[tor-dev] Notes on HS revamping

[George Kadianakis]

Kang <td66bshwu at gmail.com> writes:

>> AFAIK, this should also be possible with the current state of HS
>> descriptor publishing.
>>
>
> It should be possible, yes, but it's not a serious problem due to the
> decentralised nature of hidden service descriptor publishing.
> On the other hand I'm under the impression that there's only a few
> directory servers and that they're critical to the operation of the
> Tor network, so this would become and issue if directories were used
> instead.
> You could potentially cripple the whole network.
>

Hm. I think we are thinking of different schemes.

I was discussing the possibility of normal directory servers caching
and serving the HS descriptors. (The Hidden Services would upload
their descriptors to the directory authorities and then the directory
servers would fetch the descriptors from the authorities.) It is my
impression that this is how the current directory system works.

Although, it's true that this puts more trust and network load to the
authorities.

>> Till #8244 is solved, they can even accuse future HSDirs.
>>
>
> That's a good point, actually.
> It would be more labour intensive to contact future HSDirs, but you
> could and it would produce the same result.
>
>> This is worth thinking about. However, even with the current
>> situation, Hidden Services periodically establish circuits to their
>> HSDirs, so I'm not sure if ditching the hash ring will make any
>> difference.
>>
>
> It would make a difference because currently HSDirs change every 24 hours or so.
> If directory authorities were used as HSDirs instead they would
> (probably) be used indefinitely.
>