Tor 0.2.2.17-alpha is out

Roger Dingledine arma at mit.edu
Fri Oct 1 08:56:25 UTC 2010


Tor 0.2.2.17-alpha introduces a feature to make it harder for clients
to use one-hop circuits (which can put the exit relays at higher risk,
plus unbalance the network); fixes a big bug in bandwidth accounting
for relays that want to limit their monthly bandwidth use; fixes a
big pile of bugs in how clients tolerate temporary network failure;
and makes our adaptive circuit build timeout feature (which improves
client performance if your network is fast while not breaking things
if your network is slow) better handle bad networks.

https://www.torproject.org/download.html.en

Packages will be appearing over the next few days.

Changes in version 0.2.2.17-alpha - 2010-09-30
  o Major features:
    - Exit relays now try harder to block exit attempts from unknown
      relays, to make it harder for people to use them as one-hop proxies
      a la tortunnel. Controlled by the refuseunknownexits consensus
      parameter (currently enabled), or you can override it on your
      relay with the RefuseUnknownExits torrc option. Resolves bug 1751.

  o Major bugfixes (0.2.1.x and earlier):
    - Fix a bug in bandwidth accounting that could make us use twice
      the intended bandwidth when our interval start changes due to
      daylight saving time. Now we tolerate skew in stored vs computed
      interval starts: if the start of the period changes by no more than
      50% of the period's duration, we remember bytes that we transferred
      in the old period. Fixes bug 1511; bugfix on 0.0.9pre5.
    - Always search the Windows system directory for system DLLs, and
      nowhere else. Bugfix on 0.1.1.23; fixes bug 1954.
    - When you're using bridges and your network goes away and your
      bridges get marked as down, recover when you attempt a new socks
      connection (if the network is back), rather than waiting up to an
      hour to try fetching new descriptors for your bridges. Bugfix on
      0.2.0.3-alpha; fixes bug 1981.

  o Major bugfixes (on 0.2.2.x):
    - Fix compilation on Windows. Bugfix on 0.2.2.16-alpha; related to
      bug 1797.
    - Fix a segfault that could happen when operating a bridge relay with
      no GeoIP database set. Fixes bug 1964; bugfix on 0.2.2.15-alpha.
    - The consensus bandwidth-weights (used by clients to choose fast
      relays) entered an unexpected edge case in September where
      Exits were much scarcer than Guards, resulting in bad weight
      recommendations. Now we compute them using new constraints that
      should succeed in all cases. Also alter directory authorities to
      not include the bandwidth-weights line if they fail to produce
      valid values. Fixes bug 1952; bugfix on 0.2.2.10-alpha.
    - When weighting bridges during path selection, we used to trust
      the bandwidths they provided in their descriptor, only capping them
      at 10MB/s. This turned out to be problematic for two reasons:
      Bridges could claim to handle a lot more traffic then they
      actually would, thus making more clients pick them and have a
      pretty effective DoS attack. The other issue is that new bridges
      that might not have a good estimate for their bw capacity yet
      would not get used at all unless no other bridges are available
      to a client. Fixes bug 1912; bugfix on 0.2.2.7-alpha.

  o Major bugfixes (on the circuit build timeout feature, 0.2.2.x):
    - Ignore cannibalized circuits when recording circuit build times.
      This should provide for a minor performance improvement for hidden
      service users using 0.2.2.14-alpha, and should remove two spurious
      notice log messages. Bugfix on 0.2.2.14-alpha; fixes bug 1740.
    - Simplify the logic that causes us to decide if the network is
      unavailable for purposes of recording circuit build times. If we
      receive no cells whatsoever for the entire duration of a circuit's
      full measured lifetime, the network is probably down. Also ignore
      one-hop directory fetching circuit timeouts when calculating our
      circuit build times. These changes should hopefully reduce the
      cases where we see ridiculous circuit build timeouts for people
      with spotty wireless connections. Fixes part of bug 1772; bugfix
      on 0.2.2.2-alpha.
    - Prevent the circuit build timeout from becoming larger than
      the maximum build time we have ever seen. Also, prevent the time
      period for measurement circuits from becoming larger than twice that
      value. Fixes the other part of bug 1772; bugfix on 0.2.2.2-alpha.

  o Minor features:
    - When we run out of directory information such that we can't build
      circuits, but then get enough that we can build circuits, log when
      we actually construct a circuit, so the user has a better chance of
      knowing what's going on. Fixes bug 1362.
    - Be more generous with how much bandwidth we'd use up (with
      accounting enabled) before entering "soft hibernation". Previously,
      we'd refuse new connections and circuits once we'd used up 95% of
      our allotment. Now, we use up 95% of our allotment, AND make sure
      that we have no more than 500MB (or 3 hours of expected traffic,
      whichever is lower) remaining before we enter soft hibernation.
    - If we've configured EntryNodes and our network goes away and/or all
      our entrynodes get marked down, optimistically retry them all when
      a new socks application request appears. Fixes bug 1882.
    - Add some more defensive programming for architectures that can't
      handle unaligned integer accesses. We don't know of any actual bugs
      right now, but that's the best time to fix them. Fixes bug 1943.
    - Support line continuations in the torrc config file. If a line
      ends with a single backslash character, the newline is ignored, and
      the configuration value is treated as continuing on the next line.
      Resolves bug 1929.

  o Minor bugfixes (on 0.2.1.x and earlier):
    - For bandwidth accounting, calculate our expected bandwidth rate
      based on the time during which we were active and not in
      soft-hibernation during the last interval. Previously, we were
      also considering the time spent in soft-hibernation. If this
      was a long time, we would wind up underestimating our bandwidth
      by a lot, and skewing our wakeup time towards the start of the
      accounting interval. Fixes bug 1789. Bugfix on 0.0.9pre5.

  o Minor bugfixes (on 0.2.2.x):
    - Resume generating CIRC FAILED REASON=TIMEOUT control port messages,
      which were disabled by the circuit build timeout changes in
      0.2.2.14-alpha. Bugfix on 0.2.2.14-alpha; fixes bug 1739.
    - Make sure we don't warn about missing bandwidth weights when
      choosing bridges or other relays not in the consensus. Bugfix on
      0.2.2.10-alpha; fixes bug 1805.
    - In our logs, do not double-report signatures from unrecognized
      authorities both as "from unknown authority" and "not
      present". Fixes bug 1956, bugfix on 0.2.2.16-alpha.

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