[tor-bugs] #12600 [Core Tor/Tor]: Save retrieved bridge information in our state file

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#12600: Save retrieved bridge information in our state file
-------------------------------------------------+-------------------------
 Reporter:  asn                                  |          Owner:  isis
     Type:  task                                 |         Status:
 Priority:  High                                 |  assigned
Component:  Core Tor/Tor                         |      Milestone:  Tor:
 Severity:  Normal                               |  0.2.9.x-final
 Keywords:  tor-bridge, tails-wants,             |        Version:
  028-triage, tor-pt                             |     Resolution:
Parent ID:                                       |  Actual Points:
 Reviewer:                                       |         Points:
                                                 |  medium/large
                                                 |        Sponsor:
                                                 |  SponsorS-can
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Old description:

> Currently, Tor clients don't remember anything about bridges after a
> restart.
> So for example, if there was a torrc Bridge line without a fingerprint
> specified, and Tor retrieves the fingerprint from the descriptor, it
> won't save it on the disk.
>
> Or, if a bridge changed IP:PORT, but we managed to get its new ip:port
> using the bridge authority (see #12599), we will not save this down
> either.
>
> Fortunately, Sebastian wrote proposal192 about this issue:
> https://gitweb.torproject.org/torspec.git/blob/HEAD:/proposals/192-store-
> bridge-information.txt
>
> We should re-read the proposal, revise it as needed and implement it.

New description:

 Currently, Tor clients don't remember anything about bridges after a
 restart.
 So for example, if there was a torrc Bridge line without a fingerprint
 specified, and Tor retrieves the fingerprint from the descriptor, it won't
 save it on the disk.

 Or, if a bridge changed IP:PORT, but we managed to get its new ip:port
 using the bridge authority (see #12599), we will not save this down
 either.

 Fortunately, Sebastian wrote proposal192 about this issue:
 https://gitweb.torproject.org/torspec.git/tree/proposals/192-store-bridge-
 information.txt

 We should re-read the proposal, revise it as needed and implement it.

--

Comment (by sajolida):

 The link to the proposal in the description of the ticket was pointing to
 something weird so I changed it. I hope I didn't mess up.

 I don't have time to dive into the proposal right now but, at first sight,
 the related efforts in Tails are:

 * Persistent Tor state, because right now no state is stored:
 https://tails.boum.org/blueprint/persistent_Tor_state/.
 * Persistent Tor configuration, because we likely don't want to always
 reuse the same bridges across different Wi-Fi networks for example:
 https://tails.boum.org/blueprint/network_connection/.

--
Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/12600#comment:9>
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