tor/doc/TODO

$Id$
Legend:
SPEC!!  - Not specified
SPEC    - Spec not finalized
NICK    - nick claims
ARMA    - arma claims
PHOBOS  - phobos claims
        - Not done
        * Top priority
        . Partially done
        o Done
        D Deferred
        X Abandoned

For 0.1.0.x:
  o Why do solaris cpuworks go dormant?
    (Apparently, disabling threads fixes this.)
  - Why does kevent barf with EINVAL on some freebsd boxes?
    (Lucky is trying a patch that should tell us why.)
  o Fix the remaining flyspray bugs marked for 0.1.0.9
  X Free remaining unfreed memory (arma will run valgrind)
    (Not for a stable release)
  o Note libevent/method/platform combos that are unlikely to work.
  . Memory use on Linux: what's happening?
    - Is it threading?  (Maybe, maybe not)
    - Is it the buf_shrink bug? (Quite possibly)
  - instrument the code to figure out where our memory is going. (all platforms?)
  X change torrc to point to abuse-faq (once abuse-faq is posted)

for 0.1.1.x:
  - switch accountingmax to count total in+out, not either in or
    out. it's easy to move in this direction (not risky), but hard to
    back, out if we decide we prefer it the way it already is. hm.
  - Start using create-fast cells as clients
  - Handle rendezvousing with unverified nodes.
    - Specify: Stick rendezvous point's key in INTRODUCE cell.
      Bob should _always_ use key from INTRODUCE cell.
    - Implement.
  - make sure err-level log events get flushed to the controller
    immediately, since tor will exit right after.
  - it looks like tor_assert writes to stderr. what happens if
    stderr was closed and is now something else? uh.
  - new controller protocol
  - Let more config options (e.g. ORPort) change dynamically.
  - controller should have an event to learn about new addressmappings,
    e.g. when we learn a hostname to IP mapping ?
  - christian grothoff's attack of infinite-length circuit.
    the solution is to have a separate 'extend-data' cell type
    which is used for the first N data cells, and only
    extend-data cells can be extend requests.
  - Destroy and truncated cells should have reasons.
  - Add private:* alias in exit policies to make it easier to ban all the
    fiddly little 192.168.foo addresses.
  - recommended-versions for client / server ?
  - whine if your socks port is an open proxy.
  - cpu fixes:
    M rewrite how libevent does select() on win32 so it's not so very slow.
    - create-light
    - see if we should make use of truncate to retry
    - hardware accelerator support
    - use openssl aes when available
    - do the kernel buffer style design
  - continue decentralizing the directory
    M have two router descriptor formats
    - dirservers verify reachability claims
    - find 10 dirservers. (what are criteria to be a dirserver?)
    - some back-out mechanism?
      - dirservers have blacklist of IPs they hate
      - a way of rolling back approvals to before a timestamp
      - have new people be in limbo and need to demonstrate usefulness
        before we approve them
      - other?
    - dirservers publish router-status with all these flags.
    - alices fetch many router-statuses and update descriptors as needed.
    - add if-newer-than fetch options
    - dirservers allow people to lookup by N descriptors, or to fetch all.
    - alices avoid duplicate class C nodes.
    - everybody with a dirport will give you his descriptor.
    - config option, on by default, to cache all descriptors.
    - Compress router desc sets before transmitting them
    M Analyze how bad the partitioning is or isn't.
  - Naming:
    - some dirservers announce that they manage bindings (a flag in
      router-status).
    - other dirservers mention a binding if there is no conflict for
      that binding among the dirservers that manage it.
      no conflict == any of them bind it and no disagreement.
    - alice can specify a nickname and it will record that name in her
      datadir along with the key *if* it is bound. otherwise her specifying
      will fail (loudly we hope).
    - thus when a binding vanishes (e.g. conflict) alice will keep using
      the one she meant.
    - if the binding changes keys, the entry in her datadir will silently
      get corrected.
  - helper nodes (at least preliminary)
  - enclaves (at least preliminary)
  - packaging and ui stuff:
    - multiple sample torrc files (tyranix?)
    - uninstallers
      . for os x
    - something, anything, for sys tray on Windows.
    - figure out how to make nt service stuff the default?
      . Document it.



For sometime soon:
   - Server instructions for OSX and Windows operators.
   - Audit all changes to bandwidth buckets for integer over/underflow.

 Refactoring and infrastructure:

N . Switch to libevent
       - Hold-open-until-flushed now works by accident; it should work by
         design.
       . The logic for reading from TLS sockets is likely to overrun the
         bandwidth buckets under heavy load.  (Really, the logic was
         never right in the first place.)  Also, we should audit all users
         of get_pending_bytes().

 Documentation
r - Correct and clarify the wiki entry on port forwarding.
  o Document where OSX logs and torrc go.
  o Document where windows logs and torrc go.
    - (Make sure they actually go there.)

 Installers
N - Vet all pending installer patches
    - Win32 installer plus privoxy, sockscap/freecap, etc.
    - Vet win32 systray helper code
N . Make logs go into platform default locations.
    o OSX
    - Windows. (?)

 Correctness
   - how do ulimits work on win32, anyway?  (We should handle WSAENOBUFS as
     needed, look at the MaxConnections registry entry, look at the
     MaxUserPort entry, and look at the TcpTimedWaitDelay entry. We may also
     want to provide a way to set them as needed. See bug 98.)

  - Bug: Why do idle cpuworkers sometimes get thought of as busy?

N - tor-resolve script should use socks5 to get better error messages.
  o Script to try pulling bytes through slow-seeming servers so they can
    notice that they might be fast.
N . Reverse DNS
    o specify
    - implement
r - make min uptime a function of the available choices (say, choose 60th
    percentile, not 1 day.)
r - kill dns workers more slowly
r - build testing circuits? going through non-verified nodes?
  - config option to publish what ports you listen on, beyond ORPort/DirPort
N - It would be nice to have a FirewalledIPs thing that works like
    FirewallPorts.
  - If we have a trusted directory on port 80, stop falling back to
    forbidden ports when fascistfirewall blocks all good dirservers.
N - Code cleanup
    - Make configure.in handle cross-compilation
      - Have NULL_REP_IS_ZERO_BYTES default to 1.
      - Make with-ssl-dir disable search for ssl.
  - Efficiency/speed improvements.
    - Write limiting; configurable token buckets.
    - Make it harder to circumvent bandwidth caps: look at number of bytes
      sent across sockets, not number sent inside TLS stream.


  No
Todo: when you connect and get a guy you didn't expect, tell him hey i wasn't
expecting you i'm going to go now bye, instead of just hanging up. This lets
him know that he's doing something funny.
  - choose entry node to be one you're already connected to?
  X Convert man pages to pod, or whatever's right.
  X support hostnames as well as IPs for authdirservers.
  - GPSLocation optional config string.
  - Windows
    - Make millisecond accuracy work on win32
  - IPv6 support
     - teach connection_ap_handshake_socks_reply() about ipv6 and friends
       so connection_ap_handshake_socks_resolved() doesn't also need
       to know about them.
  - hidserv offerers shouldn't need to define a SocksPort
    * figure out what breaks for this, and do it.

   - Packaging
     X Figure out how to make the rpm not strip the binaries it makes.
   - Integrate an http proxy into Tor (maybe as a third class of worker
     process), so we can stop shipping with the beast that is Privoxy.
   - Implement If-Modified-Since for directories.
   - Windows
     - Get a controller to launch tor and keep it on the system tray.

Tier two:

N  - IPv6 support (For exit addresses)
     - Spec issue: if a resolve returns an IP4 and an IP6 address,
       which to use?
     - Add to exit policy code
     - Make tor_gethostbyname into tor_getaddrinfo
     - Make everything that uses uint32_t as an IP address change to use
       a generalize address struct.
     - Change relay cell types to accept new addresses.
     - Add flag to serverdescs to tell whether IPv6 is supported.

   - Code cleanup
     o fix router_get_by_* functions so they can get ourselves too ...
     - and audit everything to make sure rend and intro points are
       just as likely to be us as not.

   - tor should be able to have a pool of outgoing IP addresses
     that it is able to rotate through. (maybe)

   Packaging, docs, etc:
   - Exit node caching: tie into squid or other caching web proxy.

   Deferred until needed:
   - Do something to prevent spurious EXTEND cells from making middleman
     nodes connect all over.  Rate-limit failed connections, perhaps?
   - Limit to 2 dir, 2 OR, N SOCKS connections per IP.
   - Handle full buffers without totally borking
     * do this eventually, no rush.
   - Rate-limit OR and directory connections overall and per-IP and
     maybe per subnet.
   - DoS protection: TLS puzzles, public key ops, bandwidth exhaustion.
   - Have clients and dirservers preserve reputation info over
     reboots.
   - authdirserver lists you as running iff:
     - he can connect to you
     - he has successfully extended to you
     - you have sufficient mean-time-between-failures
     * keep doing nothing for now.

   Blue sky or deferred indefinitely:
   - Support egd or other non-OS-integrated strong entropy sources
   - password protection for on-disk identity key
   - Possible to get autoconf to easily install things into ~/.tor?
   - server descriptor declares min log level, clients avoid servers
     that are too loggy.
   - put expiry date on onion-key, so people don't keep trying
     old ones that they could know are expired?
   - Add a notion of nickname->Pubkey binding that's not 'verification'
   - Conn key rotation.
   - Need a relay teardown cell, separate from one-way ends.

Big tasks that would demonstrate progress:

   - Facility to automatically choose long-term helper nodes; perhaps
     on by default for hidden services.
   - patch privoxy and socks protocol to pass strings to the browser.
   - patch tsocks with our current patches + gethostbyname, getpeername, etc.
   - make freecap (or whichever) do what we want.
   - scrubbing proxies for protocols other than http.
     - Find an smtp proxy?
     . Get socks4a support into Mozilla
   - figure out enclaves, e.g. so we know what to recommend that people
     do, and so running a tor server on your website is helpful.
     - Do enclaves for same IP only.
     - Resolve first, then if IP is an OR, extend to him first.
   - implement a trivial fun gui to demonstrate our control interface.

************************ Roadmap for 2004-2005 **********************

Hard problems that need to be solved:

  - Separating node discovery from routing.
  - Arranging membership management for independence.
    Sybil defenses without having a human bottleneck.
    How to gather random sample of nodes.
    How to handle nodelist recommendations.
    Consider incremental switches: a p2p tor with only 50 users has
      different anonymity properties than one with 10k users, and should
      be treated differently.
  - Measuring performance of other nodes. Measuring whether they're up.
  - Choosing exit node by meta-data, e.g. country.
  - Incentives to relay; incentives to exit.
  - Allowing dissidents to relay through Tor clients.
  - How to intercept, or not need to intercept, dns queries locally.
  - Improved anonymity:
    - Experiment with mid-latency systems. How do they impact usability,
      how do they impact safety?
    - Understand how powerful fingerprinting attacks are, and experiment
      with ways to foil them (long-range padding?).
    - Come up with practical approximations to picking entry and exit in
      different routing zones.
    - Find ideal churn rate for helper nodes; how safe is it?
    - What info squeaks by Privoxy? Are other scrubbers better?
    - Attacking freenet-gnunet/timing-delay-randomness-arguments.
    - Is abandoning the circuit the only option when an extend fails, or
      can we do something without impacting anonymity too much?
    - Is exiting from the middle of the circuit always a bad idea?

Sample Publicity Landmarks:

  - we have N servers / N users
  - we have servers at epic and aclu and foo
  - hidden services are robust and fast
  - a more decentralized design
  - tor win32 installer works
  - win32 tray icon for end-users
  - tor server works on win32
  - win32 service for servers
  - mac installer works

***************************Future tasks:****************************

Rendezvous and hidden services:
  make it fast:
    o preemptively build and start rendezvous circs.
    o preemptively build n-1 hops of intro circs?
    o cannibalize general circs?
  make it reliable:
    - standby/hotswap/redundant services.
    - store stuff to disk? dirservers forget service descriptors when
      they restart; nodes offering hidden services forget their chosen
      intro points when they restart.
  make it robust:
    - auth mechanisms to let midpoint and bob selectively choose
      connection requests.
  make it scalable:
    - robust decentralized storage for hidden service descriptors.
  make it accessible:
    - web proxy gateways to let normal people browse hidden services.

Tor scalability:
  Relax clique assumptions.
  Redesign how directories are handled.
    - Resolve directory agreement somehow.
  Find and remove bottlenecks
    - Address linear searches on e.g. circuit and connection lists.
  Reputation/memory system, so dirservers can measure people,
    and so other people can verify their measurements.
    - Need to measure via relay, so it's not distinguishable.
  Let dissidents get to Tor servers via Tor users. ("Backbone model")

Make it more correct:
  Handle half-open connections: right now we don't support all TCP
    streams, at least according to the protocol. But we handle all that
    we've seen in the wild.
  Support IPv6.

Efficiency/speed/robustness:
  Congestion control. Is our current design sufficient once we have heavy
    use? Need to measure and tweak, or maybe overhaul.
  Allow small cells and large cells on the same network?
  Cell buffering and resending. This will allow us to handle broken
    circuits as long as the endpoints don't break, plus will allow
    connection (tls session key) rotation.
  Implement Morphmix, so we can compare its behavior, complexity, etc.
  Use cpuworker for more heavy lifting.
    - Signing (and verifying) hidserv descriptors
    - Signing (and verifying) intro/rend requests
    - Signing (and verifying) router descriptors
    - Signing (and verifying) directories
    - Doing TLS handshake (this is very hard to separate out, though)
  Buffer size pool: allocate a maximum size for all buffers, not
    a maximum size for each buffer. So we don't have to give up as
    quickly (and kill the thickpipe!) when there's congestion.
  Other transport. HTTP, udp, rdp, airhook, etc. May have to do our own
    link crypto, unless we can bully openssl into it.

*********** uncategorized

    - why gnutls is bad/not good for tor
P   - flesh out the rest of the section 6 of the faq
P   - gather pointers to livecd distros that include tor
    - desired contribute.html patch: patches for dir-servers to verify server reachability.
P   - i want to put the logo on the website, in source form, so people can put it on stickers directly, etc.
    - i want more pictures from ren. he wants to describe the tor
      handshake, i want to talk about hidden services.
    - clean up the places where our docs are redundant (or worse, obsolete in one file and correct elsewhere). agl has a start on a global list-of-tor-docs.
P   - update window's docs to clarify which versions of windows, and why a DOS window, how it's used, for the less technical users

    - write a spec appendix for 'being nice with tor'
    - Hunt for open socks ports on tor servers, send mail
    - tor-in-the-media page
    - schanzle@cas.homelinux.org: rpm spec fixes for tor-0.1.0.7.rc
    - start handling server descriptors without a socksport?