[tor-dev] What hidden services does my relay node know about?

[Matt Traudt]

On 7/29/19 11:09, clive.jenson at tutanota.com wrote:
> 
>         Onion services will use your relay to store descriptors once it
>         has the
>         HSDir flag.
> 
>     https://metrics.torproject.org/rs.html#details/ED279FC87D17921131CB629BA1D4E6B0F8C00BF8)
> 
> 
> Is the HSDir flag the same as V2Dir, or something different? You
> correctly identified my relay. I see it is a V2Dir but do not know how
> to determine if it is a HSDir.

HSDir is different than V2Dir. You'll get the HSDir flag and see it on
Relay Search when you've earned it.

Ctrl-f in this document to learn more about possible flags and their
requirements. https://gitweb.torproject.org/torspec.git/tree/dir-spec.txt

"HSDir" -- A router is a v2 hidden service directory if it stores and
serves v2 hidden service descriptors, has the Stable and Fast flag, and
the authority believes that it's been up for at least 96 hours (or the
current value of MinUptimeHidServDirectoryV2).


> 
>         You can't determine which onion services or how many onion
>         services are using you without code changes.
> 
>         Doing this is considered being a malicious relay and will get
>         your relay
>         removed from the Tor network.
> 
>     If this question came up and was sent to tor-dev@ because you intend to
>     perform research: it may be prudent to stop what you're doing and
>     content the Research Safety Board.
> 
>     https://research.torproject.org/safetyboard/
> 
> I'm just a curious user, this is not part of a formal research project. 
> Is there a public tor testnet that I could have joined my node to for
> this sort of experimentation (I don't have the resources to build my
> own)? I can understand why you don't want production nodes logging data
> that could potentially cause harm to other network users, but also do
> not think curious users should be discouraged from poking around in the
> code.
> 

There's no public Tor testnet, but you can easily run your own on your
own machine with Chutney[0] (easy, but less powerful) or Shadow[1]
(harder, but very powerful). Chutney is more than enough for what it
sounds like you want to do.

I did not mean to suggest curious users should not poke around code
**safely**. Go for it. Learn a lot. And maybe even find a bug and
contribute a fix? ;)

Hope that helps.

Matt

[0]: https://gitweb.torproject.org/chutney.git
[1]: https://github.com/shadow/shadow