[tor-bugs] #2671 [Tor Relay]: Better communication for authority operators, core developers in emergency situations

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#2671: Better communication for authority operators, core developers in emergency
situations
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 Reporter:  nickm      |          Owner:       
     Type:  task       |         Status:  new  
 Priority:  normal     |      Milestone:       
Component:  Tor Relay  |        Version:       
 Keywords:             |         Parent:  #2664
   Points:             |   Actualpoints:       
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Description changed by nickm:

Old description:

> When in danger or in doubt,
>    run in circles, scream and shout!
>    - traditional motto, possibly naval.
>
> When the bug behind #2664 happened, it took us a few hours to notice.
> That was bad, and #2666 is about trying to notice such situations faster.
> But another problem is that even after we noticed, it still took a while
> to sort out who knew how best to contact which operators.  Probably
> developers should get contacted to in the
>
> We should figure out, for each authority operator and core developer[*],
> the best two or three ways to contact them in the case of an emergency.
> If these ways are not something we want to publish (e.g., phone numbers),
> a few people should know them, and all Tor people should know who those
> people are and how to contact them in a hurry.
>
> We should have some emergency-response mechanisms in place.  If
> communications are security-sensitive, we should have a way to deal with
> it in place, rather than the current approach of "send gpg-encrypted
> email to those people whose keys you happen to have" or "immediately go
> dark, use OTR to talk pairwise to people you know".  Those approaches
> scale badly; we can probably do better.
>
> We should also have planned responses for emergency events like "A key
> server looks like it might have been compromised"; "somebody has reported
> a vulnerability"; "somebody has disclosed a vulnerability"; "one or more
> authorities have gone down strangely;" "looks like the network is
> crashing;" and so on.
>

> [*] "core developer" is here defined as "a developer who is likely to
> needed urgently when something breaks."

New description:

 When in danger or in doubt,
    run in circles, scream and shout!
    - traditional motto, possibly naval.

 When the bug behind #2664 happened, it took us a few hours to notice.
 That was bad, and #2666 is about trying to notice such situations faster.
 But another problem is that even after we noticed, it still took a while
 to sort out who knew how best to contact which operators.  Probably
 developers should get contacted too, so they can be available to deal with
 bad/urgent bugs.

 We should figure out, for each authority operator and core developer[*],
 the best two or three ways to contact them in the case of an emergency.
 If these ways are not something we want to publish (e.g., phone numbers),
 a few people should know them, and all Tor people should know who those
 people are and how to contact them in a hurry.

 We should have some emergency-response mechanisms in place.  If
 communications are security-sensitive, we should have a way to deal with
 it in place, rather than the current approach of "send gpg-encrypted email
 to those people whose keys you happen to have" or "immediately go dark,
 use OTR to talk pairwise to people you know".  Those approaches scale
 badly; we can probably do better.

 We should also have planned responses for emergency events like "A key
 server looks like it might have been compromised"; "somebody has reported
 a vulnerability"; "somebody has disclosed a vulnerability"; "one or more
 authorities have gone down strangely;" "looks like the network is
 crashing;" and so on.


 [*] "core developer" is here defined as "a developer who is likely to
 needed urgently when something breaks."

--

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Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/2671#comment:1>
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