[tor-commits] [torspec/master] Fix margins, reduce duration from 5 days to 3, and mention #7126.

Wed Oct 17 01:58:39 UTC 2012

commit aa85944318fb28bb153373e4f2cf2c174ddd0a1e
Author: Mike Perry <mikeperry-git at fscked.org>
Date:   Tue Oct 16 15:35:45 2012 -0700

    Fix margins, reduce duration from 5 days to 3, and mention #7126.
---
 proposals/xxx-using-old-consensus.txt |   91 ++++++++++++++++++++-------------
 1 files changed, 55 insertions(+), 36 deletions(-)

diff --git a/proposals/xxx-using-old-consensus.txt b/proposals/xxx-using-old-consensus.txt
index 6e86406..c0faed2 100644
--- a/proposals/xxx-using-old-consensus.txt
+++ b/proposals/xxx-using-old-consensus.txt
@@ -8,34 +8,36 @@ Overview
 
   This proposal aims to extend the duration that clients will accept
   old consensus material under conditions where the directory authorities
-  are either down or fail to produce a valid consensus for an extended period
-  of time.
+  are either down or fail to produce a valid consensus for an extended
+  period of time.
 
 Motivation
 
-  Currently, if the directory authorities are down or fail to consense for 
-  24 hours, the entire Tor network will cease to function. Worse, clients
-  will enter into a state where they all need to re-bootstrap directly
-  from the directory authorities, which will likely exacerbate any
-  potential DoS condition that may have triggered the downtime in the first
-  place.
-
-  The Tor network has had such close calls before. In the past, we've been
-  able to mobilize a majority of the directory authority operators within this
-  24 hour window, but that is only because we've been exceedingly lucky and
-  the DoS conditions were accidental rather than deliberate.
-
-  If a DoS attack was deliberately timed to coincide with a major US and
-  European combined holiday such as Christmas Eve, New Years Eve, or Easter,
-  it is very unlikely we would be able to muster the resources to diagnose
-  and deploy a fix to the authorities in time to prevent network collapse.
+  Currently, if the directory authorities are down or fail to consense
+  for 24 hours, the entire Tor network will cease to function. Worse,
+  clients will enter into a state where they all need to re-bootstrap
+  directly from the directory authorities, which will likely exacerbate
+  any potential DoS condition that may have triggered the downtime in the
+  first place.
+
+  The Tor network has had such close calls before. In the past, we've
+  been able to mobilize a majority of the directory authority operators
+  within this 24 hour window, but that is only because we've been
+  exceedingly lucky and the DoS conditions were accidental rather than
+  deliberate.
+
+  If a DoS attack was deliberately timed to coincide with a major US
+  and European combined holiday such as Christmas Eve, New Years Eve, or
+  Easter, it is very unlikely we would be able to muster the resources to
+  diagnose and deploy a fix to the authorities in time to prevent network
+  collapse.
 
 Description
 
-  Based on the need to survive multi-day holidays and long weekends balanced
-  with the need to ensure clients can't be captured on an old consensus
-  forever, I propose that the consensus liveness constants be set at 5 days
-  rather than 24 hours.
+  Based on the need to survive multi-day holidays and long weekends
+  balanced with the need to ensure clients can't be captured on an old
+  consensus forever, I propose that the consensus liveness constants be
+  set at 3 days rather than 24 hours.
 
   This requires updating two consensus defines in the source, and one
   descriptor freshness variable. The descriptor freshness should be
@@ -45,25 +47,40 @@ Description
 
 Security Concerns: Using an Old Consensus
 
-  Clients should not trust old consensus data without an attempt to download
-  fresher data from a directory mirror.
+  Clients should not trust old consensus data without an attempt to
+  download fresher data from a directory mirror.
+
+  As far as I could tell, the code already does this. The minimum
+  consensus age before we try to download new data is two hours.
 
-  As far as I could tell, the code already does this. The minimum consensus 
-  age before we try to download new data is two hours.
+  However, the ability to accept old consensus documents does introduce
+  the ability of malicious directory mirrors to feed their favorite old
+  consensus document to clients to alter their paths until they
+  download a fresher consensus from elsewhere. Directory guards
+  (Proposal 207) may exacerbate this ability.
+
+  This proposal does not address such attacks, and seeks only a modest
+  increase in the valid timespan as a compromise.
+
+  Future consideration of these and other targeted-consensus attacks
+  will be left to proposals related to ticket #7126[1]. Once those
+  proposals are complete and implemented, raising the freshness limit
+  beyond 3 days should be possible.
 
 Implementation Notes
 
   There appear to be at least three constants in the code involved with
-  using potentially expired consensus data. Two of them (REASONABLY_LIVE_TIME
-  and NS_EXPIRY_SLOP) involve the consensus itself, and two
-  (OLD_ROUTER_DESC_MAX_AGE and TOLERATE_MICRODESC_AGE) deal with descriptor
-  liveness.
+  using potentially expired consensus data. Two of them
+  (REASONABLY_LIVE_TIME and NS_EXPIRY_SLOP) involve the consensus itself,
+  and two (OLD_ROUTER_DESC_MAX_AGE and TOLERATE_MICRODESC_AGE) deal with
+  descriptor liveness.
 
   Two additional constants ROUTER_MAX_AGE and ROUTER_MAX_AGE_TO_PUBLISH
   are only used when submitting descriptors for consensus voting.
 
-  FORCE_REGENERATE_DESCRIPTOR_INTERVAL is the maximum age a router descriptor
-  will get before a relay will re-publish. It is set to 18 hours.
+  FORCE_REGENERATE_DESCRIPTOR_INTERVAL is the maximum age a router
+  descriptor will get before a relay will re-publish. It is set to 18
+  hours.
 
   OLD_ROUTER_DESC_MAX_AGE is set at 5 days. TOLERATE_MICRODESC_AGE
   is set at 7 days.
@@ -75,11 +92,11 @@ Implementation Notes
   OLD_ROUTER_DESC_MAX_AGE is checked in routerlist_remove_old_routers(), 
   router_add_to_routerlist(), and client_would_use_router().
 
-  It is my opinion that we should combine REASONABLY_LIVE_TIME and 
-  NS_EXPIRY_SLOP into a single define, and make OLD_ROUTER_DESC_MAX_AGE
-  a function of REASONABLY_LIVE_TIME and FORCE_REGENERATE_DESCRIPTOR_INTERVAL:
+  It is my opinion that we should combine REASONABLY_LIVE_TIME and
+  NS_EXPIRY_SLOP into a single define, and make OLD_ROUTER_DESC_MAX_AGE a
+  function of REASONABLY_LIVE_TIME and FORCE_REGENERATE_DESCRIPTOR_INTERVAL:
 
-  #define REASONABLY_LIVE_TIME           (5*24*60*60)
+  #define REASONABLY_LIVE_TIME           (3*24*60*60)
   #define NS_EXPIRY_SLOP                 REASONABLY_LIVE_TIME
   #define OLD_ROUTER_DESC_MAX_AGE        \
           (REASONABLY_LIVE_TIME+FORCE_REGENERATE_DESCRIPTOR_INTERVAL)
@@ -87,3 +104,5 @@ Implementation Notes
   Based on my review of the above code paths, these changes should be all
   we need to enable clients to use older consensuses for longer while
   still attempting to fetch new ones.
+
+1. https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/7126



