[tor-relays] Questions about 4 Relays per IP and the ddos mitigation scripts

[Chris Enkidu-6]

@nusenu

Thank you very much for taking the time to help me understand things
better. I can use all the help I can get.

    > You can also not be sure whether it is an actual authenticated
relay to relay
    > connection or a client to relay connection just by looking at the
source IP.


    > In a vanilla current tor version it is not possible to use a tor
client
    > to connect via an exit to another relay's ORPort so this is very
unlikely.


    > An exit can share it's source IP with tor clients for example
behind NAT

Sorry I'm confused here. Those statements seem to contradict each other
or there's something here
I misunderstood. Even if that happens, why would a client connect
directly to an Exit and get the
Exit to connect to another relay or Guard using the Exit's IP address?
Wouldn't the same protection you mentioned kick in and
stop a client?


    > I was not able to follow you there. I was unable to find any exit
relay that
    > has more than one ORPort on IPv4 (I identify relays by fingerprint
not by IP address).

Sorry, I should have been more careful in using my words. In the world
of firewalls and iptables
we identify connections by IPAddress:port pairs hence my inaccurate
wording. A relay has only one ORPort
but an IP address can have 4.


    > I think there is a misunderstanding there. One important point to
take away:
    > Relays do not chose the next hop in a circuit, tor clients do.
    > So if my tor clients picks a circuit with these relays:
    > client -> A -> B -> C -> example.com
    > and B can not reach C, B can not say "oh I can not reach C I'll
pick D instead for you",


I understand that and I think it might be my fault again for not being
clear. It doesn't matter who makes
that choice. What matters is that the choice is being made. My
understanding is that the moment you open
your Tor Browser, it starts establishing connections and building
multiple circuits and keeps them in a pool.

In the old days of vidalia you could actually see that in real time.
Many established circuits were just
sitting there waiting. Each time you try to browse a page, Tor doesn't
say, oh let's find a relay. It picks
a circuit from a pool of already Established ones. If Tor tries to build
a circuit with a relay and it's unable to,
it will try another one that works and keeps it in the pool for when
it's needed. Again, I may be wrong.
Feel free to tell me if I am.

If that wasn't the case, any time I rebooted, someone would scream for
being disconnected
from the Internet. Evey single relay is important but not that important.


    > Blocking relay to relay communication should not be done
    > as it breaks a core assumption of the tor network (every relay can
talk
    > to all other relays ORPorts)


Okay, now let's be clear about DDoS mitigations. There's no such thing
as DDoS mitigation without rate limiting.
Both my rules and @toralf rules and frankly any other rules that anyone
could come up with by themselves, includes
rate limiting.This means that at any given time, someone, somewhere is
not allowed to connect due to their behaviour.

The idea that all relays must be able to connect to other relays any
time and in any shape or form they choose can not
exist in real world of DDoS mitigation. Right at this moment I have
about 1600 relays that have established connections
to me and I probably have as many connections to other relays and my
relay is happily operating at about its
Max Advertised Bandwidth. Do I really need to keep 6000 relays in my
allow list and let them do whatever they want?
Giving 6000 servers a free reign on your system is unheard of in the
security world.


DDoS mitigation like anything else in life is about compromise. Ideals
are sacrificed in favour of "good to haves" and
"good to haves" are sacrificed in favour of survival. Otherwise you'd be
a part of the currently
[over 2000 relays that are
overloaded](https://github.com/Enkidu-6/tor-relay-lists/blob/main/overloaded.txt)
and passing it along.

When I'm attacked, it's not just about me. I'm relaying that attack to
the next relay and they relay that to the next
one. So the idea that I should accept the attack when it's coming from
another relay is simply unacceptable.

Again I'd like to be very clear, this is not about blocking relays, it's
about rate limiting. They do get to connect
but at a reasonable rate. For example, there's no justifiable reason for
a relay to try to connect to another relay
at a rate of 10 times a second for 15 minutes straight.

So if for example we say a relay can have two Established connections to
me, we're not blocking them. If they do need
the connection, they use it. If they close a connection and at some
point they need one, they can open another one. But
they can't have 10 connections at the same time.

Again, My goal here with my questions is to find a way to keep the
balance of that compromise in our favour. But thinking
that we can go on without making those compromises would be naive.


Again thanks for reading and thank you for your time and response.


On 2/6/2023 6:17 PM, nusenu wrote:
> Hi,
>
> thanks for raising these questions and trying to understand before
> deploying/changes to filters.
>
> A good understanding of how tor relays and connections work is
> important when trying
> to defend against overload attacks, without breaking functionality
> with packet filters that cause false positive blocks, especially when
> such a
> long standing limit like the relays per IPv4 address limit is changed.
>
>> - I have a few Exit relays as permanent residents in my block list, not
>> because I want them to be there but because, no matter how many times I
>> remove them, day or night, they'll be back in seconds for making too
>> many concurrent attempts.
>
> As a relay operator you should allow all other relays
> to connect to your relay's ORPort no matter what flags or onionoo
> guard/middle/exit probability they might have.
> Place known relay IPs on an exception list so your filters don't block
> them
> and update that list at least every hour.
>
> If you have a problem on your relay's ORPort with a source IP that
> is also used by an exit relay please try to contact
> the operator by looking at their contactinfo, if they don't
> have a contactinfo, join the 'require a usable contactinfo' lobby ;)
> for this very reason and maybe ask on this list if they can drop you
> an email.
>
> You can also not be sure whether it is an actual authenticated relay
> to relay
> connection or a client to relay connection just by looking at the
> source IP.
> Some upcoming MetricsPort enhancement might help you there in the future
> not per source IP but as a general overview for your relay's ORPort
> connections.
> An exit can share it's source IP with tor clients for example behind NAT,
> but I don't think that is common and it is also discouraged. Exits
> should have dedicated
> IPs that is not shared for unrelated things.
>
> Blocking relay to relay communication should not be done
> as it breaks a core assumption of the tor network (every relay can talk
> to all other relays ORPorts). Upcoming tooling that detects
> broken relay to relay links might also detect and flag your relay
> if your filters break relay to relay communication.
>
> As an option of last resort - after verifying it is an authenticated
> relay to relay connection that is causing you trouble and not some tor
> client using the same source IP
> you might contact the bad-relays list. That is still better than blocking
> another relay from reaching your relay's ORPort.
>
> I've seen other problematic filter practices for relay to relay
> connections and I'll
> write up some recommendations in a separate email so it doesn't get
> lost in this lengthy email.
>
>> I'm assuming this is due to the fact that
>> Exits are being used to attack other relays 
>
> In a vanilla current tor version it is not possible to use a tor client
> to connect via an exit to another relay's ORPort so this is very
> unlikely. The background here
> is that tor does not allow such connections to prevent an attacker
> from reentering
> the tor network via an exit relay.
>
> You can test that by opening this URL in tor browser, you will get a
> "Unable to connect" very fast:
>
> https://185.220.102.242/
> because it is this ORPort:
> https://metrics.torproject.org/rs.html#details/0A2366980A2842D770EF8E136A7DA14876360447
>
>
> the answer is very fast and not a slow timeout because a tor client
> can predict
> that is inaccessible before even trying to create a stream
> because exits will not allow such connections to relay ORPorts.
>
>> I have 2 Established connections to two Or Ports of an exit relay
>
> I was not able to follow you there. I was unable to find any exit
> relay that
> has more than one ORPort on IPv4 (I identify relays by fingerprint not
> by IP address).
> Maybe you can list the specific exit relay fingerprint and timestamp
> so I can cross
> check for bugs in my tooling/onionoo?
>
>> - Each relay has Established connections to many other relays and if
>> they're guard they will also have many connections to regular users and
>> their Tor browsers until they have enough traffic to reach their
>> MaxAdvertisedBandwidth. Obviously we don't Establish connections to all
>> 6300 relays out there.
>
> It is best to actually expect that.
>
>> So if we do not allow each IP more than two
>> connections and they need 4, They'll have two from us and they'll move
>> on to another relay and get the other two and get the job done and we
>> will reach our Max Bandwidth anyway by accepting traffic from other
>> relays. Diversity of relays as opposed to concentration of some relays.
>> Am I correct in my assumption that this will have little to no effect on
>> the health of the Tor network as a whole?
>
> I think there is a misunderstanding there. One important point to take
> away:
> Relays do not chose the next hop in a circuit, tor clients do.
> So if my tor clients picks a circuit with these relays:
> client -> A -> B -> C -> example.com
> and B can not reach C, B can not say "oh I can not reach C I'll pick D
> instead for you",
> a relay has no say in that. I hope that helps to reinforce the
> importance of
> ubiquitous reachability between relays. Relays have to obey a tor
> client's
> orders and a tor client expects that all relays can talk to each other.
> A few years ago David Stainton published some actual scan results on
> tor-dev
> that showed that this expectation might not be true in reality but
> close enough.
>
> I fear that overly aggressive relay to relay filter actually help the
> adversaries more
> than the network and would advise against filtering practices between
> relays.
> The first step should always be on a social level: Try to reach the
> operator if you feel
> they attack your relay and NOT iptables DROP without notice.
>
> kind regards,
> nusenu
>