[tor-bugs] #5968 [Tor]: Improve onion key and TLS management
Tor Bug Tracker & Wiki
blackhole at torproject.org
Wed Apr 10 00:50:53 UTC 2013
#5968: Improve onion key and TLS management
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Reporter: mikeperry | Owner:
Type: enhancement | Status: new
Priority: major | Milestone: Tor: 0.2.5.x-final
Component: Tor | Version:
Keywords: tor-relay | Parent: #5456
Points: | Actualpoints:
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Comment(by mikeperry):
Replying to [comment:7 nickm]:
> If the attacker can steal the identity key for a server, they could
publish their own descriptors to the authorities, containing their own TLS
cert hash and IP. The server operator might notice, but the users
wouldn't.
What I want to remove is the ability for someone demand a guard's identity
key and target specific users using interception hardware operating
independently from that relay. The reason I want to prevent this specific
case is because it's an adversary that can make money subverting Tor's
security through the sale of such devices, which means the arms race
escalates faster. Such adversaries will be incentivized to subvert/weaken
legal systems to support their existence.. We should be sure to head them
off before they begin to exist for this usecase, I think.
If TLS certs are also validated through the consensus somehow, we could
prevent such devices from being possible without persistent compromise,
which I do think is a different beast. See below.
> Sticking this int the _micro_descriptors seems pretty heavyweight.
Maybe I don't understand the attack, though. If the attacker can steal
the identity key for a server, it seems to me that they could also steal
the onion key, replace the server's Tor software, trojan the server in
some other way, publish descriptors with a different onion key, and so on.
I don't think that "identity key compromise" is something that a server
can really recover from in our design.
In the future, secure boot and/or a readonly runtime could authenticate
tor relays from many classes of such adversaries except one: some guy with
a gun who demands you hand over your key.
With a frequent enough TLS key rotation, we can make such requests
impractical, or at least bounded by what minimal restrictions on such
repeated requests may be in place.
--
Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/5968#comment:9>
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