[tor-dev] Onion Service - Intropoint DoS Defenses

[George Kadianakis]

juanjo <juanjo at avanix.es> writes:

> Ok, thanks, I was actually thinking about PoW on the Introduction Point 
> itself, but it would need to add a round trip, like some sort of 
> "authentication based PoW" before allowing to send the INTRODUCE1 cell. 
> At least it would make the overhead of clients higher than I.P. as the 
> clients would need to compute the PoW function and the I.P. only to 
> verify it. So if right now the cost of the attack is "low" we can add an 
> overhead of +10 to the client and only +2 to the I.P. (for example) and 
> the hidden service doesn't need to do anything.
>

Also see the idea in (b) (1) here: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2019-April/013790.html
and how it couples with the "rendezvous approver" from ticket #16059.
Given a generic system there, adding proof-of-work is a possibility.

Another option would be to add the proof-of-work in the public parts of
INTRO1 and have the introduction point verify it which is not covered in
our email above.

Proof-of-work systems could be something to consider, altho tweaking a
proof-of-work system that would deny attackers and still allow normal
clients to visit it (without e.g. burning the battery of mobile clients)
is an open problem AFAIK.