[tor-talk] Run Tor as a bridge in the Amazon Cloud

Roger Dingledine arma at mit.edu
Tue Nov 15 17:33:36 UTC 2011


On Tue, Nov 15, 2011 at 05:29:12PM +0000, Runa A. Sandvik wrote:
> >> A bridge should not specify the ?MyFamily? option. You won't run a
> >> middle relay or an exit relay in the cloud, so this shouldn't be an
> >> issue.
> >
> > As far as I understand, this is correct if you only run bridges (because
> > a circuit never uses two bridges), but what if someone (like me) runs a
> > bridge and a normal relay as well? IMHO you don't want to use a relay
> > which is operated by the same operator as your bridge? Please correct
> > me, if I'm wrong.
> 
> Yes, you should set the MyFamily option in the Tor configuration file
> if you run both a bridge and a relay.

No, this is dangerous: if you list your bridge as part of your family in
the relay descriptor, then everybody can learn your bridge fingerprint,
and they can look up your bridge's descriptor (and thus location) at
the bridge directory authority.

We currently don't have a good answer for putting bridges and relays
in the same family. Suggestions welcome. (Note that if the bridge and
the relay are in the same /16 network, Tor clients will automatically
know they're in the same family. So the unsolved case is where they're
in different networks but operated by the same human. My inclination is
to not worry about it that much.)

--Roger



More information about the tor-talk mailing list