[tor-bugs] #7202 [Tor]: Implement ntor handshake or its successor

Tor Bug Tracker & Wiki blackhole at torproject.org
Mon Nov 26 07:04:12 UTC 2012


#7202: Implement ntor handshake or its successor
--------------------------------+-------------------------------------------
 Reporter:  karsten             |          Owner:                    
     Type:  project             |         Status:  new               
 Priority:  normal              |      Milestone:  Tor: 0.2.4.x-final
Component:  Tor                 |        Version:                    
 Keywords:  SponsorZ tor-relay  |         Parent:                    
   Points:                      |   Actualpoints:                    
--------------------------------+-------------------------------------------

Comment(by mikeperry):

 Hrmm. I am worried that ntor is even more asymmetric and DoS-vulnerable
 than what we have now. It seems as though ntor CREATE2 cells will cost a
 client roughly 0 computation if it wants to spam ntor CREATE2's at a node
 and ignore the results. The server, on the other hand, has to do a lot of
 exponentiations and HMACing.

 Crazy idea: What if we included a hash of the CREATE2 cell's content, with
 some additional requirements on the hash to be verified server-side as
 proof-of-work. For example, we could require timestamp+nonce parameter
 additions (that are themselves hashed) such that the hash has a certain
 number of leading zeroes. Nodes could also verify that they don't see
 repeats of this hash value over some time period after which they would
 simply discard CREATE2 with old enough timestamps, without hashing
 anything.

 This makes discarding replayed CREATE2s require zero crypto from the
 server, and can be made to be arbitrarily costly for the client (dare I
 say it: perhaps via a consensus parameter specifying the required hash
 prefix?)

-- 
Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/7202#comment:3>
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