[tor-dev] Tor 0.2.8 and Fallback Directory Mirrors

[Tim Wilson-Brown - teor]

Dear Tor App Developers,

Just a heads' up that tor 0.2.8 includes a fallback directory mirrors feature, where tor clients bootstrap from a set of hard-coded long-lived directory mirrors. This makes bootstrap more reliable, and makes it harder to block tor. The wiki has an entry with more details. [0]

We're currently trying to finalise a list of around 100 fallback directory mirrors by the time tor 0.2.8-stable is released. [1]

If we have this many mirrors, I am confident we won't overwhelm any of the mirrors when an app like Orbot, Tor Browser, or Tails switches to tor 0.2.8. (Are there any other tor apps with millions of users that I've missed?)

If this feature does cause problems, or if your app needs to bootstrap only from the authorities (Tails time syncing? [2]), the fallback directory mirrors feature can be disabled using the tor config option "UseDefaultFallbackDirs 0".

Tim

[0]: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/doc/FallbackDirectoryMirrors <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/doc/FallbackDirectoryMirrors>
[1]: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/17158 <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/17158>
[2]: https://tails.boum.org/contribute/design/Time_syncing/ <https://tails.boum.org/contribute/design/Time_syncing/>

Tim Wilson-Brown (teor)

teor2345 at gmail dot com
PGP 968F094B

teor at blah dot im
OTR CAD08081 9755866D 89E2A06F E3558B7F B5A9D14F

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