[tor-bugs] #7145 [Tor]: Evaluate, possibly revise, and then implement ideas for TLS certificate normalization

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#7145: Evaluate, possibly revise, and then implement ideas for TLS certificate
normalization
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 Reporter:  karsten              |          Owner:                    
     Type:  project              |         Status:  new               
 Priority:  normal               |      Milestone:  Tor: 0.2.4.x-final
Component:  Tor                  |        Version:                    
 Keywords:  SponsorZ tor-client  |         Parent:                    
   Points:                       |   Actualpoints:                    
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Comment(by asn):

 Opinion piece:

 On the "Evaluate, possibly revise" phase, how much of proposal 195 should
 we actually care to do?

 Some parts of proposal 195 are easy-ish; like using better CNs or changing
 the certificate lifetime. Other parts of proposal 195 are not trivial to
 implement and change lots of core tor code, like #4549 and #4550 (see the
 ticket discussion to see why link-protocol code needs to be changed).

 I like how PTs moves the circumvention rat race to another (more flexible)
 layer, and nowadays that PTs are kiiiiind-of deployed, I don't like
 changing core parts of little-t-tor for circumvention purposes (like the
 link-protocols (#4549) and tor's security properties (#7189)).

 As a matter of fact, in a future where PTs are widely deployed and all
 users know that they have to use PTs to circumvent censorship, I would
 enjoy little-t-tor having no circumvention capabilities whatsoever and
 solely relying on PTs to be undetectable. That is, I would like complete
 layer separation: little-t-tor gives me security/anonymity and PTs give me
 censorship circumvention.

 WRT 195, I don't have specific rules of thumb on which changes we should
 do, but IMO we should only change little-t-tor for circumvention purposes
 when:
 * It will unblock vanilla Tor in large jurisdictions.
 and
 * The change is easy to implement and reason about.

 In other cases, I think that the manpower required to implement parts of
 195 is better invested in doing other little-t-tor tasks, or in helping
 with further deployment of PTs.

-- 
Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/7145#comment:2>
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