[tor-bugs] #3237 [Analysis]: Develop consensus tracker for metrics website

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#3237: Develop consensus tracker for metrics website
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 Reporter:  karsten      |          Owner:     
     Type:  enhancement  |         Status:  new
 Priority:  minor        |      Milestone:     
Component:  Analysis     |        Version:     
 Keywords:               |         Parent:     
   Points:               |   Actualpoints:     
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 Damian wrote a consensus tracker script that parses network status
 consensuses and compares them to a local database to identify possible
 Sybil attacks on the Tor network.  Whenever it suspects an attack, it
 sends out an email for a human to check.

 AFAIK, this script uses a simple approach of counting new relays and
 deciding whether this number exceeds a given threshold.  This is a good
 start, but maybe we can do better.

 We should sit down and analyze how we can detect Sybil attacks.  We should
 also analyze past network statuses to see how many false positives we'd
 have and whether there might have been Sybil attacks in the past.
 Obviously, we won't detect all such attacks, in particular when making the
 detection code public and allowing smart attackers to adapt.  But we can
 make sure that the dumbest attacks don't go unnoticed.

 This is an Analysis ticket until we have finished the analysis of network
 statuses and come up with a design we can implement.  Then it should
 become a Metrics Website ticket, because metrics-web is probably the most
 useful place to implement this.  An alternative would be to write a
 standalone tool and put it in metrics-utils, but that would mean
 duplicating code that's already present in metrics-web.

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Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/3237>
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