[tor-bugs] #12813 [Metrics Website]: Look at a bitmap visualization of relay consensus

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#12813: Look at a bitmap visualization of relay consensus
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 Reporter:  dcf              |          Owner:
     Type:  task             |         Status:  new
 Priority:  normal           |      Milestone:
Component:  Metrics Website  |        Version:
 Keywords:                   |  Actual Points:
Parent ID:                   |         Points:
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 I tried a visualization of the hourly consensus that might be useful.

 Warning, big graphic (5832×39026 pixels)
  *
 https://people.torproject.org/~dcf/graphs/microdescs/microdescs-2014.png
  *
 https://people.torproject.org/~dcf/graphs/microdescs/microdescs-2014.txt

 Each row in the graphic is one fingerprint. Each column is one hour in the
 consensus, from January 2014 on the left to August 2014 on the right.
 Black pixels are when the fingerprint was in the consensus. The rows are
 sorted first by total weight, then by center of mass of the black pixels
 (so two rows with the same weight will have one that is more to the left,
 higher).

 The rows in the graphic map 1:1 to lines in the text file. You can open
 the graphic in Gimp and hover over an interesting area to get the row
 number. Then you can jump to that line number (plus one) in the text file
 to see what descriptors are there.

 Why this visualization is interesting is some visually noticeable features
 have a meaning. For example, near the top at about rows 1469 through 1508
 and 1554 through 1610 are two heavy black areas that start and stop at
 almost the same time. It turns out, if you look at the corresponding lines
 in the text file, that those blocks belong to the attacker of
 https://blog.torproject.org/blog/tor-security-advisory-relay-early-
 traffic-confirmation-attack. There are other weird and interesting
 features that I haven't looked at yet.

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Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/12813>
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