Tor 0.0.8pre1 is out

Roger Dingledine arma at mit.edu
Fri Jul 23 06:54:27 UTC 2004


We've fixed a few bugs from 0.0.7.2, added more infrastructure for
future features, and probably added many bugs too.

tarball:   http://freehaven.net/tor/dist/tor-0.0.8pre1.tar.gz
signature: http://freehaven.net/tor/dist/tor-0.0.8pre1.tar.gz.asc
(use -t tor-0_0_8pre1 if you want to check out from cvs)

---Note to server operators---
When you upgrade your server, the 0.0.8 code will rename your
$datadirectory/keys/identity.key file to secret_id_key.
If you downgrade to 0.0.7, you'll have to rename it back manually.
---Note to server operators---

Improvements since 0.0.7.2:
  o Bugfixes:
    - Made our unit tests compile again on OpenBSD 3.5, and tor
      itself compile again on OpenBSD on a sparc64.
    - We were neglecting milliseconds when logging on win32, so
      everything appeared to happen at the beginning of each second.

  o Protocol changes:
    - 'Extend' relay cell payloads now include the digest of the
      intended next hop's identity key. Now we can verify that we're
      extending to the right router, and also extend to routers we
      hadn't heard of before.

  o Features:
    - Tor nodes can now act as relays (with an advertised ORPort)
      without being manually verified by the dirserver operators.
      - Uploaded descriptors of unverified routers are now accepted
        by the dirservers, and included in the directory.
      - Verified routers are listed by nickname in the running-routers
        list; unverified routers are listed as "$<fingerprint>".
      - We now use hash-of-identity-key in most places rather than
        nickname or addr:port, for improved security/flexibility.
      - To avoid Sybil attacks, paths still use only verified servers.
        But now we have a chance to play around with hybrid approaches.
      - Nodes track bandwidth usage to estimate capacity (not used yet).
      - ClientOnly option for nodes that never want to become servers.
    - Directory caching.
      - "AuthoritativeDir 1" option for the official dirservers.
      - Now other nodes (clients and servers) will cache the latest
        directory they've pulled down.
      - They can enable their DirPort to serve it to others.
      - Clients will pull down a directory from any node with an open
        DirPort, and check the signature/timestamp correctly.
      - Authoritative dirservers now fetch directories from other
        authdirservers, to stay better synced.
      - Running-routers list tells who's down also, along with noting
        if they're verified (listed by nickname) or unverified (listed
        by hash-of-key).
      - Allow dirservers to serve running-router list separately.
        This isn't used yet.
    - ORs connect-on-demand to other ORs
      - If you get an extend cell to an OR you're not connected to,
        connect, handshake, and forward the create cell.
      - The authoritative dirservers stay connected to everybody,
        and everybody stays connected to 0.0.7 servers, but otherwise
        clients/servers expire unused connections after 5 minutes.
    - When servers get a sigint, they delay 30 seconds (refusing new
      connections) then exit. A second sigint causes immediate exit.
    - File and name management:
      - Look for .torrc if no CONFDIR "torrc" is found.
      - If no datadir is defined, then choose, make, and secure ~/.tor
        as datadir.
      - If torrc not found, exitpolicy reject *:*.
      - Expands ~/ in filenames to $HOME/ (but doesn't yet expand ~arma).
      - If no nickname is defined, derive default from hostname.
      - Rename secret key files, e.g. identity.key -> secret_id_key,
        to discourage people from mailing their identity key to tor-ops.
    - Refuse to build a circuit before the directory has arrived --
      it won't work anyway, since you won't know the right onion keys
      to use.
    - Try other dirservers immediately if the one you try is down. This
      should tolerate down dirservers better now.
    - Parse tor version numbers so we can do an is-newer-than check
      rather than an is-in-the-list check.
    - New socks command 'resolve', to let us shim gethostbyname()
      locally.
      - A 'tor_resolve' script to access the socks resolve functionality.
      - A new socks-extensions.txt doc file to describe our
        interpretation and extensions to the socks protocols.
    - Add a ContactInfo option, which gets published in descriptor.
    - Publish OR uptime in descriptor (and thus in directory) too.
    - Write tor version at the top of each log file
    - New docs in the tarball:
      - tor-doc.html.
      - Document that you should proxy your SSL traffic too.



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