[tor-bugs] #16978 [Tor]: Minority of hostile dirauths can influence consensus in dangerous ways
Tor Bug Tracker & Wiki
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Fri Sep 4 14:27:51 UTC 2015
#16978: Minority of hostile dirauths can influence consensus in dangerous ways
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Reporter: Sebastian | Owner:
Type: defect | Status: new
Priority: normal | Milestone: Tor: 0.2.???
Component: Tor | Version:
Keywords: | Actual Points:
Parent ID: | Points:
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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>
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