[tor-bugs] #16978 [Tor]: Minority of hostile dirauths can influence consensus in dangerous ways

Tor Bug Tracker & Wiki blackhole at torproject.org
Fri Sep 4 14:27:51 UTC 2015


#16978: Minority of hostile dirauths can influence consensus in dangerous ways
-----------------------+------------------------------
 Reporter:  Sebastian  |          Owner:
     Type:  defect     |         Status:  new
 Priority:  normal     |      Milestone:  Tor: 0.2.???
Component:  Tor        |        Version:
 Keywords:             |  Actual Points:
Parent ID:             |         Points:
-----------------------+------------------------------
 We like to claim that if a minority of dirauths is not honest, the worst
 they can do is manipulate the voting process in such a way that no
 consensus emerges but not that a consensus emerges that is (at least
 partially) dictated by the bad actors. Unfortunately, this isn't the case
 for the opt-in features. If a majority of the dirauths opting in to
 features such as bad exit voting, bandwidth measurements, or voting for a
 specific parameter want to influence these values in the consensus, they
 don't require a majority of total dirauths to do that. This might not be
 so much of an issue with less important features like Naming, but since
 badexit and bandwidth weight directly influences path selection on the
 client, these authorities that opt in to those features have considerably
 more power over the consensus than those that do not.

--
Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/16978>
Tor Bug Tracker & Wiki <https://trac.torproject.org/>
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