[tor-dev] May Tor proposal status, and proposal plans for 0.2.3

[Nick Mathewson]

Hi, all!  When Roger was at my house the week before last, we spent
some time trying to triage currently open proposals for 0.2.3.x.  I've
spent some time revising the list of proposal statuses that I sent out
in early March to reflect that conversation.  Here's the current list
of proposal statuses, plus a list of those that we would like to
target for 0.2.3.

Note that this is a *tentative* list of stuff for 0.2.3, not a final
list.  Given a goal of getting 0.2.3.x-stable out much more quickly
than 0.2.2.x-stable, we may need to let unfinished items wait until
0.2.4.  I'll be trying to work out a release schedule over the course
of this week (to fit in with commitments we've made and time we have).
 That said, the distinction between "nice to have for 0.2.3" and
"targeted for 0.2.3" is that the "targeted for 0.2.3" items are the
ones I would currently consider delaying the release a little for,
whereas the others would be neat to focus on, but great whenever they
land.


===== FINISHED SINCE MARCH 2:

These were actually implemented and merged since March 2:
  158  Clients download consensus + microdescriptors
  162  Publish the consensus in multiple flavors
  174  Optimistic Data for Tor: Server Side [CLOSED]

These ones were implemented (in full or in part) all along:
  149  Using data from NETINFO cells
  163  Detecting whether a connection comes from a client
  166  Including Network Statistics in Extra-Info Documents

These were superseded in full:
  170  Configuration options regarding circuit building

===== TARGETED FOR 0.2.3

  110 Avoiding infinite length circuits

    This proposal solves a potential DoS attack.

    This has been nearly completely implemented for a while.  All we
    need to do is verify that there are no clients that do not send
    RELAY_EARLY cells correctly, and if so, turn on the code that drops
    EXTEND cells not sent via RELAY_EARLY.  The hard part here is
    double-checking that all the clients that send EXTEND commands
    inside non-RELAY_EARLY cells are really and truly obsolete.

  117 IPv6 exits

    This proposal describes how to transmit IPv6 traffic over Tor.

    It needs updating to work properly with microdescriptors; it also
    has some open questions about DNS.

    We should revise this to bring it up-to-date for microdescriptors
    and what we now know about DNS, and try to get it into 0.2.3.x.

  147 Eliminate the need for v2 directories in generating v3 directories

    This proposal explains a way that we can phase out the vestigial use
    of v2 directory documents in keeping authorities well-informed
    enough to generating the v3 consensus.  It's still correct; somebody
    should implement it before the v2 directory code rots any further.

  157 Make certificate downloads specific

    This proposal added cross-certification and signing-key-specific
    download URLs for directory authority certificates.  It is IIRC
    mostly implemented; there are just some SHOULDs that we should turn
    into MUSTS if all sufficiently old authority certificates are now
    obsolete.

  171 Separate streams across circuits by connection metadata

    This proposal describes a way to prevent cross-application linking
    of different anonymized sessions by isolating different kinds of
    streams on different circuits based on their characteristics.

    Robert Hogan did an implementation for a much earlier version of
    this proposal that distinguished only based on ports; this could
    serve as the basis of a new proposal, or not.

  176 Proposed version-3 link handshake for Tor

    Here's my proposal for how to improve our TLS handshake to eliminate
    renegotiation, become less fingerprintable, and generally make the
    world a better place.  It needs more review by actual crypto people,
    but I would like to get it into 0.2.3.x.

  178 Require majority of authorities to vote for consensus parameters

    This is a proposal for making it a little harder for a small number
    of authorities to influence the value of a consensus parameter.  It
    needs more discussion; Sebastian has a draft implementation in his
    "safer_params" branch.

  179 TLS certificate and parameter normalization

    Here's a proposal that describes better ways to come up with TLS
    parameters (including DH parameter values and X.509 cetificates) to
    make our protocol even harder to fingerprint.

    Jacob has an implementation in progress.

  180 Pluggable transports for circumvention

    And this one is the sledgehammer of circumvention support: it
    describes

    There's Google Summer of Code student (George) planning to spend
    some time working on this one.

===== NICE-TO-HAVE FOR 0.2.3

   118 Advertising multiple ORPorts at once

    This proposal describes how an OR can advertise more than one
    address and OR port at a time.  It needs to be updated to work with
    microdescriptors, and to explain how much information can be
    transmitted in the consensus and how (the original proposal was
    written before consensus directories were really figured out).

   140 Provide diffs between consensuses

    This proposal describes a way to transmit less directory traffic by
    sending only differences between consensuses, rather than the
    consensuses themselves.  It is mainly languishing for lack of an
    appropriately licensed, well-written, very small, pure-C
    implementation of the "diff" and "patch" algorithms.  (The good
    diffs seem to be GPL (which we can't use without changing Tor's
    license), or spaghetti code, or not easily usable as a library, or
    not written in C, or very large, or some combination of those.)

   143 Improvements of Distributed Storage for Tor Hidden Service
   Descriptors

     Here's a proposal from Karsten about making the hidden service DHT
     more reliable and secure to use.  It could use more discussion and
     analysis.

   164 Reporting the status of server votes

     This proposal explains a way for authorities to provide a slightly
     more verbose document that relay operators can use to diagnose
     reasons that their router was or was not listed in the consensus.
     These documents would be like slightly more verbose versions of the
     authorities' votes, and would explain *why* the authority voted as
     it did.  It wouldn't be too hard to implement, and would be a fine
     project for somebody who wants to get to know the directory code.

   168 Reduce default circuit window

     This proposal reduces the default window for circuit sendme cells.
     I think it's implemented, isn't it?  If so, we should make sure
     that tor-spec.txt is updated and close it.

   172 GETINFO controller option for circuit information
   173 GETINFO Option Expansion

    These would help controllers (particularly arm) provide more useful
    information about a running Tor process.  They're accepted and some
    parts of 173 are even implemented: somebody just needs to implement
    the rest.

   177 Abstaining from votes on individual flags

     Here's my proposal for letting authorities have opinions about some
     (flag,router) combinations without voting on whether _every_ router
     should have that flag.  It's simple, and I think it's basically
     right.  With more discussion and review, somebody could/should
     build it for 0.2.3.x, I think.

===== OPEN:

   145 Separate "suitable as a guard" from "suitable as a new guard"

     Currently, the Guard flag means both "You can use this node as a
     guard if you need to pick a new guard" and "If this node is
     currently your guard, you can keep using it as a guard."  This
     proposal tries to separate these two concepts, so that clients can
     stop picking a router once it is full of existing clients using it
     as a guard, but the clients currently on it won't all drop it.

     It's not clear whether this has anonymity issues, and it's not
     clear whether the imagined performance gains are actually
     worthwhile.

   146 Add new flag to reflect losing-term stability

     From time to time we get the idea of having clients ship with a
     reasonably recent consensus (or a list of directory mirrors), so
     instead of bootstrapping from one of the authorities, they can
     bootstrap from a regular directory cache.  The problem here is that
     by the time the client is run, most of the directory mirrors will
     be down or will have changed their IP.  This proposal tries to
     address that.

     It needs analysis based on behavior of actual routers on the
     network to see whether it could work, and what parameters might
     work.

   156 Tracking blocked ports on the client side

     This proposal provides a way for clients to learn which ports they
     are (and aren't) able to connect to, and connect to the ones that
     work.  It comes with a patch, too.  It also lets routers track
     ports that _they_ can't connect to.

     I'm a little unconvinced that : most clients that have some ports
     blocked will need bridges, not just restriction to a smaller set of
     ports.  This could be good behind restrictive firewalls, though.

     The router-side part is a little iffy: routers that can't connect
     to each other violate one of our network topology assumptions, and
     even if we do want to track failed router->router connections, the
     routers need to be sure that they aren't fooled into trying to
     connect repeatedly to a series of nonexistent addresses in an
     attempt to make them believe that (say) they can't reach port 443.

     This one is a paradigmatic "open" proposal: it needs more
     discussion.  The patch probably also needs to be ported to 0.2.3.x;
     it touches some code that has changed.

   159 Exit Scanning

     This is an overview of SoaT, with some ideas for how to integrate
     it into Tor.

   165 Easy migration for voting authority sets

     This is a design for how to change the set of authorities without
     having a flag day where the authority operators all reconfigure
     their authorities at once.  It needs more discussion.  One
     difficulty here is that we aren't talking much about changing the
     set of authorities, but that may be a chicken-and-egg issue, since
     changing the set is so onerous.

     If anybody is interested, it would be great to move the discussion
     ahead here.

===== DRAFT:

   127 Relaying dirport requests to Tor download site / website

    The idea here was to make it easier to fetch and learn about Tor by
    making it easy for relays to automatically act as proxies to the Tor
    website.  It needs more discussion, and there are some significant
    details to work out.  It's not at all clear whether this is actually
    a good idea or not.

   132 A Tor Web Service For Verifying Correct Browser Configuration

    This proposal was meant to give users a way to see if their browser
    and privoxy (yes, it was a while ago) are correctly configured by
    running a local webserver on 127.0.0.1.  I'm not sure the status
    here.

   133 Incorporate Unreachable ORs into the Tor Network

    This proposal had an idea for letting ORs that can only make
    outgoing connections still relay data usefully in the network.  It's
    something we should keep in mind, and it's a pretty neat idea, but
    it radically changes the network topology.  Anybody who wants to
    analyze new network topologies should definitely have a look.

   141 Download server descriptors on demand

    The idea of this proposal was for clients to only download the
    consensus, and later ask nodes for their own server descriptors
    while building the circuit through them.  It would make each circuit
    more time-consuming to build, but make bootstrapping much cheaper.

    A microdescriptor-based version of this would be even better, and
    microdescriptors would solve a lot of the problem that this was
    meant to resolve.  It still is not wholly superseded by the
    microdescriptor system, though.

   144 Increase the diversity of circuits by detecting nodes belonging
   the same provider

    This is a version of the good idea, "Let's do routing in a way that
    tries to keep from routing traffic through the same provider too
    much!"  There are complex issues here that the proposal doesn't
    completely address, but I think it might be a fine idea for somebody
    to see how much more we know now than we did in 2008, particularly
    in light of the relevant paper(s) by Matt Edmann and Paul Syverson.

   175 Automatically promoting Tor clients to nodes

    Here's Steven's proposal for adding a mode between "client mode" and
    "relay mode" for "self-test to see if you would be a good relay, and
    if so become one."  It didn't get enough attention when it was
    posted to the list; more people should review it.


===== NEEDS-REVISION: 131 Help users to verify they are using Tor

     Here's a proposal for making a torcheck-like website more reliable.
     If anybody wants to pick it up (especially somebody working on
     torcheck) and see whether it should be reopened or rejected, that
     would be a fine thing.

====== "IDEAS":

   xxx-bwrate-algs.txt

     Here's a note about better round-robin calculations for rate
     limiting.  Mike wrote it; I don't understand what's going on with
     it.

   xxx-choosing-crypto-in-tor-protocol.txt

     Here's the start of a considerations document that Marian was
     writing about how to pick new crypto algorithms to migrate to.

   xxx-controllers-intercept-extends.txt

     Here's an old idea from Geoff Goodell about letting controllers
     intercept EXTEND commands.  It is partially superseded by Damian's
     172, though there is an additional feature that doesn't make sense
     for the Tor network, but might make sense for experimental stuff
     like Geoff was working on.

   xxx-crypto-migration.txt

     Here's the document I wrote in December about which parts of our
     crypto there are to migrate, and what might be involved.  This
     isn't a draft or pre-draft of a design proposal; it is more of a
     new category of "survey of stuff we need to design and think
     about", or "proposal for proposals" or something.

   xxx-crypto-requirements.txt

     Here's Robert Ransom's draft for what crypto properties, exactly,
     we're trying to get out of our circuit crypto.  It is not a
     proposal draft or pre-draft: it is again a "design considerations"
     document, and one worth reading.

   xxx-draft-spec-for-TLS-normalization.txt

     Here's Jacob's proposal for certificate normalization.  It should
     get renamed, given a proposal number, and called "Open" or "Draft"
     depending on how much the details are likely to change.

   xxx-encrypted-services.txt

     This is a start-of-a-proposal of Rogers that somebody should pick
     up and finish some time: The idea is to use the hidden service
     mechanism to provide a secure naming and encrypted connection
     facility for hosting sites that do not actually want anonymity
     themselves.  There's been more interest in this topic lately.  It
     might also turn into "exit enclaves done right".

   xxx-exit-scanning-outline.txt

     Looks like this was superseded by 159?

   xxx-geoip-survey-plan.txt

     Here's an old document I wrote a while ago about tracking usage by
     country.  Probably it should go into the metrics documentation
     somewhere (if we do this), or get thrown into "old" (if we won't do
     this), or updated (if we might someday do this).

   xxx-grand-scaling-plan.txt

     Here are some notes on scaling that Roger wrote in 2008.  There
     might be some smart ideas here!  Have a look some time.

   xxx-hide-platform.txt

     Here's a proposal pre-draft that says we should normalize the
     platform string.  Somebody could turn this into a proposal pretty
     easily.

   xxx-ipv6-plan.txt

     Here's a survey of what we need to do for IPv6 support that I
     started writing.  It's not a proposal; it's a survey of proposal
     and implementation statuses.

   xxx-pluggable-transport.txt

     Here's the thing Jacob and I have been working on for pluggable
     obfuscation techniques.  It should get turned into "Draft" status
     asap, if not "Open".  We should finish writing the missing
     sections, like, yesterday.

   xxx-port-knocking.txt

     Here's a pre-proposal from Jacob about using port knocking to make
     bridges harder to fingerprint.  This could be a good idea for
     somebody to do in terms of the pluggable transport spec.

   xxx-rate-limit-exits.txt

     Here are some notes of Roger's from 2008 claiming that we should
     rate-limit stream creation at exit nodes.  It could help avoid
     port-scans if we do it right, but we would need to be exceedingly
     careful not to disrupt useful traffic.

   xxx-using-spdy.txt

     Here's a document from Steven about opportunistic use of SPDY over
     Tor.

     This should be a "Draft" proposal IMO.

   xxx-what-uses-sha1.txt

     Here's the beginnings of a survey of where Tor uses SHA1, with an
     eye to stopping.  This really isn't a design proposal; it might
     fall into a new category of "issue survey" or "information" or
     something.