- tor-relays - lists.torproject.org

Cloudflare Onions Beta and Network Stability
by Nathaniel Suchy 29 Aug '18

29 Aug '18

As some of you may have heard, Cloudflare is beta testing opportunistic onions. This of course is going to create more Tor traffic. Cloudflare has several concerns about running their own relays and says they won’t at this time. That said if every Cloudflare website becomes an Onion Service overnight how would that affect network stability and what can we as relay operators do to prepare for it?

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The truth about Greypony
by Tor Professional 29 Aug '18

29 Aug '18

The truth must come out eventually about the menace known as Greypony. Now that people are beginning to realize what a menace to our network Greypony really is maybe this information will finally get us to banish him once and for all. Greypony has no real customers. You will not find a legitimate customer because they do not exist. They are all one Conrad Rockenhaus. Just so you know. Do you know any of the people that are bragging about using Greypony? Are they true professionals that use Tor? I do not think so. Find one person that you can legitimately trust that has used Greypony or that has dealt with Rockenhaus legitimately and you will not find one because such a person does not exist. Greypony lies about their bandwidth numbers. Those numbers are impossible. How are they eclipsing some of the fastest tor exits on the Internet? How are they operating the fastest exits in Canada? By lying about their numbers and cheating. What are Rockenhaus' motives for doing this? He says he wants to help Tor but we all know that he is full of it. Why would someone like him want to help us? We do not need someone like him. We can do better. We are better. Let us apply a little chemotherapy to the cancer and kill off Greypony.

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Re: [tor-relays] Individual Operator Exit Probability Threshold
by Paul Templeton 28 Aug '18

28 Aug '18

> About finding sponsors for high speed exits, it could be nice > to gather ideas. Can I ask what is a high speed/capacity exit? For me it would be >10MiB/s am I correct? Paul

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[release] ExoneraTor 3.0.1
by Karsten Loesing 28 Aug '18

28 Aug '18

Hi relay operators, today we released ExoneraTor 3.0.1 which fixes links to IP addresses in the same /24 or /48 IP network (#27266). This is also the first release after making several code improvements, which ideally should not affect operation. But just in case something breaks that was previously working, this could be the reason. Please direct any comments or questions to the (public) metrics-team mailing list: https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/metrics-team All the best, Karsten

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Protecting Tor Circuit path selection from correlation attacks by an autonomous system
by Nathaniel Suchy 28 Aug '18

28 Aug '18

This thread continues the broader discussion of Tor Circuit path selection discussed at https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-relays/2018-August/015994.html regarding possible correlation attacks by an autonomous system. *Current measures include:* * Preventing two relays from the same /16 in IPv4 and /32 in IPv6 networks, from being in the same Tor circuit. CIDR is helpful, but is it enough? * The MyFamily directive, this does rely on relay operators being honest and we shouldn't rely on this as the sole indicator. * Others things that I am not aware of? *Some measures worth considering include:* * Preventing two relays in the same ASN from being in a circuit. * Maybe prevent two relays in the same ASN from being Guard and Exit, excluding the middle relay from this calculation. * Bridges could be a challenge when implementing this, although it's not impossible. * Looking at relays with same/similar names, heuristics maybe? It's really guesswork but hey it might work. * Looking at relays with same/similar contact info * Looking at relays in the same geographic regions and avoiding them * Relays with the same non-standard ports - excluding 9001, 9030, 80, 443 (anything else that's super common?) * On device models looking at the above data to make decisions of which relays are most likely run by the same entity, use machine learning to make an informed decision based on all factors maybe? *Papers worth reviewing:* * AS-awareness in Tor Path Selection https://www.freehaven.net/anonbib/cache/DBLP:conf/ccs/EdmanS09.pdf * Users Get Routed: Traffic Correlation on Tor by Realistic Adversaries https://www.ohmygodel.com/publications/usersrouted-ccs13.pdf * Moving Tor Circuits Towards Multiple-Path: Anonymity and Performance Considerations https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/aa94/7dd4762bd0f6531bacfeac9d29ef1e1d4cd6.… * Avoiding The Man on the Wire: Improving Tor’s Security with Trust-Aware Path Selection https://www.nrl.navy.mil/itd/chacs/sites/www.nrl.navy.mil.itd.chacs/files/p… *Outside the scope:* * In AS-es where Virtual Machines are sold, and Physical Machines are not. It's quite possible that the provider may steal relay keys. Little research exists where you could successfully protect against such an adversary who isn't playing nice. Legislation (For example, GDPR) in the EU exists where such activity may violate local laws. This may or may not be enough. Certainly not against a government actor, but against an AS doing it per their only devices maybe. * An AS hosting a Tor relay who logs or watches network traffic will always be able to learn something about the circuit, but perhaps we can prevent them from learning everything about the circuit most of the time. Everyone on the list has a had very insightful and helpful thoughts on this discussion so far and I'm looking forward to getting more discussion of the broader issue. Cordially, Nathaniel Suchy

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Avoiding Off-Topic Posts
by teor 28 Aug '18

28 Aug '18

Hi, A healthy, robust, and growing tor network needs a lot of different ways to run tor relays. Focusing on one or two models creates single points of failure. So we encourage individual volunteers, organisations, donations, paid services, and researchers: as long as they operate ethically and prioritise user safety. That said, this list is for "support and questions about running Tor relays". In future, please: * keep on topic, we are here to help each other run Tor relays * make sure each post contains new, useful information. You can search the archives before posting: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-relays/ * avoid promoting or criticising the same providers more than once a month * deal with commercial / payment issues off-list But you should feel free to ask questions about operating relays at any time. T -- teor Please reply @torproject.org New subkeys 1 July 2018 PGP C855 6CED 5D90 A0C5 29F6 4D43 450C BA7F 968F 094B ----------------------------------------------------------------------

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Issues regarding 185.125.33.114 relay
by Nathaniel Suchy 27 Aug '18

27 Aug '18

Can the operator of the relay 185.125.33.114 please reach out to me? There is not any contact information available on Tor Metrics for the relay. Cordially, Nathaniel Suchy

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Congrats to Nullvoid
by Conrad Rockenhaus 27 Aug '18

27 Aug '18

I just wanted to say congratulations to Nullvoid, who is currently running the second fastest exit in France in my colo in Europe. https://metrics.torproject.org/rs.html#details/51420DFB2047A33803A9A6E456D6… Also, go FreeBSD! Thanks, Conrad

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Re: [tor-relays] Individual Operator Exit Probability Threshold
by livak 25 Aug '18

25 Aug '18

Hi ! In a an older thread I read: > Like Teor mentioned, it's important for operators to increase capacity > and stability, while still meaningfully supporting diversity. Emerald > Onion is not going to surpass 10% of exit capacity without first > helping ~10 other groups set up and manage their own 1%+ relays. As > more and more high-capacity groups come online, I think orgs like > Quintex and Emerald Onion can slowly increase capacity but stick > around the 10% line. Is there any help for setting up new high capacity exit relays ? Livak Sent with [ProtonMail](https://protonmail.com) Secure Email.

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Yay, Complaints
by Conrad Rockenhaus 25 Aug '18

25 Aug '18

So, new equipment gets plugged into a colo…. I’m a dude that was looking to increase AS diversity on Tor and well, decided to add a new colo to the mix. Two exit relays are brought online on properly SWIPed IP addresses. These exit relays have only been online for about 24 hours. An organization, known as Irdeto Intelligence, ignores the fact that the IP addresses are SWIPed and sends abuse complaints to my upstream providers asking them to straighten me out, because I’m a pox on society because people are torrenting via Tor. They have sent over 40 emails in the last 12 hours. Some dude-man, who calls himself a “Network Security Administrator” who asked me to explain what Tor is……….because he’s a Network Security Administrator……..has told me that due to the volume of complaints I need to block the offending applications from their network. I told him that I spoke with them prior to bringing this stuff online, explained what Tor was, explained what a Tor exit was, explained that it will generate complaints, explained the DCMA liability, explained the whole thing…..and was told that they were okay with it. I’m sorry for the bitching and moaning…it’s just another case of doing everything right and now I’m quite worried that they’ll not only pull the plug, that I’ll have to fight to get my Cisco UCS blade server back (and other assorted equipment) which is totally not going to be cool. Conrad

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Freebsd trial with greypony.it was a success
by zimmer linux 24 Aug '18

24 Aug '18

Hi, Conrad Rockenhaus - with your guidance and support with freebsd, within just 21 days total running time, you have helped me set up and manage the fastest exit relay in all of Canada. See https://metrics.torproject.org/rs.html#search/country:ca%20flag:exit https://metrics.torproject.org/rs.html#details/D9B1E08CC91F7F42EEE5578EA8B0… Give yourself a pat on the back. If anyone wants to talk through running a freebsd relay, feel free to contact me off list. Zim

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Snowflake PT
by Nathaniel Suchy 24 Aug '18

24 Aug '18

Hi everyone, Tor Browser 8 Alpha includes the Snowflake PT as it comes near a final release, the adoption and usage of the Snowflake PT will continue to rise. I now have the following questions... 1) Will a command line tool like an obfs4proxy come out so those of us with infrastructure can run high capacity snowflake bridges. 2) Is the goal to replace OBFS4 with Snowflake or will they continue to co-exist? 3) How does Snowflake attempt to obfuscate, if at all it's traffic? How strong is the cryptography compared to obfs4proxy Looking forward to learning more about this :) Cordially, Nathaniel Suchy

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Dropping packets with TCP MSS=1400 to foil GFW active probing
by David Fifield 22 Aug '18

22 Aug '18

A paper from FOCI 2018 by Arun Dunna, Ciarán O'Brien, and Phillipa Gill on the subject of Tor bridge blocking in China has this interesting suggestion (Section 5.2): https://www.usenix.org/conference/foci18/presentation/dunna To do this, we write a series specific rules using iptables in order to drop packets from Chinese scanners. ... We use a rule to drop incoming Tor packets with an MSS of 1400. Further investigation would be needed to analyze potential false positives... We note that this method of dropping scan traffic successfully keeps our bridge relays from being blocked and allows our client in China to maintain access to the bridge. Like https://github.com/NullHypothesis/brdgrd, surely this trick won't work forever, but if you're setting up a new bridge, it's worth a try? This is completely untested, but I think the iptables rule would look something like this: iptables -A INPUT --protocol tcp --dport [your-bridge-port] -m tcpmss --mss 1400 -j DROP Then, after a while, check /var/lib/tor/stats/bridge-stats and see if you have any connections from "cn".

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Interested in running a FreeBSD Relay on Cogent?
by Conrad Rockenhaus 21 Aug '18

21 Aug '18

Would you like to trial a FreeBSD Relay on Cogent until October 1st? Yes, it has to be FreeBSD, because I use Bhyve as my hypervisor and some of my blades don’t support UG, which means, I support FreeBSD only on these series of servers. If you’re interested in a Model “A” (25GB HDD, 1vCPU, 2GB RAM, burstable up to 1gbit of bandwidth/unlimited transfer) running FreeBSD and would like to try it out until October 1st, just send me your Public Key. My hope is you will keep it online and hopefully increase the BSD Relay percentage to 7%. After October 1st its only $15/mo, which is my costs alone. You don’t have to worry about abuse complaints, I handle that for you. You just worry about running your exit and maintaining your OS. I take care of everything else. If you’re interested, send me a public key. Thanks, Conrad

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contact for relay in AS64484
by nusenu 20 Aug '18

20 Aug '18

please drop me an email if you are the operator of F0AA2DB7B4B2E7927F88286788773844B68E2C01 Unnamed at 191.96.249.110 thanks! -- https://twitter.com/nusenu_ https://mastodon.social/@nusenu

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Rendezvous on non-OR circuit?
by tor-markus 20 Aug '18

20 Aug '18

I've been running a tor relay for several days now (C65EF5E06B8338CF976D376048BE2C8FBD499C9C). During my regular checks I noticed something odd within the tor log files. [WARN] Tried to establish rendezvous on non-OR circuit with purpose Acting as rendevous (pending) It occurs several times per hour and I couldn't find anything except the [bug tracker](https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/15618) which seems to be outdated (newest message is four weeks old). I'm concerned that this could be some kind of "attack" that could compromise users, as I'm running an exit node. Does somebody have more information on this matter?

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question related to consensus weight fraction calculation
by Toralf Förster 19 Aug '18

19 Aug '18

I do wonder about any changes in the algorithm which drops the cw of a relay [1] by a magnitude within 1 year as seen in [2]? [1] https://metrics.torproject.org/rs.html#details/1AF72E8906E6C49481A791A6F8F8… [2] https://screenshotscdn.firefoxusercontent.com/images/040958f1-a5be-4630-955… -- Toralf PGP C4EACDDE 0076E94E

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How long before a new relay shows up in Relay Search?
by hanzer＠riseup.net 17 Aug '18

17 Aug '18

Hello, I've recently set up a new relay: Tor 0.3.3.7 (git-035a35178c92da94) on a FreeBSD-11.2 machine. The Tor server's identity key fingerprint is: 'Chiron420 9C7BB4BCB58AC876D83B67277A0CF3BC73F4FDF6' A search for this relay on the metrics site says "No Results found!" <https://metrics.torproject.org/rs.html#search/Chiron420%209C7BB4BCB58AC876D…> Is this typical or might there be something awry in my setup? Thanks!

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Random Relay Reset On Mac OS + OS Support Question
by Keifer Bly 17 Aug '18

17 Aug '18

Hello, So something strange happened recently with my relay running on Mac OS via homebrew at https://metrics.torproject.org/rs.html#details/DB1AF6477BB276B6EA5E72132684… Just this morning, my relays uptime had been reset to 0 days. When I checked the software it indeed said the uptime was back to six hours. This is odd as I did not reset thee software within the last 24 hours (that I remember), there was a brief time when my network went down due to an ISP glitch however has been working fine ever since. I am wondering, do newer versions of the tor relay software automatically reset if they detect the internet is unreachable? I also have one more question, around when does tor / homebrew drop support for older versions of an OS? I am asking this because the computer that runs this relay is a 2011 iMac, and Apple has confirmed it will run the new MacOS coming this year (Movari) however versions of macos afterwards are unconfirmed. Thanks all.

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Shutdown by ISP / Hoster? [was Albania]
by grarpamp 16 Aug '18

16 Aug '18

When these ISP's give their shutdowns and excuses, regardless of size of ISP, you could in turn... - Offer to work there, they probably need the help, and you get something from the experience. - Start your own, customers probably need the services, and would be willing to pay. Why vote with only your own customer dollars, when you can add your brain and voice into the production.

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Albania Hosting suspended my two relays
by arisbe 15 Aug '18

15 Aug '18

Greetings Tor Users, I wanted to pass along the death of two of my relays, one was a fallback directory and one exit, both on VPS hardware operated by Albania Hosting sh. a. I successfully operated the guard/middle node for three years without an abuse report. [0] Based on that success, I asked and was granted permission to operate an exit relay. [1] That relay went six months before the first abuse report. I responded to the first report promptly reviewing logs, checking for intrusion, etc. The second abuse report got me suspended. Both abuse reports were of the automated type. I did not see the second report until after suspension and by requesting it be forwarded. In the second instance there was reported one ftpd attack attempt over a period of 3600 seconds. Apparently, no further attempts were made. I was the first Tor relay in Albania and the first Tor exit relay as well so I'm very sad that this will end. I think the issue with Albania Hosting was not so much the automated abuse reports but the inconvenience dealing with me. To quote a recent Hosting email: "Actually we will not fight with such abuses, it is really not worth any penny." So, RIP... [0] TorNodeAlbania D3E5EDDBE5159388704D6785BE51930AAFACEC6F [1] TorExitAlbania 516D1B9E22484202322828D8CAC30325030017E2

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ExoneraTor has moved to Tor Metrics; [release] ExoneraTor 3.0.0
by Karsten Loesing 14 Aug '18

14 Aug '18

Hi, the ExoneraTor service (where one can "enter an IP address and date to find out whether that address was used as a Tor relay") has moved to the Tor Metrics website: https://metrics.torproject.org/exonerator.html Requests to the previous location are automatically redirected to the new location, which includes all permanent links written/printed on previous lookup results. The current plan is to leave redirects in place for the next 6 to 12 months, but if there's a good reason to keep them for longer, please let us know. Just in case you're wondering why we're making this change, it is part of a more long-term effort to bundle all user-facing Tor Metrics content on the Tor Metrics website. Over the past months and years this has affected the Onionoo protocol specification, CollecTor files, the Relay Search service, and now the ExoneraTor service, all of which have been moved over to the Tor Metrics website. At the same time of changing the location of Exonerator, we're releasing ExoneraTor 3.0.0 which redirects all requests to Tor Metrics. However, redirects can easily be disabled in src/main/resources/web.xml, if requests are supposed to be handled locally. Please direct any comments or questions to the (public) metrics-team mailing list: https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/metrics-team All the best, Karsten

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Onionoo protocol broken?
by Ralph Wetzel 14 Aug '18

14 Aug '18

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Re: [tor-relays] [tor-talk] anonymous file storage was "freehaven question".
by Lluís 14 Aug '18

14 Aug '18

Hi, Thanks for the information, pretty useful. I have visited Tahoe-LAFS, seems interesting. I couldn't contact "Aktie" however, maybe they block tor connections ? We should discuss it at "tor-talk", moderators could tell us we are off-topic. Cheers, Lluís mlnl: > Hi, > >> Maybe "anonymous file storage" is a better subject ? >> >> I'm posting it on tor-talk too, and we can follow the discussion >> there. >> >> And back to the topic, maybe it would be possible to set up a >> pilot-test so one could see how many use cases free haven could >> properly solve. >> >> If I didn't understand from "freehaven.net", just cyphering and >> splitting a file among many servers could be useful. > > I have used the Aktie application > <http://i2pwiki.i2p/index.php?title=Aktie> and Tahoe-LAFS with I2P for > filesharing some time and both worked fine. Something like that or OFS > or an distributed, "global OnionShare" (not only friend-to-friend), > povided over a Tor Onion Service client, would be imo fine to store, > share or online-backup files. Or is a more centralized anonymous data > (cloud) haven meant to store files permanently? >

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Will have to keep a close eye on this...
by Paul Templeton 14 Aug '18

14 Aug '18

In the Bill at https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/about/consultations/assistance-and-access-bi… 137CF322859E400455E457DB920F65FFDD222CDF

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