[tor-commits] [tech-reports/master] Add Sebastian's different-ways-use-bridge blog post.

karsten at torproject.org karsten at torproject.org
Thu Aug 9 06:40:23 UTC 2012


commit 9557af36b1732afe864641291886102eafb8f6e2
Author: Karsten Loesing <karsten.loesing at gmx.net>
Date:   Wed Aug 8 10:18:55 2012 +0200

    Add Sebastian's different-ways-use-bridge blog post.
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+different-ways-use-bridge.pdf
+different-ways-use-bridge-2011-11-29.pdf
+
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+\documentclass{tortechrep}
+\usepackage{graphicx}
+\begin{document}
+
+\author{Sebastian Hahn}
+\contact{sebastian at torproject.org}
+\reportid{DRAFT}
+\date{November 29, 2011}
+\title{Different Ways to Use a Bridge}
+\maketitle
+
+\section{Different Ways to Use a Bridge}
+
+When some adversary prevents users from reaching the Tor network, our most
+popular answer is using bridge relays (or bridges for short).
+Those are hidden relays, not listed along with all the other relays in the
+networkstatus documents.
+Currently, we have about 600 of them, and censors are having different
+luck learning and blocking them---see the 10 ways to discover Tor bridges
+blog post for more on how discovery approaches may work.%
+\footnote{\url{https://blog.torproject.org/blog/research-problems-ten-ways-discover-tor-bridges}}
+China appears to be the only place able to successfully block most bridges
+consistently, whereas other places occasionally manage to block Tor's
+handshake and as a byproduct block all bridges too.
+
+Bridge users can be broadly grouped in three camps:
+
+\begin{itemize}
+\item Tor is blocked, and some way---any way---to reach the network has to
+be found.
+The adversary is not very dangerous, but very annoying.
+\item Tor may or may not be blocked, but the user is trying to hide the
+fact they're hiding Tor.
+The adversary may be extremely dangerous.
+\item Other bridge users: Testing whether the bridge works (automated or
+manual), probing, people using bridges without their knowledge because
+they came pre-configured in their bundle.
+\end{itemize}
+
+Here we examine the first two use cases more closely.
+Specifically, we want to look at properties of a bridge that must exist
+for it to be useful to a user.
+
+\section{Bridges---building blocks}
+
+First off, it is helpful to understand some basics about bridges and how
+they are used by normal users.
+
+Bridges are very similar to ordinary relays, in that they are operated by
+volunteers who made the decision to help people reach the Tor network.
+The difference to a normal relay is where the information about the bridge
+is published to---bridges can choose to either publish to the Bridge
+Authority (a special relay collecting all bridge addresses that it
+receives), or to not publish their information anywhere.
+The former are called public bridges, the latter private bridges.
+
+We don't have any information about the number of private bridges, but
+since the Bridge Authority collects data about the public bridges, we do
+know that bridges are used in the real world.
+See the bridge users%
+\footnote{\url{https://metrics.torproject.org/users.html\#bridge-users}}
+and networksize graphs%
+\footnote{\url{https://metrics.torproject.org/network.html\#networksize}}
+for some examples.
+Not having data about private bridges or their users means some of the
+analysis below is based on discussions with users of private bridges and
+our best estimates, and it can't be backed up by statistical data.
+
+The reason we're using a Bridge Authority and collecting information about
+bridges is that we want to give out bridges to people who aren't in a
+position to learn about a private bridge themselves.
+
+``Learning about a bridge'' generally means learning about the bridge's IP
+address and port, so that a connection can be made.
+Optionally, the bridge identity fingerprint is included, too---this helps
+the client to verify that it is actually talking to the bridge, and not
+someone that is intercepting the network communication.
+For a private bridge, the operator has to pass on that information; public
+bridges wrap up some information about themselves in what is called their
+bridge descriptor and send that to the bridge authority.
+The bridge descriptor includes some statistical information, like
+aggregated user counts and countries of origin of traffic.
+Our analysis here focuses solely on the data provided by public bridges.
+
+Once a user has learned about some bridges, she configures her Tor client
+to use them, typically by entering them into the appropriate field in
+Vidalia.
+Alternatively, she might use a different controller or put the data into
+tor's configuration file directly.
+
+\section{Learning from bridge descriptor fetches}
+
+We've been collecting bridge descriptor fetch statistics on the bridge
+authority, and are using this data to pose some questions and propose some
+changes.
+The statistics collected are how many bridge descriptors were served in
+total, and how many unique descriptors were served, as well as the 0, 25,
+50, 75 and 100 percentiles of fetches per descriptor.
+Every 24 hours, the current statistics are written to disk and the
+counters reset.
+The current statistics are attached to this post, for closer inspection.
+We've also prepared two graphs in Figures~\ref{fig:bridge-total-downloads}
+and \ref{fig:bridge-downloads-per-desc} to easily see the data at a
+glance.
+
+\begin{figure}
+\centering
+\includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{bridge-total-downloads.png}
+\caption{Daily descriptor downloads from the bridge authority}
+\label{fig:bridge-total-downloads}
+\end{figure}
+
+\begin{figure}
+\centering
+\includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{bridge-downloads-per-desc.png}
+\caption{Daily downloads per descriptor from the bridge authority}
+\label{fig:bridge-downloads-per-desc}
+\end{figure}
+
+The first thing to note is that there aren't very many bridge descriptor
+fetches at all, which isn't a big surprise: The current Tor bundles don't
+fetch them when they're used in the typical way, that is by adding some
+bridges via Vidalia's interface after bridges were discovered via one of
+our bridge distribution channels.
+Over the past month, there have been between 3900 and 6600 fetches per
+day, with a median of 8 fetches per bridge.
+The most fetched descriptor is fetched up to 350 times per day, indicating
+that it does indeed belong to a bridge that was given out with a
+fingerprint and being used by Tor clients.
+We have gotten some reports that a bundle circulated with pre-configured
+bridges, and this could account for the many fetches.
+
+Secondly, most bridge descriptors are not even fetched from the authority.
+This is a clear indication that we can improve our odds of updating bridge
+clients with current bridge info if we can get them to request the
+information better.
+
+\section{Improving Tor's behaviour for the two user groups}
+
+The first group (``Tor is blocked, and some way to reach the network has
+to be found'') is mostly concerned about circumvention, without
+necessarily hiding that they're using Tor from someone.
+Typically, access to the Internet is filtered, but circumventing a filter
+isn't too risky and people are more concerned with access than hiding
+their tracks from a data-collecting adversary.
+Speed, bootstrapping performance, and little intervention/maintenance of a
+setup are the biggest goals.
+
+Adding auto-discovery mechanisms for bridges that changed their IP address
+will help this group gain a lot more robustness when it comes to
+maintaining connectivity against an adversary that blocks public relays,
+but isn't very quick in blocking all bridges.
+As far as we know, this is currently true for the majority of our bridge
+userbase.
+
+For the second group (``Tor may or may not be blocked, but the user is
+trying to hide the fact they're hiding Tor''), precise control over Tor's
+actions is much more important than constant connectivity, and private
+bridges might be utilized to that end as well.
+A user in this group wants to keep the bridges he's using secret, and puts
+up with frequent updates to the configuration for the added safety of only
+connecting to a pre-specified IP address:port combination.
+We can't do very much for a user belonging to this group with regard to
+bridges, but he will very much benefit from improvements made to our
+general fingerprintability resistance.
+Also options like the \texttt{DisableNetwork}%
+\footnote{\url{https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/3644}}
+option (prevent touching the network in any kind of way until this option
+is changed) that was recently introduced to Tor help him.
+
+Another interesting point here is that we can indirectly improve the
+behaviour for the first group by not making it too easy to learn about
+bridges, because censors can use the same data to more effectively block
+them.
+This means that we shouldn't, for example, start giving out significantly
+more bridges to a single user.
+
+We've written a proposal%
+\footnote{\url{https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2011-November/003097.html}}
+to implement some changes in Tor, to better facilitate the needs of the
+first group of bridge users.
+
+\end{document}
+
diff --git a/2011/different-ways-use-bridge/tortechrep.cls b/2011/different-ways-use-bridge/tortechrep.cls
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+../../tortechrep.cls
\ No newline at end of file





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