- tor-relays - lists.torproject.org

Guidelines and processes for our bad relay work
by Georg Koppen 08 Apr '20

08 Apr '20

Hello! There has been some confusion among relay operators about how we deal with bad relays and who is actually making decisions and how the overall process is working. Even though we don't have a document yet to point to for answering all those questions (more on that below) we thought it could be useful to give a status update to the relay community and outline possible next steps. One of the tasks in the network health area is to make sure bad relays are found and excluded from the network. This should happen according to transparent criteria which help relay operators to understand both expectations and processes. Ideally, a document containing those criteria would give operators some insight at how we arrived at those as well. Unfortunately and as I said above, we are not at a point yet where we have written up that document. However, that does not mean that removing relays from the network is arbitrary currently. Rather, we have some rules of thumb and some unwritten guidelines which still seem to be worth sharing at this point to help relay operators better understand what is going on in the bad relay detection world. A bad relay is one that either doesn't work properly or tampers with users' connections. This can be either through maliciousness or misconfiguration. We are relying on some scanners that check for common issues to find those relays and on volunteers that spot things beyond what our scanners target. To give you some examples of issues we are concerned about: a) Tampering with exit traffic b) Running HSDirs that harvest and probe .onion addresses c) Issues with resolving DNS queries on exit relays d) Flooding the network with relays to deanonymize users e) Running outdated Tor versions ... Now, how do we detect maliciousness vs. misconfiguration and what do we do about both? There is behavior that we think is clearly malicious like tampering with exit traffic or trying to harvest and probe .onion addresses. In those cases we outright reject relays. In the past we thought relays that tampered with exit traffic could still be useful as non-exit relays and they got the BadExit flag. But it turned out that a bunch of those had other, more subtle, misbehavior and thus we decided to be on the safe side and just reject those malicious relays nowadays. For behavior that could either be malicious or the result of a misconfiguration (like missing MyFamily settings) things get messier. Means for contacting relay operators (e.g. a meaningful ContactInfo entry) are very important in cases where misconfiguration can play a role. We usually contact operators in that case (if possible) to figure out what is going on and help them getting their configurations right. That means there is no outright force removal of relays that e.g. did not have their MyFamily configuration set up properly (we know it can be tricky). That approach is successful in a lot of cases and helps us build a relationship to operators which is worthwhile as well. However, in cases where we don't get a reaction or are getting confident that the intentions of the operator are malicious we'll reject the relay(s) to protect our users. All those activities mentioned above are coordinated on the bad-relays list, which is private and used by members of the team to discuss cases and keep each other in the loop. As to next steps: yes, we need to sit down finishing that document with all the criteria we are concerned with giving some rationale for each of them. Alas, there is no timeframe for getting this work done. But once we are there we'll consult tor-internal and the tor-relays list for input and make changes as needed. I hope this helps to clear some things up. I am happy to answer questions/reply to concerns on and off-list should there be some. Georg

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(FWD) Network is suffering with only two torflows; can you help?
by Roger Dingledine 08 Apr '20

08 Apr '20

FYI, below is a start at a short-term plan to address the current network weighting issues, now that, as of a few weeks ago, gabelmoo's torflow died and Sebastian hasn't been able to get it going properly again. See also nifty's new ticket: https://bugs.torproject.org/33824 --Roger ----- Forwarded message from Roger Dingledine <arma(a)torproject.org> ----- Date: Mon, 6 Apr 2020 06:06:26 -0400 From: Roger Dingledine <arma(a)torproject.org> To: dir-auth <dir-auth(a)lists.torproject.org> Subject: Network is suffering with only two torflows; can you help? tl;dr there's a way at the bottom of this mail that you can help even without running torflow yourself. [...] So, it looks like we're down to two remaining torflows, and because that's less than three, we're suffering much more from the current errors in sbws. Specifically, (a) sbws doesn't vote for some relays, and (b) sbws votes a super low weight for some relays. There are somewhere between 500 and 1000 relays that are getting left out of sbws's opinions: https://consensus-health.torproject.org/#bwauthstatus and then some thousands more that are getting drastically underweighted, per the "Bandwidth Auth Statistics" graphs at the bottom of https://consensus-health.torproject.org/graphs.html Relay operators are sad that their relays are being useless, and thinking about how maybe they should shut them off if nobody's going to use them. I hear from GeKo that the sbws devs are aiming to fix the sbws issues by end-of-April. That's great, but I wonder if there are some short term hacks we can do that will help until then. Option 1: dizum, dannenberg, or tor26 start up a torflow. I'm guessing they would have done this already if they were going to. Option 2: maatuska, longclaw, or bastet switch from sbws to torflow. Is this an workable option for any of you? Option 3: Any of you besides Faravahar start hourly importing a copy of moria1's weights: https://freehaven.net/~arma/bwscan.V3BandwidthsFile and you vote them as though you were running your own torflow, but you don't need your own torflow. Option 3 is pretty wild at first glance -- it violates some trust and independence assumptions. But for those who aren't running a bwauth, you're already not being listened to about bandwidth weights. So I think this would be a fine hack in the short term to rescue the network, while we wait for sbws. Any takers? :) Here's the simple two-step process for testing the idea: (1) Set a "45 0-23 * * *" cron line to wget the above freehaven url. (2) In your torrc, set "V3BandwidthsFile /path/to/that/bwfile" If you like the idea, and it's just the wget that's too sketchy for you, I can set up an ssh account that just dumps the file at you when you present the right ssh key. Or for super overkill, you'll notice that moria1's (signed) vote has these two lines it: bandwidth-file-headers timestamp=1586162183 bandwidth-file-digest sha256=24+52C1ItwnAyBTtBteyy6tjxk8JnUpQ/XZx3YStEXE so with some stem or shell programming we should be able to verify the file itself, rather than just verifying the place it came from. We could be getting away from "short-term hack" there though. :) --Roger ----- End forwarded message -----

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Relay in a stop/start loop
by Totor be 07 Apr '20

07 Apr '20

Hi list I have upgraded recently my relays (totorbe*) to CentOS8 + tor 0.4.2.7 and they all seemed to run properly This morning, I just noticed a weird behavior on one of them (no idea since when this is going on) When starting tor, it goes to the point of IP identification and then starts shutting down ("Interrupt: we have stopped accepting new connections...") It attempts then to restart immediately and loops start --> interrupt --> start etc... Any idea where too start investigating?? [root@totorbex tor]# cat notices.log Apr 06 10:32:47.000 [notice] Starting with guard context "default" Apr 06 10:32:47.000 [notice] Signaled readiness to systemd Apr 06 10:32:47.000 [notice] Interrupt: we have stopped accepting new connections, and will shut down in 30 seconds. Interrupt again to exit now. Apr 06 10:32:47.000 [notice] Guessed our IP address as 82.212.170.79 (source: 128.31.0.34). Apr 06 10:32:48.000 [notice] Delaying directory fetches: We are hibernating or shutting down. Apr 06 10:33:17.000 [notice] Clean shutdown finished. Exiting. Apr 06 10:33:18.000 [notice] Tor 0.4.2.7 opening log file. Apr 06 10:33:18.719 [notice] Tor 0.4.2.7 running on Linux with Libevent 2.1.8-stable, OpenSSL 1.1.1c, Zlib 1.2.11, Liblzma 5.2.4, and Libzstd 1.4.4. Apr 06 10:33:18.719 [notice] Tor can't help you if you use it wrong! Learn how to be safe at https://www.torproject.org/download/download#warning Apr 06 10:33:18.719 [notice] Read configuration file "/usr/share/tor/defaults-torrc". Apr 06 10:33:18.719 [notice] Read configuration file "/etc/tor/torrc". Apr 06 10:33:18.723 [notice] Based on detected system memory, MaxMemInQueues is set to 5791 MB. You can override this by setting MaxMemInQueues by hand. Apr 06 10:33:18.724 [notice] Opening Socks listener on 127.0.0.1:9050 Apr 06 10:33:18.725 [notice] Opened Socks listener on 127.0.0.1:9050 Apr 06 10:33:18.725 [notice] Opening Control listener on 127.0.0.1:9051 Apr 06 10:33:18.725 [notice] Opened Control listener on 127.0.0.1:9051 Apr 06 10:33:18.725 [notice] Opening OR listener on 0.0.0.0:9001 Apr 06 10:33:18.725 [notice] Opened OR listener on 0.0.0.0:9001 Apr 06 10:33:18.725 [notice] Opening Directory listener on 0.0.0.0:9030 Apr 06 10:33:18.725 [notice] Opened Directory listener on 0.0.0.0:9030 Apr 06 10:33:18.000 [notice] Not disabling debugger attaching for unprivileged users. Apr 06 10:33:20.000 [notice] Parsing GEOIP IPv4 file /usr/share/tor/geoip. Apr 06 10:33:20.000 [notice] Parsing GEOIP IPv6 file /usr/share/tor/geoip6. Apr 06 10:33:20.000 [notice] Configured to measure statistics. Look for the *-stats files that will first be written to the data directory in 24 hours from now. Apr 06 10:33:21.000 [notice] Your Tor server's identity key fingerprint is 'TotorBEx E514A3818BC87E87B0B82B6494672F69CED5350D' Apr 06 10:33:21.000 [notice] Bootstrapped 0% (starting): Starting Apr 06 10:34:00.000 [notice] Starting with guard context "default" Apr 06 10:34:00.000 [notice] Signaled readiness to systemd Apr 06 10:34:00.000 [notice] Interrupt: we have stopped accepting new connections, and will shut down in 30 seconds. Interrupt again to exit now. Apr 06 10:34:00.000 [notice] Guessed our IP address as 82.212.170.79 (source: 128.31.0.34). Apr 06 10:34:01.000 [notice] Delaying directory fetches: We are hibernating or shutting down. Apr 06 10:34:30.000 [notice] Clean shutdown finished. Exiting. Apr 06 10:34:31.000 [notice] Tor 0.4.2.7 opening log file. Apr 06 10:34:31.721 [notice] Tor 0.4.2.7 running on Linux with Libevent 2.1.8-stable, OpenSSL 1.1.1c, Zlib 1.2.11, Liblzma 5.2.4, and Libzstd 1.4.4. Apr 06 10:34:31.721 [notice] Tor can't help you if you use it wrong! Learn how to be safe at https://www.torproject.org/download/download#warning Apr 06 10:34:31.721 [notice] Read configuration file "/usr/share/tor/defaults-torrc". Apr 06 10:34:31.721 [notice] Read configuration file "/etc/tor/torrc". Apr 06 10:34:31.725 [notice] Based on detected system memory, MaxMemInQueues is set to 5791 MB. You can override this by setting MaxMemInQueues by hand. Apr 06 10:34:31.726 [notice] Opening Socks listener on 127.0.0.1:9050 Apr 06 10:34:31.726 [notice] Opened Socks listener on 127.0.0.1:9050 Apr 06 10:34:31.726 [notice] Opening Control listener on 127.0.0.1:9051 Apr 06 10:34:31.727 [notice] Opened Control listener on 127.0.0.1:9051 Apr 06 10:34:31.727 [notice] Opening OR listener on 0.0.0.0:9001 Apr 06 10:34:31.727 [notice] Opened OR listener on 0.0.0.0:9001 Apr 06 10:34:31.727 [notice] Opening Directory listener on 0.0.0.0:9030 Apr 06 10:34:31.727 [notice] Opened Directory listener on 0.0.0.0:9030 Apr 06 10:34:31.000 [notice] Not disabling debugger attaching for unprivileged users. Apr 06 10:34:33.000 [notice] Parsing GEOIP IPv4 file /usr/share/tor/geoip. Apr 06 10:34:33.000 [notice] Parsing GEOIP IPv6 file /usr/share/tor/geoip6. Apr 06 10:34:33.000 [notice] Configured to measure statistics. Look for the *-stats files that will first be written to the data directory in 24 hours from now. Apr 06 10:34:34.000 [notice] Your Tor server's identity key fingerprint is 'TotorBEx E514A3818BC87E87B0B82B6494672F69CED5350D' Apr 06 10:34:34.000 [notice] Bootstrapped 0% (starting): Starting Apr 06 10:35:13.000 [notice] Starting with guard context "default" Apr 06 10:35:13.000 [notice] Signaled readiness to systemd Apr 06 10:35:13.000 [notice] Interrupt: we have stopped accepting new connections, and will shut down in 30 seconds. Interrupt again to exit now.

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Doubt related to Bridge relay
by Ismael Castro 07 Apr '20

07 Apr '20

Hi, I'm new to setting up a relay but I'd like to help the Tor Network. I have some, perhaps silly, doubts: 1. Can I use tor browser from the same computer the bridge relay node is set up? Navigation will remain anonymous (at least similar than when using only tor browser)? 2. Will I notice any decrease or increase in tor network navigation speed? (understanding that I'll previously set up a max bandwidth to the node) 3. Any other concern I should be aware of? Thanks!!

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Is this probing normal for a bridge
by Eddie 07 Apr '20

07 Apr '20

Hi, On the VPS where I run a couple of bridges, I often see the following: tcp6 0 0 aaa.bbb.cc.dd:443 194.14.247.1:18913 SYN_RECV tcp6 0 0 aaa.bbb.cc.dd:443 54.93.50.35:18457 SYN_RECV tcp6 0 0 aaa.bbb.cc.dd:443 194.68.0.1:29917 SYN_RECV tcp6 0 0 aaa.bbb.cc.dd:443 194.68.0.1:23629 SYN_RECV tcp6 0 0 aaa.bbb.cc.dd:443 194.14.247.1:8846 SYN_RECV tcp6 0 0 aaa.bbb.cc.dd:443 194.14.165.1:11833 SYN_RECV tcp6 0 0 aaa.bbb.cc.dd:443 54.93.50.35:20856 SYN_RECV tcp6 0 0 aaa.bbb.cc.dd:443 194.14.247.1:38085 SYN_RECV tcp6 0 0 aaa.bbb.cc.dd:443 194.14.246.1:60957 SYN_RECV tcp6 0 0 aaa.bbb.cc.dd:443 194.14.165.1:10471 SYN_RECV tcp6 0 0 aaa.bbb.cc.dd:443 194.68.0.1:60852 SYN_RECV tcp6 0 0 aaa.bbb.cc.dd:443 194.14.246.1:45321 SYN_RECV tcp6 0 0 aaa.bbb.cc.dd:443 194.14.246.1:43384 SYN_RECV tcp6 0 0 aaa.bbb.cc.dd:443 194.14.165.1:31634 SYN_RECV tcp6 0 0 aaa.bbb.cc.dd:443 194.68.0.1:29895 SYN_RECV tcp6 0 0 aaa.bbb.cc.dd:443 54.93.50.35:51774 SYN_RECV tcp6 0 0 aaa.bbb.cc.dd:443 54.93.50.35:27223 SYN_RECV tcp6 0 0 aaa.bbb.cc.dd:443 194.14.246.1:11116 SYN_RECV tcp6 0 0 aaa.bbb.cc.dd:443 194.14.0.1:31465 SYN_RECV tcp6 0 0 aaa.bbb.cc.dd:443 54.93.50.35:30646 SYN_RECV tcp6 0 0 aaa.bbb.cc.dd:443 194.14.246.1:11117 SYN_RECV tcp6 0 0 aaa.bbb.cc.dd:443 194.14.165.1:46609 SYN_RECV tcp6 0 0 aaa.bbb.cc.dd:443 194.14.247.1:57978 SYN_RECV tcp6 0 0 aaa.bbb.cc.dd:443 194.68.0.1:59133 SYN_RECV tcp6 0 0 aaa.bbb.cc.dd:443 54.93.50.35:27371 SYN_RECV tcp6 0 0 aaa.bbb.cc.dd:443 194.68.0.1:13364 SYN_RECV tcp6 0 0 aaa.bbb.cc.dd:443 194.14.165.1:50336 SYN_RECV tcp6 0 0 aaa.bbb.cc.dd:443 194.14.165.1:34511 SYN_RECV tcp6 0 0 aaa.bbb.cc.dd:80 aa.bb.ccc.dd:59349 ESTABLISHED tcp6 0 0 aaa.bbb.cc.dd:443 194.14.0.1:20251 SYN_RECV tcp6 0 0 aaa.bbb.cc.dd:443 194.68.0.1:11573 SYN_RECV tcp6 0 0 aaa.bbb.cc.dd:443 194.14.0.1:37358 SYN_RECV tcp6 0 0 aaa.bbb.cc.dd:443 54.93.50.35:44226 SYN_RECV tcp6 0 0 aaa.bbb.cc.dd:443 54.93.50.35:59194 SYN_RECV tcp6 0 0 aaa.bbb.cc.dd:443 194.14.165.1:38300 SYN_RECV tcp6 0 0 aaa.bbb.cc.dd:443 194.68.0.1:18209 SYN_RECV Is this normal probing by the script kiddies or is it specific because I'm running the bridges. Cheers.

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Update on the status for sbws (simple bandwidth scanner)
by Georg Koppen 07 Apr '20

07 Apr '20

Hello everyone! Some of you might have read about relay operators being affected by a drop of bandwidth on their relays recently or might even have hit this problem themselves. Bug 33775[1] has more details about what is going on (in short: sbws, our new bandwidth scanner, has still release critical bugs but the instances running it got recently the voting majority as Torflow is showing its age and the duct tape around it is wearing off). Roger forwarded a mail to this list yesterday as well about short term hacks to solve this problem[2]. Things are looking good at that front so far. We are optimistic that the situation is getting better substantially rather soon as some of our directory authorities are either switching right now to using Torflow data again or making progress in resolving their Torflow related issues that prevented them from running it. We thought it would be helpful to give an update about our remaining sbws work as well. So, the good news here is that we aim to have all the critical bugs fixed by end of April (yes, this month :)). Right now we know of the following five: #33350[3] #33775[4] #30735[5] #33009[6] #30719[7] We have the last two in `needs_review` (the last one via #30905[8]) and are currently distributing the first three among developers working on sbws, so we can work in parallel on them. There is the risk that behind those bugs some other critical bugs lurk, which we have not found yet. To mitigate that we'll switch one bandwidth authority to running sbws's git master branch so we detect those bugs as early as possible should they exist. Finally, we are working on a proper transition plan away from Torflow to avoid mistakes we've made so far and provide as little friction as possible for all parties involved in the whole process. Let us know if you have any questions. Either way, I hope I could get the point out that the current situation is worked on and temporal. There is no need to shut down relays as the result of the current issues. :) Georg [1] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/33775 [2] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-relays/2020-April/018337.html [3] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/33350 [4] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/33775 [5] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/30735 [6] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/33009 [7] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/30719 [8] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/30905

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Re: [tor-relays] Possible to run a tor bridge/relay via tor browser?
by Keifer Bly 02 Apr '20

02 Apr '20

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Tor fingerprint backup
by Kolja Sagorski 02 Apr '20

02 Apr '20

Hello together. I have a problem. When I install a fresh debian server and a new tor relay, I can’t restore my fingerprint. I have the fingerprint file and the key folder. I stopped the new relay. Insert and replace the fingerprint and Key Folder. After that, the server didn’t start now :( Can anyone help me? Kind regards, kolja.

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Re: [tor-relays] Low bandwidth
by ha3ks 01 Apr '20

01 Apr '20

Hi, The fingerprint is - 6E1DA4C0B0C05FB721B42329C47A20DA22908AEB I have followed some of this yes, though its a little over my head Thanks - Dan Sent with ProtonMail Secure Email. ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ On Tuesday, 31 March 2020 10:10, <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: Low bandwidth (teor) > 2. Re: Possible to run a tor bridge/relay via tor browser? > (Keifer Bly) > > > Message: 1 > Date: Tue, 31 Mar 2020 09:44:41 +1000 > From: teor teor(a)riseup.net > To: tor-relays(a)lists.torproject.org > Subject: Re: [tor-relays] Low bandwidth > Message-ID: 19B3A11C-D7CB-4B20-8319-8494A1FF0271(a)riseup.net > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" > > Hi, > > > On 30 Mar 2020, at 23:00, ha3ks ha3ks(a)protonmail.com wrote: > > my relay dropped nearly all it’s bandwidth about a month ago, checking over it I can see 3 of the dir auths have given it a low consensus weighting, would that cause low bandwidth numbers? > > I checked my ufw in Ubuntu and it’s allowing 443 and 80. > > I have seen similar reports from a few other relay operators. > > What is your relay fingerprint? > > Have you followed the troubleshooting instructions here: > https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/doc/MyRelayIsSlow > > T >

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Re: [tor-relays] Possible to run a tor bridge/relay via tor browser?
by Keifer Bly 01 Apr '20

01 Apr '20

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