tor relay - vps maintenance - what to do ?
Hi, in the next three days, my VPS provider planning to shutdown ("maintenanance") for 6 hours my VPS where tor relay is running (with some services). What should I do ? I suspect that my VPS will be copied and reviewed (by not authorized persons) afterwards. How do You react in such a situations ? I appreciate any advice. Cheers Dlugasny Sent with [ProtonMail](https://protonmail.com) Secure Email.
On Sun, Jul 12, 2020 at 09:12:31PM +0000, dlugasny@protonmail.com wrote:
in the next three days, my VPS provider planning to shutdown ("maintenanance") for 6 hours my VPS where tor relay is running (with some services). What should I do ?
I suspect that my VPS will be copied and reviewed (by not authorized persons) afterwards. How do You react in such a situations ?
I appreciate any advice.
The conservative choice would be to remove all the key material (that is, delete the files in your DataDirectory/keys/ directory) before it shuts down, and then start a fresh relay (with fresh keys) when it comes back. It really comes down to how much you think they will mess with it (or maybe even, why you think they've picked your VPS for maintenance at all). Leaving it alone and not stressing about it, or rotating to fresh keys, are both valid approaches. It depends how you want to approach it. Hope that helps, --Roger
On Sun, 12 Jul 2020 21:12:31 +0000 dlugasny@protonmail.com wrote:
in the next three days, my VPS provider planning to shutdown ("maintenanance") for 6 hours my VPS where tor relay is running (with some services).
I suspect that my VPS will be copied and reviewed (by not authorized persons) afterwards.
The provider can copy and examine disks of a running VPS even without shutting it down. They might get a few filesystem errors, but most likely nothing major and 99% of data will be there. The only way to protect from that, is to set up Full-disk encryption (FDE) on the VPS beforehand. But even then, it is challenging to make sure the decryption key is not leaked to the provider (e.g. when entering it via their "VNC Console", which can be keylogged). If you do not set up FDE, you should assume all your data on any VPS is accessible to the provider. Even RAM of a VPS can be copied without stopping it, so running Tor in a RAM disk (tmpfs) is not an answer either. For more privacy get a dedicated server rather than a VPS. At least a server actually must be shut down to mess with its disks, and RAM is basically out of reach. (I believe wiretapping SATA, let alone DDR, can be ruled out as purely theoretical, in most cases :) Make sure that backdoors such as Intel AMT are not active though, or get a non-Intel server.
What should I do ?
Do not get overly paranoid, most likely it's just a maintenance and has nothing to do with your VPS or with Tor running on it. As said above, if they wanted your VPS' contents, they can freely get it at any time without attracting attention. If it was a dedicated server, then yes, a cause for concern, as it's a plenty of time to detach your disk and copy it. For a VPS, none of that downtime is even needed for that in the first place. -- With respect, Roman
Il giorno 13 lug 2020, alle ore 08:44, Roman Mamedov <rm@romanrm.net> ha scritto:
On Sun, 12 Jul 2020 21:12:31 +0000 dlugasny@protonmail.com wrote:
The only way to protect from that, is to set up Full-disk encryption (FDE) on the VPS beforehand. But even then, it is challenging to make sure the decryption key is not leaked to the provider (e.g. when entering it via their "VNC Console", which can be keylogged).
If you do not set up FDE, you should assume all your data on any VPS is accessible to the provider. Even RAM of a VPS can be copied without stopping it, so running Tor in a RAM disk (tmpfs) is not an answer either.
I think that even with full-disk encryption, the decryption key can be obtained from RAM. Is that correct? A VPS is probably not a good choice if privacy is mission critical. — fl4co
Depends on your disk encryption software - VeraCrypt on Windows supports encrypting sensitive data (including keys) in RAM. 2020-07-13 11:10 GMT, fl4co <fl4co@fl4co.xyz>:
Il giorno 13 lug 2020, alle ore 08:44, Roman Mamedov <rm@romanrm.net> ha scritto:
On Sun, 12 Jul 2020 21:12:31 +0000 dlugasny@protonmail.com wrote:
The only way to protect from that, is to set up Full-disk encryption (FDE) on the VPS beforehand. But even then, it is challenging to make sure the decryption key is not leaked to the provider (e.g. when entering it via their "VNC Console", which can be keylogged).
If you do not set up FDE, you should assume all your data on any VPS is accessible to the provider. Even RAM of a VPS can be copied without stopping it, so running Tor in a RAM disk (tmpfs) is not an answer either.
I think that even with full-disk encryption, the decryption key can be obtained from RAM. Is that correct?
A VPS is probably not a good choice if privacy is mission critical.
— fl4co
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participants (6)
-
dlugasny＠protonmail.com -
fl4co -
Roger Dingledine -
Roman Mamedov -
Toralf Förster -
William Kane