[tor-onions] Onion-routing of The Free Software Foundation Europe

Tue Jan 26 19:14:29 UTC 2021

On 1/23/21 8:59 PM, Silvia Puglisi, Ph.D. wrote:
> Hi Jacob,
>
> On 2021-01-22 12:21, Jacob Hrbek wrote:
>> On 1/21/21 9:27 PM, Silvia wrote:
>>> Exciting to see fsfe moving to onions.
>>> How can we help you guys with this?
>> Currently the main problem is with implementation as there is an issue
>> with certificates using TLS-over-onions (Not economical for non-profit
>> foundation) where it seems that using reverse proxy with currently used
>> Apache or implementing EOTK is the way to go there?
>
> Yes EOTK uses a TLS certificate. The idea behind this is that if the
> certificate belongs to fsfe, visitors of the onion service can be sure
> that the onion has been setup by fsfe.
> The certificate is not needed for any other reason than that.
>
> If you are concerned about how people discover your onion you can use
> the onion-location header so that people visting fsfe.org over tor get
> the onion available button on the url bar and can get redirected to the
> onion
> (https://community.torproject.org/onion-services/advanced/onion-location/).
>
>> More options and way
>> to configure EOTK (alec seems to be currently busy and unable to answer)
>> appreciated.
> EOTK is a tool that setup a few options for you in nginx and install
> required packages, but you can setup the onion also manually.
>
> Here for example you will find a gist of the nginx config of the
> propubblica onion:
> https://gist.github.com/mtigas/9a7425dfdacda15790b2
>
>> Also brainstorm for the implementation as a whole would be appreciated
>> the services seems to be mostly running in jail/VM which is favorable to
>> be preserved for security reasons (e.g. in scenario where there is a
>> major bug discovered in the wild to reduce the impact of one service on
>> the system).
>> So i am currently unsure whether we want to:
>> 1. run one tor daemon per system in jail/VM to provide the routing from
>> exposed ports from the services e.g.
>> https://git.fsfe.org/kreyren/fsfe-planet/src/branch/onionz/docker-compose.yml
>> 2. implementing tor daemon within these jails/VMs with the service
>>
>> srv/service1 (exposing port 12447)
>> srv/service2 (exposing port 12448)
>>
>> and setting tor as
>>
>> HiddenServiceDir /var/lib/tor/service1
>> HiddenServicePort 12447 127.0.0.1:12447
>>
>> HiddenServiceDir /var/lib/tor/service2
>> HiddenServicePort 12447 127.0.0.1:12447
>>
>>
> I am not sure about the exact architecture here, but generally you need
> a master onion where you run onion balance and use it to scale
> horizontally with different backends
> (https://onionbalance-v3.readthedocs.io/en/latest/v3/tutorial-v3.html).
>
> If you are concerned about DOS attacks you can also implement some more
> advanced web server configs.
> One of them is using captchas, another is to use cookies to filter out
> scripted clients. The idea in this case is that the web server sends the
> client a cookie and ask the client to verify it. Usually scripted
> clients don't set cookies so the verify fails and you find out that the
> client is malicious.
>
> Nginx uses openresty and lua to implement captchas. This solution is
> usually highly scripted. With regards to cookies I can recommend this
> library from cloudflare for openresty
> https://github.com/cloudflare/lua-resty-cookie. I am sure there are
> equivalent solution in apache.
>
>
>> 3. implementing tor daemon on the router assuming all services being
>> routed through a routing server, but i am concerned about sanitization
>> as if there is a bug in tor that could expose user traffic to bad
>> actors. (currently being discussed)
>>
>> 4. Implementing xen (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xen) which currently
>> not favorable as it would require lots of work on the backend.
>>
>> 5. Other?
> There is a tool called onionscan (https://onionscan.org/) that can help
> you find vulnerabilities on your onion. This also test things like bugs
> in your web service that might expose users data and information that
> you might prefer to keep secure.
>
> I also assume that the fsfe onion isn't interested to be anonymous so
> you might consider setting up a 1-hop onion in this case
> (https://support.torproject.org/glossary/single-onion-service/).
>
> Let me know if you need more help.
>
> Cheers,
> -hiro
>> FWIW i would also like to provide something like
>> https://onion.debian.org so that the website list is available to the
>> end-user.
>>
>>
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I am sorry for delay had to process lots of informations.

The onion-location HTTP header is already tracked.

Added propublica configuration in tracking as example configuration, thanks!

One-hop non-anonymous onion service noted in tracking.

OnionScan noted in tracking and recommended to be adapted as Continuous 
Integration.

Personal tracking updated in 
https://github.com/Kreyren/kreyren/issues/60 peer-review appreciated.

About the (D)DoS -> i was told that they are not a concern over onion 
routing due to the hard delay used for encryption. Can you confirm?
Overall the (D)DoS is part of a threat model as FSFE has been (D)DoSed 
in the past where the main concern is Gitea as the static pages require 
an unreasonable amount of resources to be taken down atm.

About Apache -> This is currently used by the webserver and needs to be 
implemented with priority in 
https://git.fsfe.org/fsfe-system-hackers/webserver-bunsen/src/branch/master/files/apache2-sites 
(currently tracked in 
https://git.fsfe.org/fsfe-system-hackers/webserver-bunsen/pulls/7). Any 
relevant information to the implementation is appreciated as i am 
currently struggling with making the TLS-over-onion work there where 
apache should strip the TLS when the website is accessed over onions. 
Any relevant information appreciated.

About Nginx -> Currently not an option as the website is already using 
Apache.

About EOTK -> I would like to implement this as an alternative 
configuration for system hackers to have a choice and do their research 
more efficiently and I assume that being a better implementation here as 
we currently want to onionize gitea service which based on my experience 
on https://git.dotya.ml requires changing of non-relative links within 
the webapp (which can be done in nginx/apache, but seems to be painful 
to maintain?).

FWIW i am also considering decentralization for the static pages where 
the theory is to reduce the system load, make the websites less 
vulnerable to (D)DoS and make the websites to load faster as the 
webserver would be closer to the client in question. I am not aware of 
sane configuration for this over onions, but any relevant info appreciated.

-- 
- Krey

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