[tor-bugs] #20082 [Core Tor/Tor]: Lower initial descriptor upload delay for ephemeral services

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#20082: Lower initial descriptor upload delay for ephemeral services
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 Reporter:  twim               |          Owner:
     Type:  enhancement        |         Status:  new
 Priority:  Medium             |      Milestone:  Tor: 0.2.???
Component:  Core Tor/Tor       |        Version:
 Severity:  Normal             |     Resolution:
 Keywords:  tor-hs, research,  |  Actual Points:
Parent ID:                     |         Points:
 Reviewer:                     |        Sponsor:  SponsorR-can
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Comment (by dgoulet):

 That 30 seconds delay pre-dates my knowledge of hidden service so I have
 no clue why it was chosen. I doubt very much it was about mitigating any
 kind of "startup time correlation" attack because a random delay was added
 to it but then we realized it was borked so in the end it always been 30
 seconds...

 So indeed... why keep a delay at all for services? Descriptor publication
 to a directory only happens once all intro points circuit are ready and
 those are established at startup. If you think about it, it's actually a
 very _specific_ pattern to detect a service startup. As a guard you see 5
 circuits being established at once (yes we need 3 IPs but we launch 2
 extras for better luck) then 2 of them dies quickly and you have a 6th
 circuit almost 30 seconds after the initial launch of those... I'm not
 saying that by removing that delay we'll make it go away but I really
 don't see the point of the delay here to hide anything. Thus, I'm all for
 _removing_ it unless armadev had a reason to add that delay :) 10 years
 ago :).

 Also let's keep in mind that this would be _very_ useful to answer for
 prop224.

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Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/20082#comment:3>
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