[tor-dev] Number of directory connections

[tordev123 at Safe-mail.net]

-------- Original Message --------
From: "l.m" <ter.one.leeboi at hush.com>
Subject: Re: [tor-dev] Number of directory connections
Date: Fri, 21 Aug 2015 09:31:25 -0400

> Oh I see, so they happened before. I wasn't sure about that. In that case the last consensus stored locally must have been many days old. If that's the case you would bootstrap from dirauths then use your guard for tunneling later directory request.

I did some experiments. It looks like when the consensus is older than 5 days, a directory authority is used (and the UseEntryGuardsAsDirGuards setting basically ignored).

I can't think of a good reason for that behavior. Is there a valid security issue using an old consensus to fetch the current one from the entry guard?