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$Id$
Tor directory protocol, version 3
0. Scope and preliminaries
This directory protocol is used by Tor version 0.2.0.x-alpha and later.
See dir-spec-v1.txt for information on the protocol used up to the
0.1.0.x series, and dir-spec-v2.txt for information on the protocol
used by the 0.1.1.x and 0.1.2.x series.
Caches and authorities must still support older versions of the
directory protocols, until the versions of Tor that require them are
finally out of commission. See Section XXXX on backward compatibility.
This document merges and supersedes the following proposals:
101 Voting on the Tor Directory System
103 Splitting identity key from regularly used signing key
104 Long and Short Router Descriptors
AS OF 3 MAY 2007, THIS SPECIFICATION HAS NOT YET BEEN COMPLETELY
IMPLEMENTED.
0.1. History
The earliest versions of Onion Routing shipped with a list of known
routers and their keys. When the set of routers changed, users needed to
fetch a new list.
The Version 1 Directory protocol
--------------------------------
[XXX say which versions added what.]
Early versions of Tor introduced "Directory authorities": servers that
served signed "directory" documents containing a list of signed "router
descriptors", along with short summary of the status of each router.
Thus, clients could get up-to-date information on the state of the
network automatically, and be certain that they list they were getting
was attested by a trusted directory authority.
Later versions added directory caches, which download directories from
the authorities and serve them to clients. Non-caches fetch from the
caches in preference to fetching from the authorities, thus distributing
bandwidth requirements.
Also added during the version 1 directory protocol were "router status"
documents: short documents that listed only the up/down status of the
routers on the network, rather than a complete list of all the
descriptors. Clients and caches would fetch these documents far more
frequently than they would fetch full directories.
The Version 2 Directory Protocol
--------------------------------
During the Tor 0.1.1.x series, Tor revised its handling of directory
documents in order to address two major problems:
* Directories had grown quite large (over 1MB), and most directory
downloads consisted mainly of router descriptors that clients
already had.
* Every directory authorities was a trust bottleneck: if a single
directory authority lied, it could make clients believe for a time
an arbitrarily distorted view of the Tor network. (Clients
trusted the most recent signed document they downloaded.) Thus,
adding more authorities would make the system less secure, not
more.
To address these, we extended the directory protocol so that
authorities now published signed "network status" documents. Each
network status listed, for every router in the network: a hash of its
identity key, a hash of its most recent descriptor, and a summary of
what the authority believed about its status. Clients would download
the authorities' network status documents in turn, and believe
statements about routers iff they were attested to by more than half of
the authorities.
Instead of downloading all router descriptors at once, clients
downloaded only the descriptors that they did not have. Descriptors
were indexed by their digests, in order to prevent malicious caches
from giving different versions of a router descriptor to different
clients.
Routers began working harder to upload new descriptors only when their
contents were substantially changed.
0.2. Goals of the version 3 protocol
Version 3 of the Tor directory protocol tries to solve the following
issues:
* A great deal of bandwidth used to transmit router descriptors was
used by two fields that are not actually used by Tor routers. We
save about 60% by moving them into a separate document that most
clients do not fetch or use.
* It was possible under certain perverse circumstances for clients
to download an unusual set of network status documents, thus
partitioning themselves from clients who have a more recent and/or
typical set of documents. Even under the best of circumstances,
clients were sensitive to the ages of the network status documents
they downloaded. Therefore, instead of having the clients
correlate multiple network status documents, we have the
authorities collectively vote on a single consensus network status
document.
* The most sensitive data in the entire network (the identity keys
of the directory authorities) needed to be stored unencrypted so
that the authorities can sign network-status documents on the fly.
Now, the authorities' identity keys are stored offline, and used
to certify medium-term signing keys that can be rotated.
0.3. Some Remaining questions
Things we could solve on a v3 timeframe:
The SHA-1 hash is showing its age. We should do something about our
dependency on it. We could probably future-proof ourselves here in
this revision, at least so far as documents from the authorities are
concerned.
Too many things about the authorities are hardcoded by IP.
Perhaps we should start accepting longer identity keys for routers
too.
Things to solve eventually:
Requiring every client to know about every router won't scale forever.
Requiring every directory cache to know every router won't scale
forever.
1. Outline
There is a small set (say, around 5-10) of semi-trusted directory
authorities. A default list of authorities is shipped with the Tor
software. Users can change this list, but are encouraged not to do so,
in order to avoid partitioning attacks.
Every authority has a very-secret, long-term "Authority Identity Key".
This is stored encrypted and/or offline, and is used to sign "key
certificate" documents. Every key certificate contains a medium-term
(3-12 months) "authority signing key", that is used by the authority to
sign other directory information. (Note that the authority identity
key is distinct from the router identity key that the authority uses
in its role as an ordinary router.)
Routers periodically upload signed "routers descriptors" to the
directory authorities describing their keys, capabilities, and other
information. Routers may also upload signed "extra info documents"
containing information that is not required for the Tor protocol.
Directory authorities serve router descriptors indexed by router
identity, or by hash of the descriptor.
Routers may act as directory caches to reduce load on the directory
authorities. They announce this in their descriptors.
Periodically, each directory authority periodically generates a view of
the current descriptors and status for known routers. They send a
signed summary of this view (a "status vote") to the other
authorities. The authorities compute the result of this vote, and sign
a "consensus status" document containing the result of the vote.
Directory caches download, cache, and re-serve consensus documents.
Clients, directory caches, and directory authorities all use consensus
documents to find out when their list of routers is out-of-date.
(Directory authorities also use vote statuses.) If it is, they download
any missing router descriptors. Clients download missing descriptors
from caches; caches and authorities download from authorities.
Descriptors are downloaded by the hash of the descriptor, not by the
server's identity key: this prevents servers from attacking clients by
giving them descriptors nobody else uses.
All directory information is uploaded and downloaded with HTTP.
[Authorities also generate and caches also cache documents produced and
used by earlier versions of this protocol; see section XXX for notes.]
1.1. What's different from version 2?
Clients used to download a multiple network status documents,
corresponding roughly to "status votes" above. They would compute the
result of the vote on the client side.
Authorities used sign documents using the same private keys they used
for their roles as routers. This forced them to keep these extremely
sensitive keys in memory unencrypted.
All of the information in extra-info documents used to be kept in the
main descriptors.
1.2. Document meta-format
Router descriptors, directories, and running-routers documents all obey the
following lightweight extensible information format.
The highest level object is a Document, which consists of one or more
Items. Every Item begins with a KeywordLine, followed by one or more
Objects. A KeywordLine begins with a Keyword, optionally followed by
whitespace and more non-newline characters, and ends with a newline. A
Keyword is a sequence of one or more characters in the set [A-Za-z0-9-].
An Object is a block of encoded data in pseudo-Open-PGP-style
armor. (cf. RFC 2440)
More formally:
Document ::= (Item | NL)+
Item ::= KeywordLine Object*
KeywordLine ::= Keyword NL | Keyword WS ArgumentsChar+ NL
Keyword = KeywordChar+
KeywordChar ::= 'A' ... 'Z' | 'a' ... 'z' | '0' ... '9' | '-'
ArgumentChar ::= any printing ASCII character except NL.
WS = (SP | TAB)+
Object ::= BeginLine Base-64-encoded-data EndLine
BeginLine ::= "-----BEGIN " Keyword "-----" NL
EndLine ::= "-----END " Keyword "-----" NL
The BeginLine and EndLine of an Object must use the same keyword.
When interpreting a Document, software MUST ignore any KeywordLine that
starts with a keyword it doesn't recognize; future implementations MUST NOT
require current clients to understand any KeywordLine not currently
described.
The "opt" keyword was used until Tor 0.1.2.5-alpha for non-critical future
extensions. All implementations MUST ignore any item of the form "opt
keyword ....." when they would not recognize "keyword ....."; and MUST
treat "opt keyword ....." as synonymous with "keyword ......" when keyword
is recognized.
Implementations before 0.1.2.5-alpha rejected any document with a
KeywordLine that started with a keyword that they didn't recognize.
When generating documents that need to be read by older versions of Tor,
implementations MUST prefix items not recognized by older versions of
Tor with an "opt" until those versions of Tor are obsolete. [Note that
key certificates, status vote documents, extra info documents, and
status consensus documents will never by read by older versions of Tor.]
Other implementations that want to extend Tor's directory format MAY
introduce their own items. The keywords for extension items SHOULD start
with the characters "x-" or "X-", to guarantee that they will not conflict
with keywords used by future versions of Tor.
In our document descriptions below, we tag Items with a multiplicity in
brackets. Possible tags are:
"At start, exactly once": These items MUST occur in every instance of
the document type, and MUST appear exactly once, and MUST be the
first item in their documents.
"Exactly once": These items MUST occur exactly one time in every
instance of the document type.
"At end, exactly once": These items MUST occur in every instance of
the document type, and MUST appear exactly once, and MUST be the
last item in their documents.
"At most once": These items MAY occur zero or one times in any
instance of the document type, but MUST NOT occur more than once.
"Any number": These items MAY occur zero, one, or more times in any
instance of the document type.
"Once or more": These items MUST occur at least once in any instance
of the document type, and MAY occur more.
1.3. Signing documents
Every signable document below is signed in a similar manner, using a
given "Initial Item", a final "Signature Item", a digest algorithm, and
a signing key.
The Initial Item must be the first item in the document.
The Signature Item has the following format:
<signature item keyword> [arguments] NL SIGNATURE NL
The "SIGNATURE" Object contains a signature (using the signing key) of
the PKCS1-padded digest of the entire document, taken from the
beginning of the Initial item, through the newline after the Signature
Item's keyword and its arguments.
Unless otherwise, the digest algorithm is SHA-1.
All documents are invalid unless signed with the correct signing key.
The "Digest" of a document, unless stated otherwise, is its digest *as
signed by this signature scheme*.
2. Router operation and formats
ORs SHOULD generate a new router descriptor and a new extra-info
document whenever any of the following events have occurred:
- A period of time (18 hrs by default) has passed since the last
time a descriptor was generated.
- A descriptor field other than bandwidth or uptime has changed.
- Bandwidth has changed by more than +/- 50% from the last time a
descriptor was generated, and at least a given interval of time
(20 mins by default) has passed since then.
- Its uptime has been reset (by restarting).
After generating a descriptor, ORs upload them to every directory
authority they know, by posting them (in order) to the URL
http://<hostname:port>/tor/
2.1. Router descriptor format
Router descriptors consist of the following items. For backward
compatibility, there should be an extra NL at the end of each router
descriptor.
In lines that take multiple arguments, extra arguments SHOULD be
accepted and ignored.
"router" nickname address ORPort SOCKSPort DirPort NL
[At start, exactly once.]
Indicates the beginning of a router descriptor. "address" must be an
IPv4 address in dotted-quad format. The last three numbers indicate
the TCP ports at which this OR exposes functionality. ORPort is a port
at which this OR accepts TLS connections for the main OR protocol;
SOCKSPort is deprecated and should always be 0; and DirPort is the
port at which this OR accepts directory-related HTTP connections. If
any port is not supported, the value 0 is given instead of a port
number.
"bandwidth" bandwidth-avg bandwidth-burst bandwidth-observed NL
[Exactly once]
Estimated bandwidth for this router, in bytes per second. The
"average" bandwidth is the volume per second that the OR is willing to
sustain over long periods; the "burst" bandwidth is the volume that
the OR is willing to sustain in very short intervals. The "observed"
value is an estimate of the capacity this server can handle. The
server remembers the max bandwidth sustained output over any ten
second period in the past day, and another sustained input. The
"observed" value is the lesser of these two numbers.
"platform" string NL
[At most once]
A human-readable string describing the system on which this OR is
running. This MAY include the operating system, and SHOULD include
the name and version of the software implementing the Tor protocol.
"published" YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS NL
[Exactly once]
The time, in GMT, when this descriptor (and its corresponding
extra-info document if any) was generated.
"fingerprint" fingerprint NL
[At most once]
A fingerprint (a HASH_LEN-byte of asn1 encoded public key, encoded in
hex, with a single space after every 4 characters) for this router's
identity key. A descriptor is considered invalid (and MUST be
rejected) if the fingerprint line does not match the public key.
[We didn't start parsing this line until Tor 0.1.0.6-rc; it should
be marked with "opt" until earlier versions of Tor are obsolete.]
"hibernating" bool NL
[At most once]
If the value is 1, then the Tor server was hibernating when the
descriptor was published, and shouldn't be used to build circuits.
[We didn't start parsing this line until Tor 0.1.0.6-rc; it should be
marked with "opt" until earlier versions of Tor are obsolete.]
"uptime" number NL
[At most once]
The number of seconds that this OR process has been running.
"onion-key" NL a public key in PEM format
[Exactly once]
This key is used to encrypt EXTEND cells for this OR. The key MUST be
accepted for at least 1 week after any new key is published in a
subsequent descriptor. It MUST be 1024 bits.
"signing-key" NL a public key in PEM format
[Exactly once]
The OR's long-term identity key. It MUST be 1024 bits.
"accept" exitpattern NL
"reject" exitpattern NL
[Any number]
These lines describe the rules that an OR follows when
deciding whether to allow a new stream to a given address. The
'exitpattern' syntax is described below. The rules are considered in
order; if no rule matches, the address will be accepted. For clarity,
the last such entry SHOULD be accept *:* or reject *:*.
"router-signature" NL Signature NL
[At end, exactly once]
The "SIGNATURE" object contains a signature of the PKCS1-padded
hash of the entire router descriptor, taken from the beginning of the
"router" line, through the newline after the "router-signature" line.
The router descriptor is invalid unless the signature is performed
with the router's identity key.
"contact" info NL
[At most once]
Describes a way to contact the server's administrator, preferably
including an email address and a PGP key fingerprint.
"family" names NL
[At most once]
'Names' is a space-separated list of server nicknames or
hexdigests. If two ORs list one another in their "family" entries,
then OPs should treat them as a single OR for the purpose of path
selection.
For example, if node A's descriptor contains "family B", and node B's
descriptor contains "family A", then node A and node B should never
be used on the same circuit.
"read-history" YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS (NSEC s) NUM,NUM,NUM,NUM,NUM... NL
[At most once]
"write-history" YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS (NSEC s) NUM,NUM,NUM,NUM,NUM... NL
[At most once]
Declare how much bandwidth the OR has used recently. Usage is divided
into intervals of NSEC seconds. The YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS field
defines the end of the most recent interval. The numbers are the
number of bytes used in the most recent intervals, ordered from
oldest to newest.
[We didn't start parsing these lines until Tor 0.1.0.6-rc; they should
be marked with "opt" until earlier versions of Tor are obsolete.]
[See also migration notes in section 2.2.1.]
"caches-extra-info" 0|1 NL
[At most once.]
True if this router is a directory cache that provides extra-info
documents. If absent, the value should be treated as false.
[Versions before 0.2.0.1-alpha don't recognize this, and versions
before 0.1.2.5-alpha will reject descriptors containing it unless
it is prefixed with "opt"; it should be so prefixed until these
versions are obsolete.]
"extra-info-digest" digest NL
[At most once]
"Digest" is a hex-encoded digest (using upper-case characters)
of the router's extra-info document, as signed in the router's
extra-info. (If this field is absent, the router is not uploading
a corresponding extra-info document.)
[Versions before 0.2.0.1-alpha don't recognize this, and versions
before 0.1.2.5-alpha will reject descriptors containing it unless
it is prefixed with "opt"; it should be so prefixed until these
versions are obsolete.]
2.2. Extra-info documents
Extra-info documents consist of the following items:
"extra-info" Nickname Fingerprint NL
[At start, exactly once.]
Identifies what router this is an extra info descriptor for.
Fingerprint is encoded in hex (using upper-case letters), with
no spaces.
"published"
[Exactly once.]
The time, in GMT, when this document (and its corresponding router
descriptor if any) was generated. It MUST match the published time
in the corresponding router descriptor.
"read-history" YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS (NSEC s) NUM,NUM,NUM,NUM,NUM... NL
[At most once.]
"write-history" YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS (NSEC s) NUM,NUM,NUM,NUM,NUM... NL
[At most once.]
As documented in 2.1 above. See migration notes in section 2.2.1.
"router-signature" NL Signature NL
[At end, exactly once.]
A document signature as documented in section 1.3, using the
initial item "extra-info" and the final item "router-signature",
signed with the router's identity key.
2.2.1. Moving history fields to extra-info documents.
Tools that want to use the read-history and write-history values SHOULD
download extra-info documents as well as router descriptors. Such
tools SHOULD accept history values from both sources; if they appear in
both documents, the values in the extra-info documents are authoritative.
At some future time, to save space, new versions of Tor will no longer
generate router descriptors containing read-history or write-history.
Tools should continue to accept read-history and write-history values
in router descriptors produced by older versions of Tor.
2.3. Nonterminals in router descriptors
nickname ::= between 1 and 19 alphanumeric characters, case-insensitive.
hexdigest ::= a '$', followed by 20 hexadecimal characters.
[Represents a server by the digest of its identity key.]
exitpattern ::= addrspec ":" portspec
portspec ::= "*" | port | port "-" port
port ::= an integer between 1 and 65535, inclusive.
[Some implementations incorrectly generate ports with value 0.
Implementations SHOULD accept this, and SHOULD NOT generate it.]
addrspec ::= "*" | ip4spec | ip6spec
ipv4spec ::= ip4 | ip4 "/" num_ip4_bits | ip4 "/" ip4mask
ip4 ::= an IPv4 address in dotted-quad format
ip4mask ::= an IPv4 mask in dotted-quad format
num_ip4_bits ::= an integer between 0 and 32
ip6spec ::= ip6 | ip6 "/" num_ip6_bits
ip6 ::= an IPv6 address, surrounded by square brackets.
num_ip6_bits ::= an integer between 0 and 128
bool ::= "0" | "1"
3. Formats produced by directory authorities.
Every authority has two keys used in this protocol: a signing key, and
an authority identity key. (Authorities also have a router identity
key used in their role as a router and by earlier versions of the
directory protocol.) The identity key is used from time to time to
sign new key certificates using new signing keys; it is very sensitive.
The signing key is used to sign key certificates and status documents.
There are three kinds of documents generated by directory authorities:
Key certificates
Status votes
Status consensuses
Each is discussed below.
3.1. Key certificates
Key certificates consist of the following items:
"dir-key-certificate-version" version NL
[At start, exactly once.]
Determines the version of the key certificate. MUST be "3" for
the protocol described in this document. Implementations MUST
reject formats they don't understand.
"fingerprint" fingerprint NL
[Exactly once.]
Hexadecimal encoding without spaces based on the authority's
identity key.
"dir-identity-key" NL a public key in PEM format
[Exactly once.]
The long-term authority identity key for this authority. This key
SHOULD be at least 2048 bits long; it MUST NOT be shorter than
1024 bits.
"dir-key-published" YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS NL
[Exactly once.]
The time (in GMT) when this document and corresponding key were
last generated.
"dir-key-expires" YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS NL
[Exactly once.]
A time (in GMT) after which this key is no longer valid.
"dir-signing-key" NL a key in PEM format
[Exactly once.]
The directory server's public signing key. This key MUST be at
least 1024 bits, and MAY be longer.
"dir-key-certification" NL Signature NL
[At end, exactly once.]
A document signature as documented in section 1.3, using the
initial item "dir-key-certificate-version" and the final item
"dir-key-certification", signed with the authority identity key.
Authorities MUST generate a new signing key and corresponding
certificate before the key expires.
3.2. Vote and consensus status documents
Votes and consensuses are more strictly formatted then other documents
in this specification, since different authorities must be able to
generate exactly the same consensus given the same set of votes.
The procedure for deciding when to generate vote and consensus status
documents are described in section XXX below.
Status documents contain a preamble, an authority section, a list of
router status entries, and one more footers signature, in that order.
Unlike other formats described above, a SP in these documents must be a
single space character (hex 20).
Some items appear only in votes, and some items appear only in
consensuses. Unless specified, items occur in both.
The preamble contains the following items. They MUST occur in the
order given here:
"network-status-version" SP version NL.
[At start, exactly once.]
A document format version. For this specification, the version is
"3".
"vote-status" SP type NL
[Exactly once.]
The status MUST be "vote" or "consensus", depending on the type of
the document.
"published" SP YYYY-MM-DD SP HH:MM:SS NL
[Exactly once for votes; Does not occur in consensuses.]
The publication time for this status document (if a vote).
"valid-after" SP YYYY-MM-DD SP HH:MM:SS NL
[Exactly once.]
The start of the Interval for this vote (if a consensus.)
"valid-until" SP YYYY-MM-DD SP HH:MM:SS NL
[Exactly once.]
A time after which this vote or consensus will no longer be valid.
"client-versions" SP VersionList NL
[At most once.]
A comma-separated list of recommended client versions, in
ascending order. If absent, no opinion is held about client
versions.
"server-versions" SP VersionList NL
[At most once.]
A comma-separated list of recommended server versions, in
ascending order. If absent, no opinion is held about server
versions.
"known-flags" SP FlagList NL
[Exactly once.]
A space-separated list of all of the flags that this document
might contain. A flag is "known" either because the authority
knows about them and might set them (if in a vote), or because
enough votes were counted for the consensus for an authoritative
opinion to have been formed about their status.
The authority section of a vote contains the following items, followed
in turn by the authority's current key certificate:
"dir-source" SP nickname SP identity SP address SP IP SP dirport NL
[Exactly once, at start]
Describes this authority. The nickname is a convenient identifier
for the authority. The identity is a hex fingerprint of the
authority's current identity key. The address is the server's
hostname. The IP is the server's current IP address, and dirport
is its current directory port.
"contact" SP string NL
[At most once.]
An arbitrary string describing how to contact the directory
server's administrator. Administrators should include at least an
email address and a PGP fingerprint.
The authority section of a consensus contains groups the following
items, in the order given, with one group for each authority that
contributed to the consensus:
"dir-source" SP nickname SP address SP IP SP dirport NL
[Exactly once, at start]
As in the authority section of a vote.
"contact" SP string NL
[At most once.]
As in the authority section of a vote.
"fingerprint" SP fingerprint NL
[Exactly once.]
A hex fingerprint, without spaces, of the authority's current
identity key.
"vote-digest" SP digest NL
[Exactly once.]
A digest of the vote from the authority that contributed to this
consensus.
Each router status entry contains the following items. Router status
entries are sorted in ascending order by identity digest.
"r" SP nickname SP identity SP digest SP publication SP IP SP ORPort
SP DirPort NL
[At start, exactly once.]
"Nickname" is the OR's nickname. "Identity" is a hash of its
identity key, encoded in base64, with trailing equals sign(s)
removed. "Digest" is a hash of its most recent descriptor (as
signed), encoded in base64 as "identity". "Publication" is the
publication time of its most recent descriptor, in the form
YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS, in GMT. "IP" is its current IP address;
ORPort is its current OR port, "DirPort" is it's current directory
port, or "0" for "none".
"s" SP Flags NL
[At most once.]
A series of space-separated status flags, in alphabetical order.
Currently documented flags are:
"Authority" if the router is a directory authority.
"BadExit" if the router is believed to be useless as an exit node
(because its ISP censors it, because it is behind a restrictive
proxy, or for some similar reason).
"BadDirectory" if the router is believed to be useless as a
directory cache (because its directory port isn't working,
its bandwidth is always throttled, or for some similar
reason).
"Exit" if the router is useful for building general-purpose exit
circuits.
"Fast" if the router is suitable for high-bandwidth circuits.
"Guard" if the router is suitable for use as an entry guard.
"Named" if the router's identity-nickname mapping is canonical,
and this authority binds names.
"Stable" if the router is suitable for long-lived circuits.
"Running" if the router is currently usable.
"Valid" if the router has been 'validated'.
"V2Dir" if the router implements this protocol.
"v" SP version NL
[At most once.]
The version of the Tor protocol that this server is running. If
the value begins with "Tor" SP, the rest of the string is a Tor
version number, and the protocol is "The Tor protocol as supported
by the given version of Tor." Otherwise, if the value begins with
some other string, Tor has upgraded to a more sophisticated
protocol versioning system, and the protocol is "a version of the
Tor protocol more recent than any we recognize."
The signature section contains the following item, which appears
Exactly Once for a vote, and At Least Once for a consensus.
"directory-signature" SP identity SP digest NL Signature
This is a signature of the status document, with the initial item
"network-status-version", and the signature item
"directory-signature", using the signing key. (In this case, we
take the hash through the _space_ after directory-signature, not
the newline: this ensures that all authorities sign the same
thing.) "identity" is the hex-encoded digest of the authority
identity key of the signing authority, and "digest" is the
hex-encoded digest of the current authority signing key of the
signing authority.
3.3. Deciding how to vote.
(This section describes how directory authorities choose which status
flags to apply to routers, as of Tor 0.2.0.0-alpha-dev. Later directory
authorities MAY do things differently, so long as clients keep working
well. Clients MUST NOT depend on the exact behaviors in this section.)
In the below definitions, a router is considered "active" if it is
running, valid, and not hibernating.
"Valid" -- a router is 'Valid' if it is running a version of Tor not
known to be broken, and the directory authority has not blacklisted
it as suspicious.
"Named" -- Directory authority administrators may decide to support name
binding. If they do, then they must maintain a file of
nickname-to-identity-key mappings, and try to keep this file consistent
with other directory authorities. If they don't, they act as clients, and
report bindings made by other directory authorities (name X is bound to
identity Y if at least one binding directory lists it, and no directory
binds X to some other Y'.) A router is called 'Named' if the router
believes the given name should be bound to the given key.
"Running" -- A router is 'Running' if the authority managed to connect to
it successfully within the last 30 minutes.
"Stable" -- A router is 'Stable' if it is active, and either its
uptime is at least the median uptime for known active routers, or
its uptime is at least 30 days. Routers are never called stable if
they are running a version of Tor known to drop circuits stupidly.
(0.1.1.10-alpha through 0.1.1.16-rc are stupid this way.)
"Fast" -- A router is 'Fast' if it is active, and its bandwidth is
in the top 7/8ths for known active routers.
"Guard" -- A router is a possible 'Guard' if it is 'Stable' and its
bandwidth is above median for known active routers. If the total
bandwidth of active non-BadExit Exit servers is less than one third
of the total bandwidth of all active servers, no Exit is listed as
a Guard.
"Authority" -- A router is called an 'Authority' if the authority
generating the network-status document believes it is an authority.
"V2Dir" -- A router supports the v2 directory protocol if it has an open
directory port, and it is running a version of the directory protocol that
supports the functionality clients need. (Currently, this is
0.1.1.9-alpha or later.)
Directory server administrators may label some servers or IPs as
blacklisted, and elect not to include them in their network-status lists.
Thus, the network-status list includes all non-blacklisted,
non-expired, non-superseded descriptors.
3.4. Computing a consensus from a set of votes
Given a set of votes, authorities compute the contents of the consensus
document as follows:
The "valid-after" is the latest of all valid-after times on the votes.
The "valid-until" is the earliest of all valid-until times on the
votes.
"client-versions" and "server-versions" are sorted in ascending
order; A version is recommended in the consensus if it is recommended
by more than half of the voting authorities that included a
client-versions or server-versions lines in their votes.
The authority item groups (dir-source, contact, fignerprint,
vote-digest) are taken from the votes of the voting
authorities. These groups are sorted by the digests of the
authorities identity keys, in ascending order.
A router status entry is included in the result if it is included by more
than half of the authorities (total authorities, not just those whose
votes we have). A router entry has a flag set if it is included by
more than half of the authorities who care about that flag. Two
router entries are "the same" if they have the same identity digest.
We use whatever descriptor digest is attested to by the most
authorities among the voters, breaking ties in favor of the one with
the most recent publication time.
The signatures at the end of the document appear are sorted in
ascending order by identity digest.
3.4. Detached signatures
Assuming full connectivity, every authority should compute and sign the
same consensus directory in each period. Therefore, it isn't necessary to
download the consensus computed by each authority; instead, the
authorities only push/fetch each others' signatures. A "detached
signature" document contains items as follows:
"consensus-digest" SP Digest NL
[At start, at most once.]
The digest of the consensus being signed.
"valid-after" SP YYYY-MM-DD SP HH:MM:SS NL
"valid-until" SP YYYY-MM-DD SP HH:MM:SS NL
[As in the consensus]
"directory signature"
[As in the consensus; the signature object is the same as in the
consensus document.]
4. Directory server operation
All directory authorities and directory caches ("directory servers")
implement this section, except as noted.
4.1. Accepting uploads (authorities only)
When a router posts a signed descriptor to a directory authority, the
authority first checks whether it is well-formed and correctly
self-signed. If it is, the authority next verifies that the nickname
question is already assigned to a router with a different public key.
Finally, the authority MAY check that the router is not blacklisted
because of its key, IP, or another reason.
If the descriptor passes these tests, and the authority does not already
have a descriptor for a router with this public key, it accepts the
descriptor and remembers it.
If the authority _does_ have a descriptor with the same public key, the
newly uploaded descriptor is remembered if its publication time is more
recent than the most recent old descriptor for that router, and either:
- There are non-cosmetic differences between the old descriptor and the
new one.
- Enough time has passed between the descriptors' publication times.
(Currently, 12 hours.)
Differences between router descriptors are "non-cosmetic" if they would be
sufficient to force an upload as described in section 2 above.
Note that the "cosmetic difference" test only applies to uploaded
descriptors, not to descriptors that the authority downloads from other
authorities.
When a router posts a signed extra-info document to a directory authority,
the authority again checks it for well-formedness and correct signature,
and checks that its matches the extra-info-digest in some router
descriptor that it believes is currently useful. If so, it accepts it and
stores it and serves it as requested. If not, it drops it.
4.2. Voting (authorities only)
Authorities divide time into Intervals. Authority administrators SHOULD
try to all pick the same interval length, and SHOULD pick intervals that
are commonly used divisions of time (e.g., 5 minutes, 15 minutes, 30
minutes, 60 minutes, 90 minutes). Voting intervals SHOULD be chosen to
divide evenly into a 24-hour day.
Authorities MUST take pains to ensure that their clocks remain accurate,
for example by running NTP.
The first voting period of each day begins at 00:00 (midnight) GMT. If
the last period of the day would be truncated by one-half or more, it is
merged with the second-to-last period.
An authority SHOULD publish its vote immediately at the start of each voting
period. It does this by making it available at
http://<hostname>/tor/status-vote/current/authority.z
and sending it in an HTTP POST request to each other authority at the URL
http://<hostname>/tor/post/vote
If, N minutes after the voting period has begun, an authority does not have
a current statement from another authority, the first authority retrieves
the other's statement.
Once an authority has a vote from another authority, it makes it available
at
http://<hostname>/tor/status-vote/current/<fp>.z
where <fp> is the fingerprint of the other authority's identity key.
The consensus status, along with as many signatures as the server
currently knows, should be available at
http://<hostname>/tor/status-vote/current/consensus.z
All of the detached signatures it knows for consensus status should be
available at:
http://<hostname>/tor/status-vote/current/consensus-signatures.z
Once an authority has computed and signed a consensus network status, it
should send its detached signature to each other authority in an HTTP POST
request to the URL:
http://<hostname>/tor/post/consensus-signature
[XXXX CUTOFF HERE. STUFF BELOW THIS POINT HAS NOT YET BEEN UPDATED FROM V2.]
4.3. Downloading consensus status documents (authorities caches only)
All directory servers (authorities and mirrors) try to keep a fresh
set of network-status documents from every authority. To do so,
every 5 minutes, each authority asks every other authority for its
most recent network-status document. Every 15 minutes, each mirror
picks a random authority and asks it for the most recent network-status
documents for all the authorities the authority knows about (including
the chosen authority itself).
Directory servers and mirrors remember and serve the most recent
network-status document they have from each authority. Other
network-status documents don't need to be stored. If the most recent
network-status document is over 10 days old, it is discarded anyway.
Mirrors SHOULD store and serve network-status documents from authorities
they don't recognize, but SHOULD NOT use such documents for any other
purpose. Mirrors SHOULD discard network-status documents older than 48
hours.
4.3. Downloading and storing router descriptors (authorities and caches)
Periodically (currently, every 10 seconds), directory servers check
whether there are any specific descriptors (as identified by descriptor
hash in a network-status document) that they do not have and that they
are not currently trying to download.
If so, the directory server launches requests to the authorities for these
descriptors, such that each authority is only asked for descriptors listed
in its most recent network-status. When more than one authority lists the
descriptor, we choose which to ask at random.
If one of these downloads fails, we do not try to download that descriptor
from the authority that failed to serve it again unless we receive a newer
network-status from that authority that lists the same descriptor.
Directory servers must potentially cache multiple descriptors for each
router. Servers must not discard any descriptor listed by any current
network-status document from any authority. If there is enough space to
store additional descriptors, servers SHOULD try to hold those which
clients are likely to download the most. (Currently, this is judged
based on the interval for which each descriptor seemed newest.)
Authorities SHOULD NOT download descriptors for routers that they would
immediately reject for reasons listed in 3.1.
4.4. HTTP URLs
"Fingerprints" in these URLs are base-16-encoded SHA1 hashes.
The authoritative network-status published by a host should be available at:
http://<hostname>/tor/status/authority.z
The network-status published by a host with fingerprint
<F> should be available at:
http://<hostname>/tor/status/fp/<F>.z
The network-status documents published by hosts with fingerprints
<F1>,<F2>,<F3> should be available at:
http://<hostname>/tor/status/fp/<F1>+<F2>+<F3>.z
The most recent network-status documents from all known authorities,
concatenated, should be available at:
http://<hostname>/tor/status/all.z
The most recent descriptor for a server whose identity key has a
fingerprint of <F> should be available at:
http://<hostname>/tor/server/fp/<F>.z
The most recent descriptors for servers with identity fingerprints
<F1>,<F2>,<F3> should be available at:
http://<hostname>/tor/server/fp/<F1>+<F2>+<F3>.z
(NOTE: Implementations SHOULD NOT download descriptors by identity key
fingerprint. This allows a corrupted server (in collusion with a cache) to
provide a unique descriptor to a client, and thereby partition that client
from the rest of the network.)
The server descriptor with (descriptor) digest <D> (in hex) should be
available at:
http://<hostname>/tor/server/d/<D>.z
The most recent descriptors with digests <D1>,<D2>,<D3> should be
available at:
http://<hostname>/tor/server/d/<D1>+<D2>+<D3>.z
The most recent descriptor for this server should be at:
http://<hostname>/tor/server/authority.z
[Nothing in the Tor protocol uses this resource yet, but it is useful
for debugging purposes. Also, the official Tor implementations
(starting at 0.1.1.x) use this resource to test whether a server's
own DirPort is reachable.]
A concatenated set of the most recent descriptors for all known servers
should be available at:
http://<hostname>/tor/server/all.z
For debugging, directories SHOULD expose non-compressed objects at URLs like
the above, but without the final ".z".
Clients MUST handle compressed concatenated information in two forms:
- A concatenated list of zlib-compressed objects.
- A zlib-compressed concatenated list of objects.
Directory servers MAY generate either format: the former requires less
CPU, but the latter requires less bandwidth.
Clients SHOULD use upper case letters (A-F) when base16-encoding
fingerprints. Servers MUST accept both upper and lower case fingerprints
in requests.
5. Client operation: downloading information
Every Tor that is not a directory server (that is, those that do
not have a DirPort set) implements this section.
5.1. Downloading network-status documents
Each client maintains an ordered list of directory authorities.
Insofar as possible, clients SHOULD all use the same ordered list.
For each network-status document a client has, it keeps track of its
publication time *and* the time when the client retrieved it. Clients
consider a network-status document "live" if it was published within the
last 24 hours.
Clients try to have a live network-status document hours from *every*
authority, and try to periodically get new network-status documents from
each authority in rotation as follows:
If a client is missing a live network-status document for any
authority, it tries to fetch it from a directory cache. On failure,
the client waits briefly, then tries that network-status document
again from another cache. The client does not build circuits until it
has live network-status documents from more than half the authorities
it trusts, and it has descriptors for more than 1/4 of the routers
that it believes are running.
If the most recently _retrieved_ network-status document is over 30
minutes old, the client attempts to download a network-status document.
When choosing which documents to download, clients treat their list of
directory authorities as a circular ring, and begin with the authority
appearing immediately after the authority for their most recently
retrieved network-status document. If this attempt fails, the client
retries at other caches several times, before moving on to the next
network-status document in sequence.
Clients discard all network-status documents over 24 hours old.
If enough mirrors (currently 4) claim not to have a given network status,
we stop trying to download that authority's network-status, until we
download a new network-status that makes us believe that the authority in
question is running. Clients should wait a little longer after each
failure.
Clients SHOULD try to batch as many network-status requests as possible
into each HTTP GET.
(Note: clients can and should pick caches based on the network-status
information they have: once they have first fetched network-status info
from an authority, they should not need to go to the authority directly
again.)
5.2. Downloading and storing router descriptors
Clients try to have the best descriptor for each router. A descriptor is
"best" if:
* It is the most recently published descriptor listed for that router
by at least two network-status documents.
OR,
* No descriptor for that router is listed by two or more
network-status documents, and it is the most recently published
descriptor listed by any network-status document.
Periodically (currently every 10 seconds) clients check whether there are
any "downloadable" descriptors. A descriptor is downloadable if:
- It is the "best" descriptor for some router.
- The descriptor was published at least 10 minutes in the past.
(This prevents clients from trying to fetch descriptors that the
mirrors have probably not yet retrieved and cached.)
- The client does not currently have it.
- The client is not currently trying to download it.
- The client would not discard it immediately upon receiving it.
- The client thinks it is running and valid (see 6.1 below).
If at least 16 known routers have downloadable descriptors, or if
enough time (currently 10 minutes) has passed since the last time the
client tried to download descriptors, it launches requests for all
downloadable descriptors, as described in 5.3 below.
When a descriptor download fails, the client notes it, and does not
consider the descriptor downloadable again until a certain amount of time
has passed. (Currently 0 seconds for the first failure, 60 seconds for the
second, 5 minutes for the third, 10 minutes for the fourth, and 1 day
thereafter.) Periodically (currently once an hour) clients reset the
failure count.
No descriptors are downloaded until the client has downloaded more than
half of the network-status documents.
Clients retain the most recent descriptor they have downloaded for each
router so long as it is not too old (currently, 48 hours), OR so long as
it is recommended by at least one networkstatus AND no "better"
descriptor has been downloaded. [Versions of Tor before 0.1.2.3-alpha
would discard descriptors simply for being published too far in the past.]
[The code seems to discard descriptors in all cases after they're 5
days old. True? -RD]
5.3. Managing downloads
When a client has no live network-status documents, it downloads
network-status documents from a randomly chosen authority. In all other
cases, the client downloads from mirrors randomly chosen from among those
believed to be V2 directory servers. (This information comes from the
network-status documents; see 6 below.)
When downloading multiple router descriptors, the client chooses multiple
mirrors so that:
- At least 3 different mirrors are used, except when this would result
in more than one request for under 4 descriptors.
- No more than 128 descriptors are requested from a single mirror.
- Otherwise, as few mirrors as possible are used.
After choosing mirrors, the client divides the descriptors among them
randomly.
After receiving any response client MUST discard any network-status
documents and descriptors that it did not request.
6. Using directory information
Everyone besides directory authorities uses the approaches in this section
to decide which servers to use and what their keys are likely to be.
(Directory authorities just believe their own opinions, as in 3.1 above.)
6.1. Choosing routers for circuits.
Tor implementations only pay attention to "live" network-status documents.
A network status is "live" if it is the most recently downloaded network
status document for a given directory server, and the server is a
directory server trusted by the client, and the network-status document is
no more than 1 day old.
For time-sensitive information, Tor implementations focus on "recent"
network-status documents. A network status is "recent" if it is live, and
if it was published in the last 60 minutes. If there are fewer
than 3 such documents, the most recently published 3 are "recent." If
there are fewer than 3 in all, all are "recent.")
Circuits SHOULD NOT be built until the client has enough directory
information: network-statuses (or failed attempts to download
network-statuses) for all authorities, network-statuses for at more than
half of the authorites, and descriptors for at least 1/4 of the servers
believed to be running.
A server is "listed" if it is included by more than half of the live
network status documents. Clients SHOULD NOT use unlisted servers.
Clients believe the flags "Valid", "Exit", "Fast", "Guard", "Stable", and
"V2Dir" about a given router when they are asserted by more than half of
the live network-status documents. Clients believe the flag "Running" if
it is listed by more than half of the recent network-status documents.
These flags are used as follows:
- Clients SHOULD NOT use non-'Valid' or non-'Running' routers unless
requested to do so.
- Clients SHOULD NOT use non-'Fast' routers for any purpose other than
very-low-bandwidth circuits (such as introduction circuits).
- Clients SHOULD NOT use non-'Stable' routers for circuits that are
likely to need to be open for a very long time (such as those used for
IRC or SSH connections).
- Clients SHOULD NOT choose non-'Guard' nodes when picking entry guard
nodes.
- Clients SHOULD NOT download directory information from non-'V2Dir'
caches.
6.2. Managing naming
In order to provide human-memorable names for individual server
identities, some directory servers bind names to IDs. Clients handle
names in two ways:
When a client encounters a name it has not mapped before:
If all the live "Naming" network-status documents the client has
claim that the name binds to some identity ID, and the client has at
least three live network-status documents, the client maps the name to
ID.
When a user tries to refer to a router with a name that does not have a
mapping under the above rules, the implementation SHOULD warn the user.
After giving the warning, the implementation MAY use a router that at
least one Naming authority maps the name to, so long as no other naming
authority maps that name to a different router. If no Naming authority
maps the name to a router, the implementation MAY use any router that
advertises the name.
Not every router needs a nickname. When a router doesn't configure a
nickname, it publishes with the default nickname "Unnamed". Authorities
SHOULD NOT ever mark a router with this nickname as Named; client software
SHOULD NOT ever use a router in response to a user request for a router
called "Unnamed".
6.3. Software versions
An implementation of Tor SHOULD warn when it has fetched (or has
attempted to fetch and failed four consecutive times) a network-status
for each authority, and it is running a software version
not listed on more than half of the live "Versioning" network-status
documents.
6.4. Warning about a router's status.
If a router tries to publish its descriptor to a Naming authority
that has its nickname mapped to another key, the router SHOULD
warn the operator that it is either using the wrong key or is using
an already claimed nickname.
If a router has fetched (or attempted to fetch and failed four
consecutive times) a network-status for every authority, and at
least one of the authorities is "Naming", and no live "Naming"
authorities publish a binding for the router's nickname, the
router MAY remind the operator that the chosen nickname is not
bound to this key at the authorities, and suggest contacting the
authority operators.
...
6.5. Router protocol versions
A client should believe that a router supports a given feature if that
feature is supported by the router or protocol versions in more than half
of the live networkstatus's "v" entries for that router. In other words,
if the "v" entries for some router are:
v Tor 0.0.8pre1 (from authority 1)
v Tor 0.1.2.11 (from authority 2)
v FutureProtocolDescription 99 (from authority 3)
then the client should believe that the router supports any feature
supported by 0.1.2.11.
This is currently equivalent to believing the median declared version for
a router in all live networkstatuses.
7. Standards compliance
All clients and servers MUST support HTTP 1.0.
7.1. HTTP headers
Servers MAY set the Content-Length: header. Servers SHOULD set
Content-Encoding to "deflate" or "identity".
Servers MAY include an X-Your-Address-Is: header, whose value is the
apparent IP address of the client connecting to them (as a dotted quad).
For directory connections tunneled over a BEGIN_DIR stream, servers SHOULD
report the IP from which the circuit carrying the BEGIN_DIR stream reached
them. [Servers before version 0.1.2.5-alpha reported 127.0.0.1 for all
BEGIN_DIR-tunneled connections.]
Servers SHOULD disable caching of multiple network statuses or multiple
router descriptors. Servers MAY enable caching of single descriptors,
single network statuses, the list of all router descriptors, a v1
directory, or a v1 running routers document. XXX mention times.
7.2. HTTP status codes
XXX We should write down what return codes dirservers send in what situations.
8. Backward compatibility and migration plans
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