.184.201.30 71.212.129.108 88.22.43.218 67.6.147.5 79.16.171.221 79.113.212.117 88.91.78.20 172.88.64.65 67.251.118.15 41.109.196.229 96.237.186.35 95.31.20.151 71.113.184.94 151.225.43.243 141.255.66.158 88.19.75.220 67.11.187.237 67.6.182.48 95.252.250.216 67.6.161.111 95.236.84.157 143.107.229.252 92.194.57.57 I think for now port 8080 is open too. Can anybody make obfs4 server with these ips and port 8080? On Mon, Jul 31, 2023 at 5:01 PM <tor-relays-request(a)lists.torproject.org> wrote: > Send tor-relays mailing list submissions to > tor-relays(a)lists.torproject.org > > To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit > https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-relays > or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to > tor-relays-request(a)lists.torproject.org > > You can reach the person managing the list at > tor-relays-owner(a)lists.torproject.org > > When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific > than "Re: Contents of tor-relays digest..." > > > Today's Topics: > > 1. Re: Help Turkmens to bypass Internet censorship: run an obfs4 > bridge! (lists(a)for-privacy.net) > 2. Re: Help Turkmens to bypass Internet censorship: run an obfs4 > bridge! (Gary C. New) > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Message: 1 > Date: Sun, 30 Jul 2023 23:30:26 +0200 > From: lists(a)for-privacy.net > To: tor-relays(a)lists.torproject.org > Subject: Re: [tor-relays] Help Turkmens to bypass Internet censorship: > run an obfs4 bridge! > Message-ID: <2156503.WeTp2EQoyn@t520> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" > > On Freitag, 21. Juli 2023 18:07:35 CEST gus wrote: > > > New update: In the last few weeks, internal political conflicts and > > other events[1] in Turkmenistan have led to another wave of censorship > > on Tor and anti-censorship tools. Tor bridges have been one of the few > > free alternatives for people in Turkmenistan to connect with the world > > and access the open Internet. > > > > I stopped snowflake and now a bridge is running on my dynIP. > > > > > ## torrc example > > > > BridgeRelay 1 > > ORPort 127.0.0.1:auto > > AssumeReachable 1 > > ServerTransportPlugin obfs4 exec /usr/bin/obfs4proxy > > ServerTransportListenAddr obfs4 0.0.0.0:8080 > > ExtORPort auto > > Nickname helptm > > ContactInfo <please-add-your-email-here> > > Log notice file /var/log/tor/notices.log > > # If you set BridgeDistribution none, please remember to email > > # your bridge line to us: frontdesk(a)torproject.org > > BridgeDistribution none > > But I have that in the log :-( > Jul 30 16:48:29 t520 Tor-01[93466]: The IPv4 ORPort address 127.0.0.1 does > not match the descriptor address 203.0.113.18. If you have a static public > IPv4 address, use 'Address <IPv4>' and 'OutboundBindAddress <IPv4>'. If you > are behind a NAT, use two ORPort lines: 'ORPort <PublicPort> NoListen' and > 'ORPort <InternalPort> NoAdvertise'. > Jul 30 16:48:29 t520 Tor-01[93466]: The IPv6 ORPort address ::1 does not > match the descriptor address 2001:db8:1234:1:bbbb:eeee:eeee:ffff. If you > have a static public IPv4 address, use 'Address <IPv6>' and > 'OutboundBindAddress <IPv6>'. If you are behind a NAT, use two ORPort > lines: 'ORPort <PublicPort> NoListen' and 'ORPort <InternalPort> > NoAdvertise'. > > I don't know if I should ignore that or better configure it that way: > ORPort 127.0.0.1:8443 NoListen > ORPort 8443 NoAdvertise > ORPort [::1]:8443 NoListen > ORPort 8443 NoAdvertise > > I'm aware of > https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/core/tor/-/issues/40208 > I hope to get it done with scipting on my Mikrotik, or switch to ipv4 only. > > frontdesk(a)torproject.org has no PGP key, can I send you or meskio the > bridgeline? > > Bridgeline must be: > Bridge obfs4 <IP ADDRESS>:<PORT> <FINGERPRINT> cert=abra+kadabra iat-mode=0 > But DynIP changes every few days. Do you also give the bridge users > myrouter.example.net? > > Because of your post in the forum: > https://forum.torproject.org/t/orport-127-0-0-1-auto/8470 > should we do this with all running bridges, or only the hidden ones? > > -- > Ciao Marco! >

1 1

(no subject)
by amanyaz Amangeldiyew 27 Jul '23

27 Jul '23

Hi. I am from. Turkmenistan. I have obtained obsf4 bridge from internet but only ip address is readable. If anybody knows fully obsf4 bridge please send me to my mail. Ip address is: obsf4 93.104.161.141

1 0

Final Call: Last Opportunity to Participate in the Tor Update Survey - Closes Tomorrow!
by Meitong Wang 22 Jul '23

22 Jul '23

Dear Tor Relay Operators, We hope this email finds you well. This is our final outreach regarding the Tor Update Survey, and we want to extend a sincere thank you to those who have already participated. Your valuable contributions have been invaluable to our research project at the University of Edinburgh. For those who haven't had the opportunity to take part yet, we wanted to remind you that the survey will be closing tomorrow, the 23rd of July. If you are interested in sharing your insights towards updates as a Tor relay operator, we kindly request you to participate now and make your voice heard. Your participation in this survey is crucial for understanding the challenges and developments within the Tor network. Your responses will be treated with the utmost confidentiality, and all data will be anonymized to ensure your privacy. Taking the survey will take approximately 10 minutes, and we genuinely appreciate the time and effort you invest in contributing to this research. To participate, please click on the following link: https://cryptpad.fr/form/#/2/form/view/dvbbDORTjeztLzosbOuGVaRheI-FBjFh6xPQ… Once again, we would like to express our gratitude for your interest and support in this project. Your input will contribute to the continued growth and improvement of the Tor network. If you have already participated or are unable to participate at this time, we sincerely thank you for considering our invitation. Should you have any questions or require further information, please do not hesitate to reach out to us. Thank you, and we truly appreciate your attention to this matter. Best regards, Meitong Wang & Tariq Elahi The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in Scotland, with registration number SC005336. Is e buidheann carthannais a th' ann an Oilthigh Dh?n ?ideann, cl?raichte an Alba, ?ireamh cl?raidh SC005336.

1 0

Friendly Reminder: Tor Relay Operators' Survey Closes on 23rd July - Last Chance to Participate!
by Meitong Wang 19 Jul '23

19 Jul '23

Dear Tor Relay Operators, We hope this email finds you well. We are writing to provide a friendly reminder that our Tor Update Survey, conducted as part of the University of Edinburgh Research Project, will be closing on 23rd July. If you haven't already participated, this is your last chance to share your invaluable insights and experiences as a Tor relay operator. Your input is critical to our research and will play a significant role in understanding the challenges in the Tor network's update process. Your responses are entirely confidential, and all data will be anonymized to ensure your privacy. We truly appreciate your willingness to contribute to this research. The survey will take approximately 10 minutes to complete, and your input will shape the future improvements and enhancements of the Tor network update design. We understand how busy schedules can be, but taking the time to participate in this survey will be greatly beneficial to the entire Tor community. To access the survey, please click on the following link: https://cryptpad.fr/form/#/2/form/view/dvbbDORTjeztLzosbOuGVaRheI-FBjFh6xPQ…. The survey will close on 23rd July, so if you are interested in taking part, we kindly encourage you to do so now. Thank you once again for your participation and support. Should you have any questions or require further information, please don't hesitate to reach out to us. Please note that this study has been approved by the UoE Informatics Research Ethics Process, with the project reference number: 775342. Best regards, Meitong Wang & Tariq Elahi The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in Scotland, with registration number SC005336. Is e buidheann carthannais a th' ann an Oilthigh Dh?n ?ideann, cl?raichte an Alba, ?ireamh cl?raidh SC005336.

1 0

Is there a way to update obfs4 using chocklatey?
by Keifer Bly 16 Jul '23

16 Jul '23

Hi, So on Windows, it is possible to install the tor relay software using Chocolatey https://chocolatey.org/. Once it is installed, tor can be installed by using choco install tor and updated using choco upgrade tor in Windows powershell. But I am wondering, is there a way to install and update obfs4 in Chocolatey? Thanks. --Keifer

1 0

Question regarding bandwidth ratio on bridges.torproject.org and a few further, small, (probably related) questions
by telekobold 06 Jul '23

06 Jul '23

Hello together, I'm operating two Tor bridges. When calling bridges.torproject.org, for one of the bridges (set up in March, 2023), there are three outputs: - obfs4: functional - a bandwidth ratio - a "last tested" entry. But for my second bridge (set up at the beginning of June 2023), bridges.torproject.org does not output a bandwidth ratio. What does this missing bandwidth ratio output mean, since everything else seems to be normal? When starting nyx on the relays, I see connections there (even more on the bridge with the missing bandwidth ratio output), I can connect to both bridges using the Bridge's IP addresses and ORPorts via Tor browser, and metrics.torproject.org also outputs an advertised bandwidth, which is even much higher (4.87 MiB/s at the moment) than for my other bridge (1.43MiB/s at the momemt) for which bridges.torproject.org outputs a bandwidth ratio. The bridges run on virtual servers at the same hoster, but in two different countries. Nothing else runs on these virtual servers. I am honestly not quite sure to what extent the fingerprint of the bridge is information worth protecting, or whether only the port and IP address need to be protected. By the way, I also don't understand why my two bridges don't have a higher advertised bandwidth - currently, it's 4.87MiB/s for one and 1.43MiB/s for the other relay. I never got the fast flag for either bridge yet, in contrast to my two "normal" relays. On both servers, at least 1.6GiB/s is available, and a monthly data throughput of several terabytes. As a further issue, nyx doesn't output (in constrast to my two other relays) - not sure if this is a known issue. And, as a last issue, I didn't specify a distribution mechanism for my bridge, in the hope that the most suitable mechanism will be selected automatically. Initially, for one of my bridges (the one for which bridges.torproject.org outputs a bandwidth ratio) the bridge was assigned distribution mechanism "Moat". But suddenly, "None" is displayed under distribution mechanisms at metrics.torproject.org, which means that apparently the bridge is no longer distributed. What could be the reason that the distribution mechanism suddenly changed? Kind regards telekobold

2 1

Invitation to Participate in Tor Update Survey - University of Edinburgh Research Project
by Meitong Wang 05 Jul '23

05 Jul '23

Dear Relay Operators, My name is Meitong, and I am a Master's student at the University of Edinburgh, currently being supervised by Tariq Elahi. I am working on a project to understand Tor Relay Operators and further improve Tor security. I am writing to invite you to participate in a survey as part of a research project conducted by the University of Edinburgh. The purpose of this survey is to gather valuable insights and feedback from relay operators regarding the Tor network's update process. The overall goal of this survey is to understand the experiences, challenges, and perspectives of relay operators when it comes to Tor relay updates. Your input will contribute to improving the update design and addressing any issues that may arise. I want to assure you that your participation in this survey is completely anonymous. Your responses will be treated with strict confidentiality and will only be used for research purposes. To access the survey, please click on the following link: https://cryptpad.fr/form/#/2/form/view/dvbbDORTjeztLzosbOuGVaRheI-FBjFh6xPQ… The survey will be open until July 23, 2023. Your participation is highly appreciated and will be valuable in shaping the future updates of Tor. Please note that this study has been approved by the UoE Informatics Research Ethics Process, with the project reference number: 775342. To provide you with more information about the survey and its purpose, I have attached the Participant Information Form. This document explains the study's background, procedures, and your rights as a participant. I kindly request that you review it before deciding whether to participate. If you have any questions or concerns about the survey or the research project, please feel free to reach out to me. I would be more than happy to provide further clarification. Thank you in advance for your time and valuable contribution. We eagerly await your response! Best regards, Meitong Wang & Tariq Elahi The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in Scotland, with registration number SC005336. Is e buidheann carthannais a th' ann an Oilthigh Dh?n ?ideann, cl?raichte an Alba, ?ireamh cl?raidh SC005336.

1 0

Security implications of disabling onion key rotation?
by David Fifield 05 Jul '23

05 Jul '23

Linus Nordberg and I have had a paper accepted to FOCI 2023 on the special pluggable transports configuration used on the Snowflake bridges. That design was first hashed out on this mailing list last year. https://forum.torproject.net/t/tor-relays-how-to-reduce-tor-cpu-load-on-a-s… https://github.com/net4people/bbs/issues/103 https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/team/-/wikis/Survival%20G… There is a draft of the paper here: https://www.bamsoftware.com/papers/pt-bridge-hiperf/pt-bridge-hiperf.202303… https://www.bamsoftware.com/papers/pt-bridge-hiperf/pt-bridge-hiperf.202303… A question that more than one reviewer asked is, what are the security implications of disabling onion key rotation as we do? (Section 3.2 in the draft.) It's a good question and one we'd like to address in the final draft. What are the risks of not rotating onion keys? My understanding is that rotation is meant to enhance forward security; i.e., limit how far back in time past recorded connections can be attacked in the case of key compromise. https://spec.torproject.org/tor-design Section 4 says: Short-term keys are rotated periodically and independently, to limit the impact of key compromise. Do the considerations differ when using ntor keys versus TAP keys?

3 5

Instructions for setting up an Obfs4 bridge on windows
by tor 03 Jul '23

03 Jul '23

Hi, I'm attempting to follow the instructions for setting up a obfs4 bridge on Windows. In my instance, it is Windows 10. The instructions say to copy out the obfs4proxy.exe from: C:\Users\<user>\Desktop\Tor Browser\Browser\TorBrowser\Tor\PluggableTransports However, there is no obfs4 file in this location or anywhere else within the tor browser bundle. In this location, there are only a snowflake exe and a lyrebird exe. I also checked the tor expert bundle and there is no obfs4 exe there. Any suggestions as to where I may find the obfs4 exe for Windows? -matt

2 1

(Announcement) WebTunnel, a new pluggable transport for bridges, now available for deployment
by Shelikhoo 30 Jun '23

30 Jun '23

Dear Tor relay operators, We're excited to announce WebTunnel, a new bridge pluggable transport (PT) for the Tor ecosystem. It is a censor resistant proxy that try to imitate HTTPS traffic, based on HTTPT(https://www.usenix.org/conference/foci20/presentation/frolov) research. We are currently operating a trial soft launch for WebTunnel, and encouragebridge operators to setup WebTunnel bridges to discover issues within theimplementation of this newpluggable transport. How it works ------------ When connecting to a WebTunnel Bridge, the client send a http 1.1 upgrade request to the load balancer over an encrypted connection, like how WebSocket works. Thus, from an observator’s point of view, this process looks like a real websocket connection to the real website. If one ever try to connect to the fronting website, then what will be presented will be that fronting website. Without the full URL including the path, which the censor don’t know, it is very difficult to tell if a website hosts a WebTunnel by probing the HTTPS port. Technical requirements ---------------------- To set up a WebTunnel Bridge, you will need a self-hosted website,a domain under your control,a configurable load balancer, static IPv4, and environment to setup Tor Bridge to setup a WebTunnel Bridge. Docker or other container runtime is recommended to streamline setup process, but is not required. The setup guide is available here: _https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/web… <https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/webt…> How to test and report issues ----------------------------- You can test the WebTunnel bridge by using themost recent version of Tor Browser Alpha(https://www.torproject.org/download/alpha/). Currently, WebTunnel is only distributed over the HTTPSdistributor(torrc setting:'BridgeDistribution https'). You can report issues on the Tor Project GitLab Anti-censorship group: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/webt…. Given that this new PT is only available now on Tor Browser Alpha, relay operators should not expect significant usage or a large number of users at the moment. Please let us know if you encountered any difficulty with WebTunnel setup. Thanks for your contribution to the Tor ecosystem.

3 2

8 relays pers IP address are allowed from now (end of June 2023) on
by Georg Koppen 30 Jun '23

30 Jun '23

Hi! You might recall that Tor has been restricting the possible amount of Tor relays per IP address to 2, mainly for Sybil prevention reasons.[1] We bumped that limit to 4 earlier this year[2] to make better use of available resources and considered back then bumping that limit further to 8 relays per IP address. I've good news for everyone looking forward to raising that limit further: after an investigation into the effects of allowing 4 relays per IP address[3] we think it is overall beneficial for the network and our users to raise it further to 8. This change (by having set `AuthDirMaxServersPerAddr 8` on a majority of them) is in effect since a couple of hours and you can run more than 4 relays per IP address now. This is not meant to be a permanent change, though, but only a stopgap solution to work around missing multithreading support in Tor until relays in Arti will be available and deployed (which is still some years away from now). For more details, information and discussion see: tor#40744.[4] Thanks to everyone who helped making this change happen, Georg [1] https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/core/torspec/-/blob/main/proposals/109-no… [2] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-relays/2023-February/020999.html [3] https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/network-health/analysis/-/issues/51 [4] https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/core/tor/-/issues/40744

1 0

Process for new policies and proposals for the Tor relay operator community (001-community-relay-operator-process.md)
by gus 27 Jun '23

27 Jun '23

Hi, Last Saturday, during the Tor Relay Operator meetup, I briefly talked about the meta proposal that defines the process of submitting proposals to the relay operator community. The document is open for community feedback, and you can comment directly on the ticket: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/community/policies/-/issues/2. I'm also sharing the full text below. Gus ``` Filename: 001-community-relay-operator-process.md Title: Process for new policies and proposals for the Tor relay operator community Author: gus - gus(a)torproject.org Created: 2023-05-22 Status: Meta ## Overview This document outlines the process for submitting policies to the Tor relay operator community, explains how proposals are approved, and clarifies the relationship between Tor Community proposals and the Tor Project. This is an informational document. ## Motivation In the past, our approach to organizing the Tor relay operator community was highly informal and relied heavily on the informal dynamics between relay operators, Directory Authorities, and The Tor Project staff. Through discussions and interactions in meetups and similar events, operators would collaboratively determine the best practices for managing Tor relays while ensuring the well-being of Tor users. However, as the Tor Community expands and its members become less interconnected, there is now a necessity to establish a well-defined process for presenting and evaluating proposals and policies to the relay operator community. It's important to note that these proposals are distinct from the Tor proposals governed by torspec. The proposals in tor spec primarily focus on technical specifications and protocols at the core of the Tor network. They cover areas such as the Tor protocol, directory authorities, circuit construction, and encryption mechanisms. The proposals in this document, on the other hand, are specifically tailored to the relay operator community and address operational, policy, and community-related aspects. While both types of proposals aim to improve the Tor network, they serve different purposes and operate within their respective scopes. It's part of the scope of these proposals addressing topics like: - Security measures to combat malicious relays and attacks against the Tor network like DDoS - Expectations for relays operators and operational policies - Sustainability and operators incentivisation - Guidelines for conducting investigations to identify and remove malicious actors from the Tor network - Initiatives related to relay operator governance and community building There might be corner cases where proposals impacting the relay operator community would contain torspec material if approved. In that case it is fine to submit a proposal within this community proposal process first and a corresponding torspec on later one if the proposal got approved. ## How new proposals get added, approved and implemented The process of adding, approving, and implementing new proposals for the relay operator community follows a specific workflow as described below. Here is an overview of the steps involved: Summary of the stages: Draft & Full Proposal -> Policy -> Implementation The current proposal editors are the Tor Project Community and Network Health Team leads, who can reject or accept full proposals. The criteria for evaluation of proposals for relay operators are stated on the document ["Combating Malicious Relays - Evaluation criteria for solutions"](https://nc.torproject.net/s/bLWAjC8FJ8KKCGQ). ### 1. Draft, consensus, and full proposal To submit a proposal, open directly a new issue in the Tor Project GitLab [Community/Policies repository](https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/community/policies). A proposal should have a properly formatted (see below) draft. Once an idea moves to this stage, the Tor Community should discuss and improve it until we've reached consensus that it's a good idea and that it's detailed enough to implement. The official request for changes, suggestions and improvements of the proposal must happen in the GitLab comment section so that the author can directly receive the feedback. To submit a new update of the proposal, the author should add a comment with the new alternative text in the appropriate ticket. Additionally, the author must update the issue description to indicate the availability of a new version of the proposal. This ensures that the proposal is properly documented. ### 2. Policy and implementation Once the full proposal has reached a consensus and its final version was approved by the proposal editors, they will officially create a merge request and add the approved proposal. When this happens, we incorporate it into the Relay Operator policies directory and implement the proposal. This process ensures that proposals undergo thorough discussion and consensus-building, helping maintain the integrity of The Tor Project's policies and operations. ## Observations Unlike RFCs (Request for Comments), Tor relay operator community proposals can evolve over time while retaining the same number until they are ultimately accepted or rejected. The entire history of each proposal will be archived in the Tor Community Policies repository. It's still okay to make small changes directly to your proposal once it's finalized if it's cosmetic changes and no substantial change is required. This document reflects the current contributors' _intent_, not a permanent promise to always use this process in the future. Technical Tor spec proposals are out of the scope of this document and must follow the process described on [Tor specification](https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/core/torspec/). If consensus cannot be reached among the Tor relay operators community during the proposal review process, a Voting process involving Core contributors can be initiated. The decision to proceed with a voting process is at the discretion of the proposal editors. They are responsible for determining whether a voting process is necessary to resolve the impasse. In such cases, the voting process must follow the [Voting policy](https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/community/policies/-/blob/master/…. ## Responsibilities and roles of proposal editors The proposal editors play a crucial role in the evaluation and approval of proposals within the Tor relay operator community. Their responsibilities include: ### 1. Reviewing and evaluating proposals The proposal editors evaluate each submitted proposal to assess its feasibility, adherence to community policies, and potential impact on the Tor network and its users. ### 2. Facilitating discussions and building consensus The proposal editors actively participate in discussions related to proposals, engaging with the Tor relay operator community to understand different perspectives and build consensus. They facilitate constructive dialogue, encouraging community members to provide feedback, suggest improvements, and address concerns raised during the proposal review process. ### 3. Determining proposal status The proposal editors are responsible for assigning appropriate proposal statuses. They evaluate the progress and quality of proposals, assigning statuses such as "Draft," "Open," "Needs-Revision," "Accepted," "Finished," "Closed," "Rejected," "Dead," "Meta," or "Reserve." The proposal editors maintain the proposal status throughout the review process until a final decision is reached. ### 4. Maintaining proposal integrity and documentation The proposal editors ensure the integrity and accuracy of proposals within the Tor Community/Policies repository. They review proposals for adherence to formatting guidelines and make necessary adjustments to maintain consistency. ## Proposals made by proposal editors When proposal editors intend to submit their own proposals, they must follow the standard process outlined in the "How new proposals get added, approved and implemented" section of this document. However, when it comes to merging their own proposals, the proposal editors should not unilaterally merge their own proposals without proper evaluation and consensus from the Tor relay operator community. The proposal editors have the responsibility to maintain the integrity and fairness of the proposal review process. To avoid conflicts of interest and ensure transparency, full proposals made by proposal editors must be sponsored by two other Tor core contributors. ## What should go in a proposal Every proposal must have a header containing these fields: * Filename * Title * Author * Created * Status The body of the proposal should start with an Overview section explaining what the proposal's about, what it does, and about what state it's in. After the Overview, the proposal becomes more free-form. Depending on its length and complexity, the proposal can break into sections as appropriate, or follow a short discursive format. Every proposal should contain at least the following information before it is "ACCEPTED", though the information does not need to be in sections with these names. Motivation: What problem is the proposal trying to solve? Why does this problem matter? If several approaches are possible, why take this one? Security implications: What effects the proposed changes might have on anonymity, how well understood these effects are, and so on. Implementation: If the proposal will be tricky to implement by the Tor Community, the document can contain some discussion of how to go about making it work. ## How to format proposals Proposals must be written in Markdown. ## Proposal status Draft: This isn't a complete proposal yet; there are definite missing pieces. Please don't add any new proposals with this status. Open: A proposal under discussion. Needs-Revision: The idea for the proposal is a good one, but the proposal as it stands has serious problems that keep it from being accepted. See comments in the ticket for details. Accepted: The proposal is complete, and we intend to implement it. After this point, substantive changes to the proposal should be avoided, and regarded as a sign of the process having failed somewhere. Finished: The proposal has been accepted and implemented. After this point, the proposal should not be changed. Closed: The proposal has been accepted, implemented, and merged into the main policies documents. The proposal should not be changed after this point. Rejected: We're not going to implement the proposal as described here, though we might do some other version. See comments in the ticket for details. The proposal should not be changed after this point; to bring up some other version of the idea, write a new proposal. Dead: The proposal hasn't been touched in a long time, and it doesn't look like anybody is going to complete it soon. It can become "Open" again if it gets a new proponent. Meta: This is not a proposal, but a document about proposals. Reserve: This proposal is not something we're currently planning to implement, but we might want to resurrect it some day if we decide to do something like what it proposes. Obsolete: This proposal was flawed and has been superseded by another proposal. See comments in the document for details. The proposal editors maintain the correct status of proposals, based on rough consensus and their own discretion. ## Proposal numbering Numbers 000-099 are reserved for special and meta-proposals. 100 and up are used for actual proposals. Numbers aren't recycled. ``` -- The Tor Project Community Team Lead

1 0

Re: [tor-relays] Comcast blocks ALL traffic with tor relays
by Livingood, Jason 18 Jun '23

18 Jun '23

>As to the blog post you mention… Your statements are very generic: now you talk about "not blocking tor", but tor is not just one webpage, one server, a monolithic entity. I would appreciate details: If your customer has "advanced security" activated, can he connect to any ORPort of any tor middle relay? Fair enough. That post was in any case from 2014 and the questions are different today (I just used it as an example that we’re not against Tor). Honestly, I’m a little surprised that someone running a Tor exit node would not be using their own cable modem and running their own router (whether open source a la Openwrt or commercial). If someone wants to do stuff like run a Tor exit node or run a MASQUE relay or whatever, I’d recommend they turn off Advanced Security and manage their routing & firewall rules themselves. >Sorry if I am a bit repetitive, but https://www.xfinity.com/support/articles/using-xfinity-xfi-advanced-security<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/www.xfinity.com/support/articles/using-x…> mentions "Blocks remote access to smart devices from known dangerous sources.". What do you mean by dangerous sources, and does it include tor relays or exits? It may be down to the fact that “unknown” users connect to the relay/exit and that the average consumer user of the Advanced Security service does not want that. I suspect if someone wants this, it’s best to toggle Advanced Security off. > I don't know whether this customer has "Advanced security" turned on, I just assume he has. Do you want me to send you privately more details (my IP and this peer's IP)? Sure – I am happy to look at that confidentially. But it could be a wide range of other things – even basic things like someone’s router timing out external connections after X minutes, etc. > So you remind me of an old joke: who should I believe, you, or my eyes? Sorry, I choose my eyes. I am talking here about direction from my node to Comcast. It is still possible that you don't block connections from Comcast to relays, I have contradictory evidence about this point. So if your "not blocking tor" means "not preventing our customer from connecting to some tor relays", this could be true. Alternatively, given the large size of our network, if we were in fact blocking this, then I’d expect to see this list filled with complaints and social media sites (Twitter<https://twitter.com/search?q=comcast%20tor&src=typed_query&f=top>, Reddit, etc.) filled with complaints. But what I see now is a single report. That said, I routinely look at such reports when they seem at odds with our network policies so as to be certain there’s not some misconfiguration or bug someplace. Jason

3 2

Comcast blocks ALL traffic with tor relays
by xmrk2 16 Jun '23

16 Jun '23

I'd like to raise awareness of the Comcast blocking. As stated in subject, I believe Comcast blocks all traffic between its customers and public tor relay nodes. That is, the blocking is not limited to tor-related traffic, all other services / ports on the tor relay are blocked. Background: I am running a lightning node, lightning is a layer 2 protocol to scale Bitcoin. Lightning nodes need to be connected to each other ideally 24/7. I was contacted by the operator of another Lightning node, complaining that he cannot connect to my node. He is Comcast customer, I am not. I was also running a tor relay on the same public IPv4 address. I am pretty sure that the blocking is done by Comcast and is triggered by being in public list of tor relays. The blocking disappeared after I stopped my tor relay and restarted my router (thus getting a new external IPv4 address). After 1 day, I relaunched the tor relay, and the blocking reappeared a few hours later. It was also confirmed by the said operator of the lightning node, who said there were various rounds of blocking tor, customers complaining and Comcast lifting the block for some time, only to reinstate the blocking later. Comcast thus discourages me and similar people from running tor relays, or at least forces me to run tor in bridge mode. So this is an insidious attack on tor. Note that Bitcoin is not particularly relevant, Comcast is blocking tor nodes, not bitcoin nodes. So even if you hate Bitcoin, note that the same problem could arise even if Bitcoin never existed: e.g. a self-hosted web server, whose owner wants to donate his free capacity to tor by running tor relay. By doing this, he prevents any Comcast customers from accessing his web server, and this consequence is not obvious at all. Any ideas on how to combat this? I was thinking about including some false positives in tor relay list. Imagine including some Google servers' IP addresses - Comcast customers suddenly cannot connect to Google, unless Comcast stops this blocking... or simply whitelists Google. But those false positives sound ugly and a bit malicious, not sure it is a good idea. I already wrote about this publicly, and also wrote a mail to EFF. Hope I am not spamming, I feel this is quite important issue and am a bit frustrated by the lack of attention it gets.

9 11

[Important] A call for more long running bridges, especially with OBFS IAT-Mode set to 1 or 2.
by George Hartley 16 Jun '23

16 Jun '23

Hello dear relay and bridge hosts, recently a paper was published, describing a traffic confirmation attack called DeepCorr, which works against Tor users and as such, also hidden services. The attack allegedly had success rates of up to 96% percent. It is being worked on and listed here as a separate ticket: https://forum.torproject.net/t/tor-dev-critical-deepcorr-traffic-confirmati… Until mitigations have been merged into the Tor codebase, I kindly ask you, the driving force behind the network, to set up more bridges with "iat-mode" enabled and set to "1" or "2" - the paper stated that it was significantly harder to launch successful attacks against clients using OBFS4 bridges with timing obfuscation enabled, which is what "iat-mode" really is. In a nutshell, the measure of IAT is the average (or the arithmetic mean) between network packets arriving at a host over a period of time, of the times between packets arriving at a host over a period of time, which you can also call latency. For security reasons such as defeating DPI and similar network analysis techniques, OBFS4, while at the same time encrypting and making your traffic look like regular TLS traffic, it also offers to try and obfuscate the IAT and packet size by inserting random padding bytes. For you guys or girls with programming skills or the ability to read and understand code, here is the responsible code: https://github.com/Yawning/obfs4/blob/40245c4a1cf221395c59d1f4bf27412704535… I vote for a fair 50 / 50 distribution of bridges with "iat-mode=1" and "iat-mode=2", even though while IAT mode 2, also called the "paranoid" mode by the author of the code above, may be more effective. Dear clients, you can already enable timing-obfuscation in one way, by editing your bridge-line and setting iat-mode from "0" to either "1" or "2" - please be aware that this will only enable timing-obfuscation in one way, the bridge needs to support it too to get packet timing obfuscated in both ways. Dear bridge operators, all it takes is a simple tor configuration file change: ServerTransportOptions obfs4 iat-mode=1 or ServerTransportOptions obfs4 iat-mode=2 Your bridge key will very likely stay the same, although I do not have the infrastructure to try this out right now. It is and has been very hard to find reliable OBFS4 bridges which also support timing obfuscation, for over a year now - please consider changing your bridge configuration in order to possibly help clients and hidden services evade timing related attacks such as DeepCorr. Yours truly, George Hartley

2 2

AROI not getting verified
by chani 14 Jun '23

14 Jun '23

Hey all, I'm running a relay and wanted to get AROI setup. I tried to debug it now for quite some time, but I just cant get it to get verified. I checked that my contact info matches the well known file, and if the well known file is reachable. I also cant find anyone except myself, querying the well known file on my webserver for the last few days. Am I missing something? relay fingerprint: CA1D49840F37E0C9D5F1770A5F033D80EB6AF369

3 3

Re: [tor-relays] Do they use their own modem/router?
by Livingood, Jason 14 Jun '23

14 Jun '23

This thread mentions “Advanced Security” and you can learn more about that at https://www.xfinity.com/support/articles/using-xfinity-xfi-advanced-security. This feature can only be used with a leased Xfinity gateway like the XB7 or XB8. There are a great many cable modems that customers can and do buy in retail stores that do not have such features – like the Arris S33 cable modem. So, a customer that has Advanced Security has in essence (1) chosen to use an XB gateway rather than buy their own modem & router in retail and manage it themselves, and (2) turned on Advanced Security. If the customer in question that is using Advanced Security wishes to turn it off, they can do so in the Xfinity app (or turn the modem into ‘bridge mode’ and use their own router, or use their own modem). I’m happy to help answer other questions. Jason Livingood Technology Policy, Product & Standards Comcast

2 1

Re: [tor-relays] Comcast blocks ALL traffic with tor relays
by Livingood, Jason 14 Jun '23

14 Jun '23

Hi – Dropping into this thread from Comcast to say that we DO NOT BLOCK Tor. Feel free to refer back to my 2014 blog statement on this at https://corporate.comcast.com/comcast-voices/setting-the-record-straight-on…. Jason Livingood Technology Policy, Product & Standards Comcast

2 1

Re: [tor-relays] Do they use their own modem/router?
by Livingood, Jason 14 Jun '23

14 Jun '23

BTW, feel free to refer back to my 2014 blog statement on this at https://corporate.comcast.com/comcast-voices/setting-the-record-straight-on…. Jason From: tor-relays <tor-relays-bounces(a)lists.torproject.org> on behalf of "Livingood, Jason via tor-relays" <tor-relays(a)lists.torproject.org> Reply-To: "tor-relays(a)lists.torproject.org" <tor-relays(a)lists.torproject.org> Date: Wednesday, June 14, 2023 at 14:43 To: "tor-relays(a)lists.torproject.org" <tor-relays(a)lists.torproject.org> Cc: Jason Livingood <Jason_Livingood(a)comcast.com> Subject: Re: [tor-relays] Do they use their own modem/router? This thread mentions “Advanced Security” and you can learn more about that at https://www.xfinity.com/support/articles/using-xfinity-xfi-advanced-security<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/www.xfinity.com/support/articles/using-x…>. This feature can only be used with a leased Xfinity gateway like the XB7 or XB8. There are a great many cable modems that customers can and do buy in retail stores that do not have such features – like the Arris S33 cable modem. So, a customer that has Advanced Security has in essence (1) chosen to use an XB gateway rather than buy their own modem & router in retail and manage it themselves, and (2) turned on Advanced Security. If the customer in question that is using Advanced Security wishes to turn it off, they can do so in the Xfinity app (or turn the modem into ‘bridge mode’ and use their own router, or use their own modem). I’m happy to help answer other questions. Jason Livingood Technology Policy, Product & Standards Comcast

1 0

Do they use their own modem/router?
by xmrk2 13 Jun '23

13 Jun '23

Got a question from [seeess at riseup.net](mailto:seeess@riseup.net) > I had a question about the "advanced security" and the two users you tested with. Do either of them use their own customer provided modem, or are they both using a Comcast-provided modem/router? Is "Advanced Security" something that is configured locally on their networking equipment (like a Comcast-provided modem/router) or is it cloud based? You mention "in his Comcast router" but I wanted to double-check if it was specifically a Comcast-provided piece of hardware. CCB says: "It is configured in the cloud. There's a limited amount of things I can do with my router, most of the settings are done through their app. So like... things like my port forwarding, I can't actually do in my router, I have to go through the app, which I can access remotely or on a different network." I think we cannot be sure where the filtering is done (router at customer's premises or inside Comcast network) unless someone tries with custom router. CCA stopped replying me, I can only speculate. He tested our connection with netcat, mentioned using wireguard, so he should be capable of configuring his custom router. But whether he does.... my guess would be as good as yours. ------- Original Message ------- On Sunday, June 11th, 2023 at 1:46 PM, xmrk2 <xmrk2(a)protonmail.com> wrote: > I'd like to raise awareness of the Comcast blocking. > > As stated in subject, I believe Comcast blocks all traffic between its customers and public tor relay nodes. That is, the blocking is not limited to tor-related traffic, all other services / ports on the tor relay are blocked. > > Background: I am running a lightning node, lightning is a layer 2 protocol to scale Bitcoin. Lightning nodes need to be connected to each other ideally 24/7. I was contacted by the operator of another Lightning node, complaining that he cannot connect to my node. He is Comcast customer, I am not. I was also running a tor relay on the same public IPv4 address. > > I am pretty sure that the blocking is done by Comcast and is triggered by being in public list of tor relays. The blocking disappeared after I stopped my tor relay and restarted my router (thus getting a new external IPv4 address). After 1 day, I relaunched the tor relay, and the blocking reappeared a few hours later. It was also confirmed by the said operator of the lightning node, who said there were various rounds of blocking tor, customers complaining and Comcast lifting the block for some time, only to reinstate the blocking later. > > Comcast thus discourages me and similar people from running tor relays, or at least forces me to run tor in bridge mode. So this is an insidious attack on tor. Note that Bitcoin is not particularly relevant, Comcast is blocking tor nodes, not bitcoin nodes. So even if you hate Bitcoin, note that the same problem could arise even if Bitcoin never existed: e.g. a self-hosted web server, whose owner wants to donate his free capacity to tor by running tor relay. By doing this, he prevents any Comcast customers from accessing his web server, and this consequence is not obvious at all. > > Any ideas on how to combat this? I was thinking about including some false positives in tor relay list. Imagine including some Google servers' IP addresses - Comcast customers suddenly cannot connect to Google, unless Comcast stops this blocking... or simply whitelists Google. But those false positives sound ugly and a bit malicious, not sure it is a good idea. > > I already wrote about this publicly, and also wrote a mail to EFF. Hope I am not spamming, I feel this is quite important issue and am a bit frustrated by the lack of attention it gets.

1 0

Re: [tor-relays] Comcast blocks ALL traffic with tor relays - probably firewall configuration; further tests
by xmrk2 13 Jun '23

13 Jun '23

Starting from the most interesting info - another Comcast customer contacted me, lets call him CCB, and the first Comcast customer I mentioned previously will be CCA. CCB claims he had to disable some settings - probably "Advanced Security" - in his Comcast router, because before doing so, nobody was able to connect to his lightning node via IPv4 (clearnet, not tor). He claims to have done this back in July or August. We tested just today, and both sides were able to successfully initiate TCP connection, no blocking here. Importantly, at the same time I was not able to connect to CCA - timeout. Chronology of tests, all times are in CEST. around 18:00 yesterday - I started tor relay (non-exit, ExitPolicy reject *:*) 22:09 - it appeared as online on https://metrics.torproject.org/ . Started testing connection to CCA, using "socat -dd - TCP4:<CCA_ADDR>:<CCA_lightning_port>" every 5 minutes. Connected successfully. 07:07 - last successful connection to CCA 07:12 - first unsuccessful connection to CCA - timeout; all subsequent tests with CCA end with timeout 08:10 - stopped tor relay 13:09 - 13:14 - tests with CCB - both sides can connect 17:54 - still cannot connect to CCA 18:19 - connected to CCA from my mobile phone connection (so from another IP, which is not blacklisted, so we see CCA is not offline) 18:55 - still cannot connect to CCA So port forwarding must be correct on CCA, or I would not be able to connect. Now I think the blocking is real, probably on by default, but Comcast customers can opt-out. Doubts / weaknesses of tests and theory: - only tested with 2 Comcast users - not sure about CCA's firewall settings - I just assume he has "Advanced Security" active - my tests only cover connections from me to Comcast users. Not sure if this "Advanced Security" also blocks connections from Comcast users. On one hand, my lightning channel with CCA was inactive for a month or more, and CCA contacted me because of it. Lightning nodes want and try to connect to all peers they have channel with, automatically - so his node presumably tried to connect to mine. And lightning nodes publish their IP addresses, there are sites which show current IP addresses of lightning nodes, like https://1ml.com/node/030c3f19d742ca294a55c00376b3b355c3c90d61c6b6b39554dbc7… (the link already points to a concrete node). My node should announce its IP addresses. So even if connection from me is blocked, he should initiate connection. Inactive channel means he was not successful, difficult to explain without blocking. OTOH, he claims he can connect to tor, so must be able to connect to at least some tor relay, not necessarily mine. Any volunteer Comcast customers for further testing? Preferably without lightning nodes, because I'd like to test with this "Adv. security" active, and it may interfere with lightning node (or any other use-case which needs high uptime). If my theory is correct, Comcast is slightly less evil than my very first post would suggest. Still evil, because this blocking has little to do with security - maybe blocking exit relays makes some sense, they can be misused to attacks, DDoS etc. But according to Comcast, merely running tor relay makes you a threat. And this so-called security is probably on by default (according to CCB) and "There are definitely popups all over the place telling me to turn it on". So it is probably not apparent that this setting blocks (some? most?) tor relays completely.

1 0

«Possible compression bomb» from Authority?
by Tschador 08 Jun '23

08 Jun '23

Hi there, today I found this warning in the log of my relay (6A7551EEE18F78A9813096E82BF84F740D32B911): Jun 03 04:04:33.000 [warn] Possible compression bomb; abandoning stream. Jun 03 04:04:33.000 [warn] Unable to decompress HTTP body (tried Zstandard compressed, on Directory connection (client reading) with 199.58.81.140:80). What does this mean? Regards

4 3

Providing metrics relevant to relay operators
by Georg Koppen 07 Jun '23

07 Jun '23

Hello! I got recently pinged by a large exit operator asking whether we had a website with nice graphs and statistics relevant to relay operators on our project infrastructure (showing e.g. the largest exit operators etc.), but that's currently not the case and we should fix that. There are some third-party tools, like OrNetStats[1], but we think it would be very useful for our relay operators to have relevant information available on the Tor Project website itself. Those third-party projects are a good contribution to the overall ecosystem we have but might e.g. die at some point due to lack of maintenance or move their focus to particular parts of the network while neglecting others, which is fine in general. However, we as a project should make sure our relay operators and we ourselves are not losing important insights into the state of the network and its different relay groups in case anything like that happens. At the end of the day those statistics and graphs should show up on metrics.torproject.org but we are not there yet given the complex nature of that website and our plans to fix that. However, thanks to our efforts of setting up a database containing all the relay descriptors and other network documents and our ongoing Google Summer of Code project for making those accessible with the help of a network status API we can start to experiment with providing those statistics early on via a different venue. I've just filed a ticket tracking that process[2] for those of you who are interested. As always we are very much interested in collaboration and getting feedback from all of you. So, if you have particular statistics and graphs you would like to see on such a website, please speak up! Ideally, this would happen on the above-mentioned Gitlab issue but just replying to this thread or in private is fine as well. Thanks, Georg [1] https://nusenu.github.io/OrNetStats/ [2] https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/network-health/metrics/website/-/issues/4…

1 0