- tor-relays - lists.torproject.org

forest08 dropped out of the consensus; all authorities think it is down
by forest-relay-contact＠cryptolab.net 16 Jan '26

16 Jan '26

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA512 Hello. My relay with fingerprint BDB0F71C8EB2572080D38F036E3EB33494500E9E is no longer being recognized by the consensus. I can confirm that the entire subnet it is on is able to reach the directory authority's ORPorts, but, according to the consensus health page, not a single DA reports it as running. This has lasted for 11 hours so far. How do I get it back in the consensus? Regards, forest -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- iHUEARYKAB0WIQQtr8ZXhq/o01Qf/pow+TRLM+X4xgUCaWjfzAAKCRAw+TRLM+X4 xsIVAP9E6Ijjzt1yt7AtFTUy6TSoTnVjGMgP2A09bZr0TWNseQD/SqWS27zFl2zq wdEZyZfQHArlgB4YHyS7j06gij2GzAo= =XdXh -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Tor exit relay lifecycle - update
by Georg Koppen 14 Jan '26

14 Jan '26

Hello! We have been working on a proposal to introduce an exit relay lifecycle (similar to the one we have for non-exit relays)[1]. That proposal got recently accepted and merged[2] and now we need to get it implemented. Folks interested can follow the implementation part by tracking the respective ticket in core/tor[3]. For more context see the discussion in the original exit lifecycle ticket[4] as well. Thanks, Georg [1] https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/community/policies/-/issues/32 [2] https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/community/policies/-/blob/main/docs/relay… [3] https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/core/tor/-/issues/41196 [4] https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/network-health/team/-/issues/220

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Tor Relay Operator Meetup at 39c3
by Alexander Hansen Færøy 07 Jan '26

07 Jan '26

Hello folks, Leibi has managed to get a spot for a Tor Relay Operator Meetup here at #39c3. Folks can join us on day 3 at 00:00. For more information, check out: https://events.ccc.de/congress/2025/hub/en/event/detail/tor-relay-operators… Cheers, Alex -- Alexander Hansen Færøy

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Relay forest18 is still not on the consensus
by forest-relay-contact＠cryptolab.net 06 Jan '26

06 Jan '26

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA512 Hello. One of my new relays is simply not showing up on the consensus. It's been a few days already. I ended up wiping /var/lib/tor and restarting in order to get a new fingerprint, but it has been a while and it is still not showing up on the consensus. I have 21 relays, and this one, the 18th, is the only one having this problem. Even the 21st has shown up on the consensus already. The new fingerprint is 6435C5172690160DA25681BEBA1EA5EAC6F2BE70. Is it possible that it has been incorrectly blacklisted due to being mistaken for one of the relays involved in the recent sybil attack? The IP address is 160.250.225.3. What confuses me is that, even after changing fingerprints, it still is not showing up. It is connected to the network and is reachable from the outside. Regards, forest -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- iQIzBAEBCgAdFiEEvLrj6cuOL+I/KdxYBh18rEKN1gsFAmk1NxEACgkQBh18rEKN 1gtojw/9Hoix29gE4oevhlRJvGLftgbJHv5caZ7iGNZ7KdN7R/8HQ//0InfyG5d4 8Mb49D2jzNfLK+89svlMyNso5ZqR3sMcy7dpnTNAq+PlxB84AwQE/9Qb/8R3sTDZ A2S8ezzCtViQTEQh9eYx+zmnjJckwVt4sAbjumc6t3kIdN+f7CjOj2SZ+AbT6e4l hBZdaGwKLUQhPzL35SK20RSTjIvVNDHAwMo5rR6BsHCj/+W+3fmAG29pieqCAGp/ lwXR6E4EMII0f53Pb65ZB38FOTuMkBBFL0I3WUB90IqS4z+L3U9oU2u7KY1np1lp ApCSbQjoY+NSgpdJ0yH5b1ZZEvEnr1OhQqY0RMpVTLXOuByj79NG31mjE1v8aUaN a5Lwk6scYXuPr8ryOkxkX80tN5V21pIQWt9hubpXBHtPLvfGmTS51DwwOOEKYoIA yyFnVST75f38uyvm73H48s9c68263I5fKQvFCzUmq8Go0lpbLutjxC8LNML3J0cq 0rIINHWKDw4UjnboKihkuoRdXi+tH2ERW3ZAoKVUXTi1VHomwfDvBHJSYxb3SipI 54Qjrnd6IFr8LaHcTfFacrD/OH4WAYnGCE3lC4Ly3xX0P8Cb9KDkop8nXPuBJAup Jq7GgDP8vsmWW6hp4q/Sh+ajHkeZm/luNWA3DZqsp4q0grHi/IM= =Zdqz -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Netscan Hetzner
by Diyar Ciftci 04 Jan '26

04 Jan '26

Good evening, Apologies as this is likely the incorrect way to do things. I'm not fantastic with mailing lists. I saw on tor forum that some people were getting these netscan emails from hetzner. https://forum.torproject.org/t/tor-relays-abuse-report-from-relays-in-famil… I got my first a few months ago and I just got my second one about an hour ago. Both times it was to the 1st amendment group IP addresses. Last time I just clicked their check button and it passed and then I gave reasoning in the next link. For some reason it doesn't seem to be liking when I click the first link this time and keeps saying not solved. I don't know what my best course of action is. I've gotten 2 reports for hetzner for a guard and 0 for netcup for an exit relay :( I saw in the forum post (which is to a clone of the mailing list) about temporarily blocking tor but that feels a bit deceptive so I don't really want to go down that route. The best thing though it may be a long process as there may be a potential harm to how circuits are built negatively affecting user anonymity is for the tor program to operate in a manner so that it doesn't look like a netscan to some sensitive providers like hetzner even though we know it isn't a netscan anyways. If this issue keeps coming up with hetzner I may look at not hosting a tor relay with them because I have a lot of stuff on this server like my personal website and project mirrors and such and don't want those to be negatively affected due to a unjust IP ban by hetzner for running a tor relay. Any advice? Kind regards, Diyar Ciftci

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Questions about running an exit relay
by tor＠rehcamp.de 03 Jan '26

03 Jan '26

Hi dear list, I hope I am in the correct place for my questions regarding my tor setup. I am currently running a guard/middle relay on a vServer. The relay runs inside a docker container, exposing OrPort and DirPort externally and ControlPort and MetricsPort internally. On the same machine, but in different docker networks (except for prometheus for metrics), multiple other containers providing my personal infrastructure are running. All of them run behind caddy, which only forwards requests coming to specific subdomains on a specific domain. First of all: Is this already a bad idea? Do you seperate tor relays and personal infrastructure physically or in VMs instead of containers? Now, as netcup is my provider and they seem to tolerate exit nodes, I am thinking about allowing exits. I assume this would increase visibility of my server and maybe attract more attention. Knowing the IP address of the tor node, it could be possible to find other domains pointing to it (the PTR record however points to an irrelevant entry) and maybe find the subdomains leading to (still login-protected) infra. Do you think this is a reason not to open the relay for exits? I only have a single IPv4 address to use, additional addresses would imply additional costs. However, I do have a /64 block of IPv6 addresses. For IPv6, i could separate the tor address from the address used personally and therefore make it impossible to reach anything except tor over the designated address and covert any other domains, as they won't be associated with the tor address. Do you think this would be needed/enough? In this case, I would restrict the relay to IPv6-only exits. I am sorry if I could have found more information in the docs, but everything that I did find did not answer my questions enough. Kind regards.

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CPU requirement gone up?
by gerard＠bulger.co.uk 31 Dec '25

31 Dec '25

(Linux 6.8.0-90-ge...) Tor 0.4.8.21 (recommended) I used spin up Webtunnels on very cheap VPS, bandwidth and uptime being my main consideration. But in recent days CPU is 99% even at quiet sites with under 50 outgoing connections. This is new. It would run at 30-50% before. Gerry

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abuse report from relays in family 7EAAC49A7840D33B62FA276429F3B03C92AA9327
by Dimitris T. 29 Dec '25

29 Dec '25

Hey all, got an abuse report today from Hetzner concerning one middle relay we're running there. allegedly, our relay has been port scanning (port 443 only) some members of https://metrics.torproject.org/rs.html#search/family:7EAAC49A7840D33B62FA27… (just from family relays in 96.9.98.0/24 range, all using ORPort 443) anyone else got similar abuse reports? or someone here from this relay family, that can clear things out with this isp? thinking of replying to hetzner accordingly, let them know (with metrics link), that these are tor relays with 443 port open/accepting our middle relay connections, not port scans... best, d.

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Consensus frequently reports relay down, despite relay passing traffic
by forest-relay-contact＠cryptolab.net 29 Dec '25

29 Dec '25

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA512 Hello. One of my relays, forest19 (E21B4A2C2852298186C0EA7E2F900EF03AE38D69), frequently appears offline in the consensus despite my uptime monitors and bandwidth graphs showing uninterrupted activity. About once a day to once every other day, I get a Tor Weather notice that my relay has been offline for the last 4 hours. The relay is able to ping all authorities but Sarge, and I am not seeing abnormally high packet loss. How do I troubleshoot this? Regards, forest -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- iQIzBAEBCgAdFiEEvLrj6cuOL+I/KdxYBh18rEKN1gsFAmlN4PQACgkQBh18rEKN 1gtdxg//QENLNjbb8Ukg40Cyd5vaJDw7PSmcS7XKTh1VID6ZrCdw53arHiYBfvZM Ez26SRD+4gj6//Oz+uz2A0jcBJ8fa+RewTwm4WBthiNGLs8hhyt03CN9zA/j/sm0 9VEkxORYAnjTwJmUQYZKIzfF0GdjJirfuk/daq2q5s4Uxd1tspSSTvYI/O/myE+l 7M5qXtu7OSAJynwYGySQPudt9dGgXdb7fDCATaM7gczXpkHFkSxwIrCNHGYPPL+/ Y/xewRs5rHb0TS8DRJcvDKNBSRaTTNLUQkmiRN4it7pY3w/DWkEWduTwvufMsvK3 3AOs75oaO2cs2WVkqQag12uHTtw78uzegObZl9RPaWmThrbQ8SF/co+10zUUlUa9 UXik2zgpAyQzLLb6TNmLAkNAALQUXvO6YZnZ2z6lrkiXW5ySsgmAhgKaPX9JufKz xbXJ2kkyWRt5xP4y/I5tHj+vmjhLjahmn/gy2O3S1atdTwsd5OX0sn1MzdLfsjw2 9DPaCZpvaOCXwHoQFYM5q0K+JqDNrhsgoCMbjnIhrj/J19OCCYoaLPDd4rxrMOJ8 nsl6hzxi6804hol4A9MDnWzNpAxdxFahSbEE523TfG6OaQG4rw2GyP15Ai6NK6fO Am1cgei2NDAZBquFNB7tI2gfGvle+n7boviHdaMNmlEqMhLL7Pk= =hlTa -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Manual calculation of the bridge-moji
by Marek Küthe 29 Dec '25

29 Dec '25

Hello, When I add a bridge in Tor Browser, the fingerprint is displayed with four emojis. I would be interested to know how I can create this fingerprint manually, for example with Ansible or a Python script. The reason for this is that I would like to list my bridges with their fingerprints on my website, preferably with emojis as well. I would appreciate a reply! Best regards, Marek Küthe -- Marek Küthe m.k(a)mk16.de er/ihm he/him

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RouteFluxMap: open-source Tor relay map with historical bandwidth snapshots
by Tor at 1AEO 27 Dec '25

27 Dec '25

Hello tor-relays, I’m sharing a new open-source visualization tool for exploring Tor relay distribution and bandwidth over time (updated daily): - Live site: https://routefluxmap.1aeo.com - Open-source code: https://github.com/1aeo/routefluxmap What it does: - Interactive world map of Tor relays, with relay presence and density visualized using bandwidth-weighted aggregation - Flow-style visualization based on the probability of traffic per relay, derived from each relay’s advertised bandwidth and consensus weight (not traffic tracing) - Historical snapshots built from Tor Collector / Onionoo data, covering 2007 through present - Country-level summaries showing relay count and aggregate bandwidth Why this is useful for relay operators: - Provides a fast, high-level view of where Tor bandwidth is concentrated geographically - Helps identify broad shifts in relay distribution or bandwidth that may correlate with performance or reachability changes - Useful for gaining network-wide context when debugging issues that aren’t obvious from single-relay metrics alone Implementation notes: - Static frontend built with Astro + React using Deck.gl and MapLibre - Data pipeline aggregates publicly available Tor network metadata into versioned historical snapshots Feedback is welcome, particularly on which additional historical or aggregate views would be most useful for operators. Significant inspiration and guidance from an open source and 7 year previously retired effort, TorFlow: https://github.com/unchartedsoftware/torflow Tor at 1AEO 1st Amendment Encrypted Openness (1AEO)

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(FWD) December 2025 tor-edu update
by Roger Dingledine 27 Dec '25

27 Dec '25

Hi folks! Here is the latest update from the EFF Tor university relay campaign. We've added eight new relay groups since the last update. You can see the campaign page here: https://toruniversity.eff.org/ One of its advocacy goals is to show momentum at getting more relays running in universities and other educational institutions, first because universities make sense from an education/community/research perspective: https://toruniversity.eff.org/administrators/ and also because we want to help show the world that running relays is a normal activity that many groups around the world do, for a variety of reasons. If you are connected to an educational institution and you are reading this and want to get involved, please reach out to us! --Roger ----- Forwarded message from Roger Dingledine <arma(a)torproject.org> ----- Date: Fri, 26 Dec 2025 11:16:21 -0500 From: Roger Dingledine <arma(a)torproject.org> To: toredu-announce(a)lists.eff.org Subject: [Toredu-announce] December 2025 tor-edu update Hello excellent university relay operators, Since the July update, we have added 8 more new relay groups to https://toruniversity.eff.org/: * NYU Abu Dhabi (UAE), run by Zacharia Kornas in Christina Pöpper's research group * University of Macedonia (Greece), run by professor Panagiotis Fouliras * Bern University of Applied Sciences (Switzerland), run by professor Christian Grothoff * Hampden-Sydney College (US), run by professor William Tolley * A second relay at Arizona State University (US), now an exit relay, run by Pratham Gupta connected to professor Yan Shoshitaishvili's group * Fort Hays State University (US), run by Instructor Jackie Zhang * KAIST (Korea), run by Jinseo Lee in Min Suk Kang's research group * National Taiwan Normal University (Taiwan), run by a student named NZ I've added these folks to this list -- welcome! -- and it brings our total to 43 institutions. The two new relays at KAIST and NTNU are the first relays in East Asia to join the campaign! Here is a reminder that if your educational-network relay has been running for a year and you haven't gotten your awesome EFF challenge coin gift and you haven't heard from Cooper, please reach out to me or him and we'll get your coin(s) on track. And lastly, we've been pondering how best to set up a community for the tor-edu operators to share information and grow solidarity with each other. I would feel bad adding more zoom calls to people's schedules. Maybe we should start a wiki to record advice / experiences / questions asynchronously? Let us know if you are interested to help brainstorm about community and we will happily work with you. Thanks for everything! --Roger _______________________________________________ toredu-announce mailing list toredu-announce(a)lists.eff.org https://lists.mayfirst.org/mailman/listinfo/toredu-announce ----- End forwarded message -----

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Bridge "identity crisis" after reinstallation
by telekobold 26 Dec '25

26 Dec '25

Hi, about four weeks ago, I switched off one of my relays and two of my bridges running on Debian 11 ("Bullseye") systems after discovering the "not recommended" flags on the Tor metrics overview of those relays with the intension of reinstalling and reconfiguring the underlying VMs and relays the following days. (A few days later, I read on this list that those flags are not that critical, but unfortunately Tor doesn't seem to be updated for Debian 11 at the official torproject Debian repositories [1]). But as life goes, something always came up in the days that followed. However, a week ago, I finally wanted to reinstall one of the bridges. I'm using Offline Relay Identity Keys [2], so I created a new intermediate key pair consisting of ed25519_signing_cert and ed25519_signing_secret_key locally and copied them to /var/lib/tor/keys on my freshly installed VM, together with ed25519_master_id_public_key. Unfortunately, I didn't copy the old secret_id_key key file. I then realized that the fingerprint files under /var/lib/tor changed (despite that IP address, port number and identity key stayed the same) and that I wasn't able to connect to my bridge using Tor Browser. So, a week later (yesterday), I gave it a new try and did the complete reinstallation and configuration process again, but with the slight difference of also copying the files secret_onion_key, secret_onion_key_ntor and secret_id_key to /var/lib/tor/keys. This resulted in the fingerprint files being as they were on my old installation, but I read the following message at /var/log/tor/notices.log: [warn] http status 400 ("Looks like your keypair has changed? This authority previously recorded a different RSA identity for this Ed25519 identity (or vice versa.) Did you replace or copy some of your key files, but not the others? You should either restore the expected keypair, or delete your keys and restart Tor to start your relay with a new identity.") response from dirserver 66.111.2.131:9001. Please correct. So, I uninstalled tor, copied only the files ed25519_master_id_public_key, secret_id_key, ed25519_signing_cert and ed25519_signing_secret_key to /var/lib/tor/keys, which unfortunately also resulted in the above warning message. My question now: Do I still have a change to recover the "old identity" of my bridge, or did I "burn" the old identity now since the directory authorities apparently registered a new identity? Kind regards telekobold [1] https://deb.torproject.org/torproject.org/dists/bullseye/main/binary-amd64/… [2] https://gitlab.torproject.org/legacy/trac/-/wikis/doc/TorRelaySecurity/Offl…

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You can delete my Relay from consensus
by code9n＠pm.me 26 Dec '25

26 Dec '25

Hi, Doubt you need to know this but you can delete my relay: 41D4F82AB54AE5C5FB8D3CD24B4FC84350EFEF03 from the consensus, etc. The price for renewing has gone up 69 per cent from two years ago and it's through put has halved for the last six months or so. Not sure if Tor just doesn't need it as much as it did or if the vps hosting provider (Hostworld) is throttling it. I'll start a completely new one early in the new year when I get some time. This one is dead and the vps hire has expired - I no longer have access to it. Just out of interest is my telling [Tor Project] this useful? Christmas-y regards, Pete

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Do nameservers ever block an entire /64 if a Tor exit is in there?
by forest-relay-contact＠cryptolab.net 20 Dec '25

20 Dec '25

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA512 Hello. I'm aware that some nameservers block Tor, so running a recursive local resolver on the same IP that traffic exits can be a bad idea. The usual solution is to buy an extra IPv4 and bind the local resolver to it. What about IPv6? Is it safe to simply make a new IPv6 on the same /64 and use that for recursive lookups, or are there nameservers that block the entire /64 that a single Tor exit relay is on? I currently use Unbound with "do-ip6: no" because I do not want to fail lookups and receive a BadExit flag if my entire /64 is blocked. Regards, forest -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- iQIzBAEBCgAdFiEEvLrj6cuOL+I/KdxYBh18rEKN1gsFAmlFss8ACgkQBh18rEKN 1gugfA//UuYYhq7ATC1r3J/t5yHXB0bovAPzj519ICXGXaJ0TW86hY3PC5WzdYzk zKvKXArhQKm2Xdu9kh2w6YfETo3xTdUnTyLlBH1T/oeMamARUw1S+Osld4goiTS2 gsRzhN7hvzHw7NqMJLV+xEZQFBVLRg0Fi2E3oOqk5dBRbd5cMzpWZ4HiMqsY3jHH 6h5RY0HLk4HqPxGzAk0KRF056hDf4PmuGZuHSYsBR8PPMS4HwF/p6772KEK/ajBG VZr+v0Moi22dLMno+2SjkPy0rEOkRzOinOmqBLl6ajakn5lff0vR83eANTl3Vz2t bfP4PJ8bbraMVVdUEa5VobdDD8pGTbrryiB71gWO2AwS0GVnq8JIBK8pGSMAXmfc FNqxN/owYDSC+N3SlbOvK4YtIqbt5VKcU7nOuPzfBzm1cLMMq1NogzVN+FAdW9vr l9WD3AnKon6REM4ZpimDOZX8/5k0WKhhPm1TWmPa7ZB9NYyzQlbxEUmIIkQIXasW W0sVTeZ3vUwVQrUPilA8M0o8/cuWZleXs7RKNJP2T2r74olwUOw9E/afZXKxG9Hj daA1yUeD6tnUYk/pITddKHQ2V7Qd0BdHO2DMqQ71Bkcb7vTm/Ni45/jDaScaivz0 7vdCwPkC9k/sLEHHZ1kd33fjsGddILf7azSBRameI+9tgKZdw3E= =Z0tl -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Fwd: Potential vulnerability found in your Tor Relay
by krishna e bera 20 Dec '25

20 Dec '25

Hi all, Just got the below notice from researchers. Is the stated vulnerability an actively exploited problem or is this a DoS attack by scaremongering? This topic seems to have been covered in https://nusenu.medium.com/how-vulnerable-is-the-tor-network-to-bgp-hijackin… but i am not sure how to apply it to my situation. I have turned off the Guard capability for now. Doubtful i can influence the service provider to get them to publish a new ROA. Is there another mitigation? Regrets to all who were using the service :( -------- Forwarded Message -------- Subject: Potential vulnerability found in your Tor Relay Date: Thu, 18 Dec 2025 23:57:20 +0000 From: ENGR - SIDR Hello, We are writing to alert you that your Tor relay(s) (Pasquino3) is/are vulnerable to active BGP attacks that could be used to de-anonymize users. The best mitigation to help protect your relay is to have your service provider publish a ROA for prefix(es) 209.44.96.0/19 at AS(es) 10929 with a maxLength(s) of 19. We are researchers from the University of Connecticut reaching out to inform you that your Tor guard relay with IP address(es) 209.44.114.178 (Pasquino3) is/are currently covered by a Route Origin Authorization (ROA) which has an improperly configured maxLength attribute. This makes it vulnerable to BGP subprefix origin hijacks, where a malicious autonomous-system-level attacker may announce a subprefix of 209.44.96.0/19 and misdirect traffic destined with a high (>99%) rate of success. Guidance on how to correctly set the maxLength attribute is contained in https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc9319. We determined this vulnerability using public data sets including relay information from the Tor consensus, the RIPEStat data for IP prefix, and ROA coverage information. Feel free to contact us if you have further questions. For further information on ROAs, see https://www.ripe.net/manage-ips-and-asns/resource-management/rpki/bgp-origi… If you are not a Tor relay operator and this message reached you in error, please let us know. Thank you, UConn Secure Interdomain Routing Group

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automatic exit restriction policy does not include IPv6
by Marco Moock 19 Dec '25

19 Dec '25

Hello! I noticed that the implicit exit policy includes IPv4 localhost, RFC1918 IPv4 ranges etc, but does not include IPv6 by default, e.g. ::1, fe80::/10, fec0::/10 and not the public IPv6 itself. Is that a bug or a configuration issue? -- kind regards Marco Send spam to abfall1766003955(a)stinkedores.dorfdsl.de

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Re: DirPort IPv6
by Marco Moock 05 Dec '25

05 Dec '25

On 04.12.2025 20:22 DiffieHellman <mailing_list(a)middlendian.com> wrote: > Reviewing a lot of contradictory information online and the tor > ChangeLog and torrc.sample, it appears that the DirPort supports > IPv6, but only authorities actually advertise directory information > anymore. > > There is still the secondary DirPort use, to serve the tor exit > notice (DirPort 80\n DirPortFrontPage /etc/tor/tor-exit-notice.html) > - which seems to be only targeted at those who see abuse and decide > to put the IPv4 address into a search engine and realise that it's a > tor exit (it seems that an assumption has been made that such sort > typically manages broken networks that are IPv4-only and therefore > listening on IPv6 wouldn't achieve anything). Thanks for the clarification. The note about this in the default torrc is outdated. -- kind regards Marco Send spam to abfall1764876123(a)stinkedores.dorfdsl.de

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My exit isn't listed at https://check.torproject.org/exit-addresses
by Jon 05 Dec '25

05 Dec '25

Hi All, My exit 128.31.0.13 https://metrics.torproject.org/rs.html#details/A53C46F5B157DD83366D45A8E99A… is no longer listed in https://check.torproject.org/exit-addresses This is causing an uptick in abuse complaints to my upstream provider and making their stock response to check there a bit of a lie. metrics seem to show the relay is in good health and has a 14d uptime (since last package update). any idea what's going on with that? Thanks, -Jon

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Re: Out-of-Memory-Attack & DoS from Tor-Client
by ProSecureRelays 04 Dec '25

04 Dec '25

Hi there, It's very unfortunate, but I don't have the Logs due to initial mistake I made, not setting up a Logfile. In the updated torrc file, i recently added it but I thought it is not worth a restart to implement this. Now it works. But I saw the relay logs in the cmd during the attack, and there was nothing unusal at all, except for the high rejection rates. The Out-of-Memory was also an Error that came from Windows, not the tor-process itself. I'm a bit positive surprised by the Windows Memory Management, all System Processes and the OS were unaffected by the attack. Additionally I have an powershell-script that monitores the tor.exe and restarts it after 2 minutes of "cool-down" if it crashes for 3 times. This was the first time it was ever needed, and I hope next time is not soon. Then I will also try the stupid oversize approach.. ;) About the Firewall Topic: I've read this manual you sent before, but I think its impossible with the windows firewall implementation. That's one weakness of closed source, either it matches the use case or you have to go for something completely different. The Windows Firewall is not statefull, but I had implemented very restrictive rules since the first day. However, this is limited by allowing only the tor.exe and related stuff to send and recieve traffic. If you would try to open a new process not listed, communication would fail. But fancy "real-time" stuff - not a chance. I mean creating some rules via powershell no prob, but how to analyse the concurrent, tor related connections (grabbing netstat?!) - sounds difficult and ressource heavy to me, and I'm sadly not a coding expert. In total there are 3 Firewalls between Internet and Tor, one Open-Source, one proprietary and the Windows Firewall, maybe I can stop this happening at another point in the network. I'll dig a bit deeper when I have the time, next step planned is implement Windows Applikation Control, so only the tor.exe I've made a checksum beforehand, is allowed to run. But thats a different topic. Thank you very much for your suggestions and maybe other hints/tips! Best regards, Joker

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Out-of-Memory-Attack & DoS from Tor-Client
by ProSecureRelays 04 Dec '25

04 Dec '25

Hi there, i just want to report two partially successfull DoS Attacks on my Relay: First attack: Occured yesterday. The tor process showed massive traffic, much more my upload ( 45 Mbits) could handle. I don't know how in detail this worked, but I had receiving traffic at about 40Mbits and the relay tried to send about 100Mbits towards WAN. Because I didn't know if this was harmful traffic for the tor network, I finally pulled the plug and obtained a new IP after about 4 hours into the attack. I had the feeling that a short time, there was still unusual sending/recieving ratio, but all related to tor.exe and it stabilized soon after. My Guess ist hat a malformed packet was sent by tor, resulting in uncontrolled, unknown traffic to the WAN-Side. The Realy had 3 DDoS Circuits killed, rejected circuits and introduce 2 at unnormal high rate, also like 117 marked addresses. It sent about 250GB more then it recieved. The attack is also clearly visible in Tor Metrics, a massive spike in written Bytes can be seen. Fingerprint: 8AFE4E6F05234B0184327C052B09F10191EAFAF3 Second Attack (today): Today at about 2 p.m., the memory of the relay spiked to maximum (8GB) and additionally 22GB of virtual memory was used. This caused the process to die, with an out-of-memory Error. This also must came from a malformed packet in tor. Is there any known method to circumvent both of these Issues? In the first event, i don't know if the error could have cleared self after some more hours. Regarding the memory issue, i think this must be resolved in the tor software itself, allthough I thought about adding 64GB of RAM and 256GB Page-File, just to see if it makes any difference in case of attacks. But I don't think so. Best regards, Joker

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Add CGNAT 100.64.0.0/10 to Default Exit Relay Reject Policy
by admin＠likogan.dev 04 Dec '25

04 Dec '25

Hello, I've noticed that the non-publicly routable CGNAT subnet of 100.64.0.0/10 is not in the default exit policy reject list like 192.168/16 and 10/8 are. This range is not publicly routed, and should never need to be accessed from a Tor exit. Tailscale and other ISPs use this block. How many exit relays connected to a Tailscale network are unknowingly exposing all of their other Tailscale devices to the Tor network? ISPs may be less willing to allow exit relays if there are bots using Tor to toy with the ISPs 100.64/10 range. Maybe there is something I am missing for it to not be included? Thanks, Likogan.Dev

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DirPort IPv6
by Marco Moock 03 Dec '25

03 Dec '25

Hello! Does DirPort support IPv6? If I use it without address, it only listend on the IPv4 socket. If I use DirPort [::]:9030, it cannot start up. -- kind regards Marco Send spam to abfall1764741021(a)stinkedores.dorfdsl.de

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Small update to Relay Operator Expectations Policy
by Georg Koppen 02 Dec '25

02 Dec '25

Hello! We just pushed a commit to update our Relay Operator Expectations Policy[1] to version 2.1. It comes with a clarification for section "3. Make sure your relay isn't broken", where we now say "Don't block outgoing connections." instead of "Don't firewall outgoing connections." This makes the point we try to convey in that particular part of the policy clearer. For context, this topic got raised in a recent thread about Hetzner related issues[2] and, while we improved the wording of our expectations document and updated the bad-relay criteria accordingly, we are not done on that front yet. There is still a ticket open for investigating potentially acceptable solutions dealing with the underlying issue at Hetzner on a technical level[3]. Depending on that outcome and after thinking through filtering/rate-limiting concerns we might need to update the expectations document in the future again. Thanks to everyone who helped so far both with the technical investigation and policy discussion. Georg [1] https://community.torproject.org/policies/relays/expectations-for-relay-ope… [2] https://lists.torproject.org/mailman3/hyperkitty/list/tor-relays@lists.torp… [3] https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/network-health/analysis/-/issues/105

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Split Horizon Tor+Mastodon
by Jon 02 Dec '25

02 Dec '25

Hi All, I'm working on https://domum.social a Mastodon instance that does not collect email addresses and only allows authenticated access via the tor hidden service URL: http://f3rz5puehnq7dfqqwajxu3izuovb6wqepof3prqesle76qyfivlfxgyd.onion Federation to and from the regular clear-net fediverse works as normal. While there's a number of Mastodon instances that have onion addresses and at least one I found that doesn't block well know disposable email addresses like sharklasers.com, this puts a high burden on the user. My technical goal with domum.social is to make privacy the default so you can't accidentally login outside Tor and there's no opportunity to enter an identifiable email address. Socially a lot of documentation is needed so that a general audience can understand how to evaluate their own threat models and manage their own operational security. I've been working on the site off and on since last April and running live with myself as the only user for about a month. Before taking on real users I want to open the concept and implementation to wider scrutiny. I'm an infrastructure person not a a programmer by trade so hopefully it's not too ugly. I tried to keep code over rides to a minimum with nothing in tree. This repo has all the Mastodon related overrides: https://github.com/domum-social/mastodon-additions There's a bit more special sauce in the proxy config to disallow access to the authentication endpoints on the clear-net site, and to ensure rewriting of clear-net URL that mastodon generates to the onion URL when accessed through the hidden site. The mail server config is also a bit special so most users get their fake internal email discarded but Admins and Moderators (who are nonymous) can get real mail deliver to be notified or any issues. Depending on feed back, I'm hoping to start a limited public beta in about a week. Any and all thoughts are appreciated here, or on Mastodon @jon@domum.social Thanks! -Jon https://metrics.torproject.org/rs.html#details/A53C46F5B157DD83366D45A8E99A…

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