[tor-relays] Overload (dropped ntor) due to DDoS??

s7r s7r at sky-ip.org
Thu Aug 4 23:11:27 UTC 2022


Richard Menedetter wrote:
> Hi All
> 
> I have a non exit relay running on a root server (4 AMD Epyc cores, 8 GB RAM, 2.5 GBit/s Ethernet)
> I have limited tor to numcpus 2, relaybandwidthburst 15 MB, hardwareaccel 1, maxadvertisedbandwidth 10 MB, maxmeminqueues 3GB

Thanks for running a relay!

didn't you also use RelayBandwidthRate along with RelayBandwidthBurst ?

> 
> Usually it takes less than 1 CPU core, and like 1 GB of RAM.
> But recently my relay is foten shown as obverloaded.
> I have these LOG entries:
> Tor[814]: General overload -> Ntor dropped (290376) fraction 5.3451% is above threshold of 0.5000%

You are not the only one, it's an ongoing DoS attack on the network, 
targeting onion services.

> 
> Is this due to DDoS attacks or a misconfigration on my side?

Besides the question above about RelayBandwidthRate I don't see anything 
wrong.

> Is there something that I can do to aleviate this issue?

Nope, there is nothing you can do, unfortunately. Tor has some defenses 
against DoS and will blacklist / mark the abusing addresses, etc. as 
much as it can. But as you know DoS is a never ending battle, usually 
won by having "larger pipe", and it's something hard to tickle in an 
environment where anonymity is the grounding law.

What you can do is maintain your relay up and running in good shape with 
the latest version of Tor until this "attack" gets through. As I said, I 
guess most of relays are getting this at present times. The DoS "attack" 
is not targeted at your relay, what you are seeing is just a side effect 
of someone creating large amounts of circuits (heavy usage of Tor) which 
is reflected network-wide anyways.

> 
> CU, Ricsi
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