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Tor directory protocol, version 3
Table of Contents
0. Scope and preliminaries
0.1. History
0.2. Goals of the version 3 protoc
0.3. Some Remaining questions
1. Outline
1.1. What's different from version 2?
1.2. Document meta-format
1.3. Signing documents
1.4. Voting timeline
2. Router operation and formats
2.1. Uploading server descriptors and extra-info documents
2.1.1. Server descriptor format
2.1.2. Extra-info document format
2.1.3. Nonterminals in server descriptors
3. Directory authority operation and formats
3.1. Creating key certificates
3.2. Accepting server descriptor and extra-info document uploads
3.3. Computing microdescriptors
3.4. Exchanging votes
3.4.1. Vote and consensus status document formats
3.4.2. Assigning flags in a vote
3.4.3. Serving bandwidth list files
3.5. Downloading missing certificates from other directory authorities
3.6. Downloading server descriptors from other directory authorities
3.7. Downloading extra-info documents from other directory authorities
3.8. Computing a consensus from a set of votes
3.8.0.1. Deciding which Ids to include.
3.8.0.2. Deciding which descriptors to include
3.8.1. Forward compatibility
3.8.2. Encoding port lists
3.8.3. Computing Bandwidth Weights
3.9. Computing consensus flavors
3.9.1. ns consensus
3.9.2. Microdescriptor consensus
3.10. Exchanging detached signatures
3.11. Publishing the signed consensus
4. Directory cache operation
4.1. Downloading consensus status documents from directory authorities
4.2. Downloading server descriptors from directory authorities
4.3. Downloading microdescriptors from directory authorities
4.4. Downloading extra-info documents from directory authorities
4.5. Consensus diffs
4.5.1. Consensus diff format
4.5.2. Serving and requesting diff
4.6 Retrying failed downloads
5. Client operation
5.1. Downloading network-status documents
5.2. Downloading server descriptors or microdescriptors
5.3. Downloading extra-info documents
5.4. Using directory information
5.4.1. Choosing routers for circuits.
5.4.2. Managing naming
5.4.3. Software versions
5.4.4. Warning about a router's status.
5.5. Retrying failed downloads
6. Standards compliance
6.1. HTTP headers
6.2. HTTP status codes
A. Consensus-negotiation timeline.
B. General-use HTTP URLs
C. Converting a curve25519 public key to an ed25519 public key
D. Inferring missing proto lines.
E. Limited ed diff format
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.
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
XXX timeline
XXX fill in XXXXs
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL
NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and
"OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in
RFC 2119.
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
--------------------------------
Early versions of Tor (0.0.2) introduced "Directory authorities": servers
that served signed "directory" documents containing a list of signed
"server 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 the list they were getting
was attested by a trusted directory authority.
Later versions (0.0.8) 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 server descriptors that clients
already had.
* Every directory authority 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 server 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 server 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 server descriptors was
used by two fields that are not actually used by Tor routers
(namely read-history and write-history). 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 server 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 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 server 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
relay's identity key: this prevents directory servers from attacking
clients by giving them descriptors nobody else uses.
All directory information is uploaded and downloaded with HTTP.
1.1. What's different from version 2?
Clients used to download multiple network status documents,
corresponding roughly to "status votes" above. They would compute the
result of the vote on the client side.
Authorities used to 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
Server 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 zero 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-],
but may not start with -.
An Object is a block of encoded data in pseudo-Privacy-Enhanced-Mail (PEM)
style format: that is, lines of encoded data MAY be wrapped by inserting
an ascii linefeed ("LF", also called newline, or "NL" here) character
(cf. RFC 4648 §3.1). When line wrapping, implementations MUST wrap lines
at 64 characters. Upon decoding, implementations MUST ignore and discard
all linefeed characters.
More formally:
NL = The ascii LF character (hex value 0x0a).
Document ::= (Item | NL)+
Item ::= KeywordLine Object*
KeywordLine ::= Keyword NL | Keyword WS ArgumentChar+ NL
Keyword = KeywordStart KeywordChar*
KeywordStart ::= 'A' ... 'Z' | 'a' ... 'z' | '0' ... '9'
KeywordChar ::= KeywordStart | '-'
ArgumentChar ::= any printing ASCII character except NL.
WS = (SP | TAB)+
Object ::= BeginLine Base64-encoded-data EndLine
BeginLine ::= "-----BEGIN " Keyword (" " Keyword)* "-----" NL
EndLine ::= "-----END " Keyword (" " Keyword)* "-----" NL
A Keyword may not be "-----BEGIN".
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.
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.
For forward compatibility, each item MUST allow extra arguments at the
end of the line unless otherwise noted. So if an item's description below
is given as:
"thing" int int int NL
then implementations SHOULD accept this string as well:
"thing 5 9 11 13 16 12" NL
but not this string:
"thing 5" NL
and not this string:
"thing 5 10 thing" NL
.
Whenever an item DOES NOT allow extra arguments, we will tag it with
"no extra arguments".
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 PKCS#1 1.5 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.
The signature does not include the algorithmIdentifier specified in PKCS #1.
Unless specified 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*.
1.4. Voting timeline
Every consensus document has a "valid-after" (VA) time, a "fresh-until"
(FU) time and a "valid-until" (VU) time. VA MUST precede FU, which MUST
in turn precede VU. Times are chosen so that every consensus will be
"fresh" until the next consensus becomes valid, and "valid" for a while
after. At least 3 consensuses should be valid at any given time.
The timeline for a given consensus is as follows:
VA-DistSeconds-VoteSeconds: The authorities exchange votes. Each authority
uploads their vote to all other authorities.
VA-DistSeconds-VoteSeconds/2: The authorities try to download any
votes they don't have.
Authorities SHOULD also reject any votes that other authorities try to
upload after this time. (0.4.4.1-alpha was the first version to reject votes
in this way.)
Note: Refusing late uploaded votes minimizes the chance of a consensus
split, particular when authorities are under bandwidth pressure. If an
authority is struggling to upload its vote, and finally uploads to a
fraction of authorities after this period, they will compute a consensus
different from the others. By refusing uploaded votes after this time,
we increase the likelihood that most authorities will use the same vote
set.
Rejecting late uploaded votes does not fix the problem entirely. If
some authorities are able to download a specific vote, but others fail
to do so, then there may still be a consensus split. However, this
change does remove one common cause of consensus splits.
VA-DistSeconds: The authorities calculate the consensus and exchange
signatures. (This is the earliest point at which anybody can
possibly get a given consensus if they ask for it.)
VA-DistSeconds/2: The authorities try to download any signatures
they don't have.
VA: All authorities have a multiply signed consensus.
VA ... FU: Caches download the consensus. (Note that since caches have
no way of telling what VA and FU are until they have downloaded
the consensus, they assume that the present consensus's VA is
equal to the previous one's FU, and that its FU is one interval after
that.)
FU: The consensus is no longer the freshest consensus.
FU ... (the current consensus's VU): Clients download the consensus.
(See note above: clients guess that the next consensus's FU will be
two intervals after the current VA.)
VU: The consensus is no longer valid; clients should continue to try to
download a new consensus if they have not done so already.
VU + 24 hours: Clients will no longer use the consensus at all.
VoteSeconds and DistSeconds MUST each be at least 20 seconds; FU-VA and
VU-FU MUST each be at least 5 minutes.
2. Router operation and formats
2.1. Uploading server descriptors and extra-info documents
ORs SHOULD generate a new server 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.
- Its uptime is less than 24h and bandwidth has changed by a factor of 2
from the last time a descriptor was generated, and at least a given
interval of time (3 hours by default) has passed since then.
- Its uptime has been reset (by restarting).
- It receives a networkstatus consensus in which it is not listed.
- It receives a networkstatus consensus in which it is listed
with the StaleDesc flag.
[XXX this list is incomplete; see router_differences_are_cosmetic()
in routerlist.c for others]
ORs SHOULD NOT publish a new server descriptor or extra-info document
if none of the above events have occurred and not much time has passed
(12 hours by default).
Tor versions older than 0.3.5.1-alpha ignore uptime when checking for
bandwidth changes.
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/
Server descriptors may not exceed 20,000 bytes in length; extra-info
documents may not exceed 50,000 bytes in length. If they do, the
authorities SHOULD reject them.
2.1.1. Server descriptor format
Server descriptors consist of the following items.
In lines that take multiple arguments, extra arguments SHOULD be
accepted and ignored. Many of the nonterminals below are defined in
section 2.1.3.
"router" nickname address ORPort SOCKSPort DirPort NL
[At start, exactly once.]
Indicates the beginning of a server descriptor. "nickname" must be a
valid router nickname as specified in section 2.1.3. "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. (At least one of DirPort and ORPort SHOULD be set;
authorities MAY reject any descriptor with both DirPort and ORPort of
0.)
"identity-ed25519" NL "-----BEGIN ED25519 CERT-----" NL certificate
"-----END ED25519 CERT-----" NL
[Exactly once, in second position in document.]
[No extra arguments]
The certificate is a base64-encoded Ed25519 certificate (see
cert-spec.txt) with terminating =s removed. When this element
is present, it MUST appear as the first or second element in
the router descriptor.
The certificate has CERT_TYPE of [04]. It must include a
signed-with-ed25519-key extension (see cert-spec.txt,
section 2.2.1), so that we can extract the master identity key.
[Before Tor 0.4.5.1-alpha, this field was optional.]
"master-key-ed25519" SP MasterKey NL
[Exactly once]
Contains the base-64 encoded ed25519 master key as a single
argument. If it is present, it MUST match the identity key
in the identity-ed25519 entry.
[Before Tor 0.4.5.1-alpha, this field was optional.]
"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 relay can handle. The
relay remembers the max bandwidth sustained output over any ten
second period in the past 5 days, and another sustained input. The
"observed" value is the lesser of these two numbers.
Tor versions released before 2018 only kept bandwidth-observed for one
day. These versions are no longer supported or recommended.
"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 UTC, 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 relay 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]
[No extra arguments]
This key is used to encrypt CREATE 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.
The key encoding is the encoding of the key as a PKCS#1 RSAPublicKey
structure, encoded in base64, and wrapped in "-----BEGIN RSA PUBLIC
KEY-----" and "-----END RSA PUBLIC KEY-----".
"onion-key-crosscert" NL a RSA signature in PEM format.
[Exactly once]
[No extra arguments]
This element contains an RSA signature, generated using the
onion-key, of the following:
A SHA1 hash of the RSA identity key,
i.e. RSA key from "signing-key" (see below) [20 bytes]
The Ed25519 identity key,
i.e. Ed25519 key from "master-key-ed25519" [32 bytes]
If there is no Ed25519 identity key, or if in some future version
there is no RSA identity key, the corresponding field must be
zero-filled.
Parties verifying this signature MUST allow additional data
beyond the 52 bytes listed above.
This signature proves that the party creating the descriptor
had control over the secret key corresponding to the
onion-key.
[Before Tor 0.4.5.1-alpha, this field was optional whenever
identity-ed25519 was absent.]
"ntor-onion-key" base-64-encoded-key
[Exactly once]
A curve25519 public key used for the ntor circuit extended
handshake. It's the standard encoding of the OR's curve25519
public key, encoded in base 64. The trailing '=' sign MAY be
omitted from the base64 encoding. The key MUST be accepted
for at least 1 week after any new key is published in a
subsequent descriptor.
[Before Tor 0.4.5.1-alpha, this field was optional.]
"ntor-onion-key-crosscert" SP Bit NL
"-----BEGIN ED25519 CERT-----" NL certificate
"-----END ED25519 CERT-----" NL
[Exactly once]
[No extra arguments]
A signature created with the ntor-onion-key, using the
certificate format documented in cert-spec.txt, with type
[0a]. The signed key here is the master identity key.
Bit must be "0" or "1". It indicates the sign of the ed25519
public key corresponding to the ntor onion key. If Bit is "0",
then implementations MUST guarantee that the x-coordinate of
the resulting ed25519 public key is positive. Otherwise, if
Bit is "1", then the sign of the x-coordinate MUST be negative.
To compute the ed25519 public key corresponding to a curve25519
key, and for further explanation on key formats, see appendix C.
This signature proves that the party creating the descriptor
had control over the secret key corresponding to the
ntor-onion-key.
[Before Tor 0.4.5.1-alpha, this field was optional whenever
identity-ed25519 was absent.]
"signing-key" NL a public key in PEM format
[Exactly once]
[No extra arguments]
The OR's long-term RSA identity key. It MUST be 1024 bits.
The encoding is as for "onion-key" above.
"accept" exitpattern NL
"reject" exitpattern NL
[Any number]
These lines describe an "exit policy": the rules that an OR follows
when deciding whether to allow a new stream to a given address. The
'exitpattern' syntax is described below. There MUST be at least one
such entry. 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 *:*.
"ipv6-policy" SP ("accept" / "reject") SP PortList NL
[At most once.]
An exit-policy summary as specified in sections 3.4.1 and 3.8.2,
summarizing
the router's rules for connecting to IPv6 addresses. A missing
"ipv6-policy" line is equivalent to "ipv6-policy reject
1-65535".
"overload-general" SP version SP YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS NL
[At most once.]
Indicates that a relay has reached an "overloaded state" which can be
one or many of the following load metrics:
- Any OOM invocation due to memory pressure
- Any ntor onionskins are dropped
- TCP port exhaustion
The timestamp is when at least one metrics was detected. It should always
be at the hour and thus, as an example, "2020-01-10 13:00:00" is an
expected timestamp. Because this is a binary state, if the line is
present, we consider that it was hit at the very least once somewhere
between the provided timestamp and the "published" timestamp of the
document which is when the document was generated.
The overload-general line should remain in place for 72 hours since last
triggered. If the limits are reached again in this period, the timestamp
is updated, and this 72 hour period restarts.
The 'version' field is set to '1' for now.
(Introduced in tor-0.4.6.1-alpha, but moved from extra-info to general
descriptor in tor-0.4.6.2-alpha)
"router-sig-ed25519" SP Signature NL
[Exactly once.]
It MUST be the next-to-last element in the descriptor, appearing
immediately before the RSA signature. It MUST contain an Ed25519
signature of a SHA256 digest of the entire document. This digest is
taken from the first character up to and including the first space
after the "router-sig-ed25519" string. Before computing the digest,
the string "Tor router descriptor signature v1" is prefixed to the
document.
The signature is encoded in Base64, with terminating =s removed.
The signing key in the identity-ed25519 certificate MUST
be the one used to sign the document.
[Before Tor 0.4.5.1-alpha, this field was optional whenever
identity-ed25519 was absent.]
"router-signature" NL Signature NL
[At end, exactly once]
[No extra arguments]
The "SIGNATURE" object contains a signature of the PKCS1-padded
hash of the entire server descriptor, taken from the beginning of the
"router" line, through the newline after the "router-signature" line.
The server 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 relay's administrator, preferably
including an email address and a PGP key fingerprint.
"bridge-distribution-request" SP Method NL
[At most once, bridges only.]
The "Method" describes how a Bridge address is distributed by
BridgeDB. Recognized methods are: "none", "any", "https", "email",
"moat". If set to "none", BridgeDB will avoid distributing your bridge
address. If set to "any", BridgeDB will choose how to distribute your
bridge address. Choosing any of the other methods will tell BridgeDB to
distribute your bridge via a specific method:
- "https" specifies distribution via the web interface at
https://bridges.torproject.org;
- "email" specifies distribution via the email autoresponder at
bridges@torproject.org;
- "moat" specifies distribution via an interactive menu inside Tor
Browser; and
Potential future "Method" specifiers must be as follows:
Method = (KeywordChar | "_") +
All bridges SHOULD include this line. Non-bridges MUST NOT include
it.
BridgeDB SHOULD treat unrecognized Method values as if they were
"none".
(Default: "any")
[This line was introduced in 0.3.2.3-alpha, with a minimal backport
to 0.2.5.16, 0.2.8.17, 0.2.9.14, 0.3.0.13, 0.3.1.9, and later.]
"family" names NL
[At most once]
'Names' is a space-separated list of relay 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]
(These fields once appeared in router descriptors, but have
appeared in extra-info descriptors since 0.2.0.x.)
"eventdns" bool NL
[At most once]
Declare whether this version of Tor is using the newer enhanced
dns logic. Versions of Tor with this field set to false SHOULD NOT
be used for reverse hostname lookups.
[This option is obsolete. All Tor current relays should be presumed
to have the evdns backend.]
"caches-extra-info" NL
[At most once.]
[No extra arguments]
Present only if this router is a directory cache that provides
extra-info documents.
[Versions before 0.2.0.1-alpha don't recognize this]
"extra-info-digest" SP sha1-digest [SP sha256-digest] NL
[At most once]
"sha1-digest" is a hex-encoded SHA1 digest (using upper-case characters)
of the router's extra-info document, as signed in the router's
extra-info (that is, not including the signature). (If this field is
absent, the router is not uploading a corresponding extra-info
document.)
"sha256-digest" is a base64-encoded SHA256 digest of the extra-info
document. Unlike the "sha1-digest", this digest is calculated over the
entire document, including the signature. This difference is due to
a long-lived bug in the tor implementation that it would be difficult
to roll out an incremental fix for, not a design choice. Future digest
algorithms specified should not include the signature in the data used
to compute the digest.
[Versions before 0.2.7.2-alpha did not include a SHA256 digest.]
[Versions before 0.2.0.1-alpha don't recognize this field at all.]
"hidden-service-dir" NL
[At most once.]
Present only if this router stores and serves hidden service
descriptors. This router supports the descriptor versions declared
in the HSDir "proto" entry. If there is no "proto" entry, this
router supports version 2 descriptors.
"protocols" SP "Link" SP LINK-VERSION-LIST SP "Circuit" SP
CIRCUIT-VERSION-LIST NL
[At most once.]
An obsolete list of protocol versions, superseded by the "proto"
entry. This list was never parsed, and has not been emitted
since Tor 0.2.9.4-alpha. New code should neither generate nor
parse this line.
"allow-single-hop-exits" NL
[At most once.]
[No extra arguments]
Present only if the router allows single-hop circuits to make exit
connections. Most Tor relays do not support this: this is
included for specialized controllers designed to support perspective
access and such. This is obsolete in tor version >= 0.3.1.0-alpha.
"or-address" SP ADDRESS ":" PORT NL
[Any number]
ADDRESS = IP6ADDR | IP4ADDR
IPV6ADDR = an ipv6 address, surrounded by square brackets.
IPV4ADDR = an ipv4 address, represented as a dotted quad.
PORT = a number between 1 and 65535 inclusive.
An alternative for the address and ORPort of the "router" line, but with
two added capabilities:
* or-address can be either an IPv4 or IPv6 address
* or-address allows for multiple ORPorts and addresses
A descriptor SHOULD NOT include an or-address line that does nothing but
duplicate the address:port pair from its "router" line.
The ordering of or-address lines and their PORT entries matter because
Tor MAY accept a limited number of address/port pairs. As of
Tor 0.2.3.x only the first address/port pair is advertised and used.
"tunnelled-dir-server" NL
[At most once.]
[No extra arguments]
Present if the router accepts "tunneled" directory requests using a
BEGIN_DIR cell over the router's OR port.
(Added in 0.2.8.1-alpha. Before this, Tor relays accepted
tunneled directory requests only if they had a DirPort open,
or if they were bridges.)
"proto" SP Entries NL
[Exactly once.]
Entries =
Entries = Entry
Entries = Entry SP Entries
Entry = Keyword "=" Values
Values =
Values = Value
Values = Value "," Values
Value = Int
Value = Int "-" Int
Int = NON_ZERO_DIGIT
Int = Int DIGIT
Each 'Entry' in the "proto" line indicates that the Tor relay supports
one or more versions of the protocol in question. Entries should be
sorted by keyword. Values should be numerically ascending within each
entry. (This implies that there should be no overlapping ranges.)
Ranges should be represented as compactly as possible. Ints must be no
larger than 63.
This field was first added in Tor 0.2.9.x.
[Before Tor 0.4.5.1-alpha, this field was optional.]
2.1.2. Extra-info document format
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.
"identity-ed25519"
[As in router descriptors]
"published" YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS NL
[Exactly once.]
The time, in UTC, when this document (and its corresponding router
descriptor if any) was generated. It MUST match the published time
in the corresponding server 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.]
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.
These fields include both IPv4 and IPv6 traffic.
"ipv6-read-history" YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS (NSEC s) NUM,NUM,NUM... NL
[At most once]
"ipv6-write-history" YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS (NSEC s) NUM,NUM,NUM... NL
[At most once]
Declare how much bandwidth the OR has used recently, on IPv6
connections. See "read-history" and "write-history" for full details.
"geoip-db-digest" Digest NL
[At most once.]
SHA1 digest of the IPv4 GeoIP database file that is used to
resolve IPv4 addresses to country codes.
"geoip6-db-digest" Digest NL
[At most once.]
SHA1 digest of the IPv6 GeoIP database file that is used to
resolve IPv6 addresses to country codes.
("geoip-start-time" YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS NL)
("geoip-client-origins" CC=NUM,CC=NUM,... NL)
Only generated by bridge routers (see blocking.pdf), and only
when they have been configured with a geoip database.
Non-bridges SHOULD NOT generate these fields. Contains a list
of mappings from two-letter country codes (CC) to the number
of clients that have connected to that bridge from that
country (approximate, and rounded up to the nearest multiple of 8
in order to hamper traffic analysis). A country is included
only if it has at least one address. The time in
"geoip-start-time" is the time at which we began collecting geoip
statistics.
"geoip-start-time" and "geoip-client-origins" have been replaced by
"bridge-stats-end" and "bridge-stats-ips" in 0.2.2.4-alpha. The
reason is that the measurement interval with "geoip-stats" as
determined by subtracting "geoip-start-time" from "published" could
have had a variable length, whereas the measurement interval in
0.2.2.4-alpha and later is set to be exactly 24 hours long. In
order to clearly distinguish the new measurement intervals from
the old ones, the new keywords have been introduced.
"bridge-stats-end" YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS (NSEC s) NL
[At most once.]
YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS defines the end of the included measurement
interval of length NSEC seconds (86400 seconds by default).
A "bridge-stats-end" line, as well as any other "bridge-*" line,
is only added when the relay has been running as a bridge for at
least 24 hours.
"bridge-ips" CC=NUM,CC=NUM,... NL
[At most once.]
List of mappings from two-letter country codes to the number of
unique IP addresses that have connected from that country to the
bridge and which are no known relays, rounded up to the nearest
multiple of 8.
"bridge-ip-versions" FAM=NUM,FAM=NUM,... NL
[At most once.]
List of unique IP addresses that have connected to the bridge
per protocol family.
"bridge-ip-transports" PT=NUM,PT=NUM,... NL
[At most once.]
List of mappings from pluggable transport names to the number
of unique IP addresses that have connected using that
pluggable transport. Unobfuscated connections are counted
using the reserved pluggable transport name "<OR>" (without
quotes). If we received a connection from a transport proxy
but we couldn't figure out the name of the pluggable
transport, we use the reserved pluggable transport name
"<??>".
("<OR>" and "<??>" are reserved because normal pluggable
transport names MUST match the following regular expression:
"[a-zA-Z_][a-zA-Z0-9_]*" )
The pluggable transport name list is sorted into lexically
ascending order.
If no clients have connected to the bridge yet, we only write
"bridge-ip-transports" to the stats file.
"dirreq-stats-end" YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS (NSEC s) NL
[At most once.]
YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS defines the end of the included measurement
interval of length NSEC seconds (86400 seconds by default).
A "dirreq-stats-end" line, as well as any other "dirreq-*" line,
is only added when the relay has opened its Dir port and after 24
hours of measuring directory requests.
"dirreq-v2-ips" CC=NUM,CC=NUM,... NL
[At most once.]
"dirreq-v3-ips" CC=NUM,CC=NUM,... NL
[At most once.]
List of mappings from two-letter country codes to the number of
unique IP addresses that have connected from that country to
request a v2/v3 network status, rounded up to the nearest multiple
of 8. Only those IP addresses are counted that the directory can
answer with a 200 OK status code. (Note here and below: current Tor
versions, as of 0.2.5.2-alpha, no longer cache or serve v2
networkstatus documents.)
"dirreq-v2-reqs" CC=NUM,CC=NUM,... NL
[At most once.]
"dirreq-v3-reqs" CC=NUM,CC=NUM,... NL
[At most once.]
List of mappings from two-letter country codes to the number of
requests for v2/v3 network statuses from that country, rounded up
to the nearest multiple of 8. Only those requests are counted that
the directory can answer with a 200 OK status code.
"dirreq-v2-share" NUM% NL
[At most once.]
"dirreq-v3-share" NUM% NL
[At most once.]
The share of v2/v3 network status requests that the directory
expects to receive from clients based on its advertised bandwidth
compared to the overall network bandwidth capacity. Shares are
formatted in percent with two decimal places. Shares are
calculated as means over the whole 24-hour interval.
"dirreq-v2-resp" status=NUM,... NL
[At most once.]
"dirreq-v3-resp" status=NUM,... NL
[At most once.]
List of mappings from response statuses to the number of requests
for v2/v3 network statuses that were answered with that response
status, rounded up to the nearest multiple of 4. Only response
statuses with at least 1 response are reported. New response
statuses can be added at any time. The current list of response
statuses is as follows:
"ok": a network status request is answered; this number
corresponds to the sum of all requests as reported in
"dirreq-v2-reqs" or "dirreq-v3-reqs", respectively, before
rounding up.
"not-enough-sigs: a version 3 network status is not signed by a
sufficient number of requested authorities.
"unavailable": a requested network status object is unavailable.
"not-found": a requested network status is not found.
"not-modified": a network status has not been modified since the
If-Modified-Since time that is included in the request.
"busy": the directory is busy.
"dirreq-v2-direct-dl" key=NUM,... NL
[At most once.]
"dirreq-v3-direct-dl" key=NUM,... NL
[At most once.]
"dirreq-v2-tunneled-dl" key=NUM,... NL
[At most once.]
"dirreq-v3-tunneled-dl" key=NUM,... NL
[At most once.]
List of statistics about possible failures in the download process
of v2/v3 network statuses. Requests are either "direct"
HTTP-encoded requests over the relay's directory port, or
"tunneled" requests using a BEGIN_DIR cell over the relay's OR
port. The list of possible statistics can change, and statistics
can be left out from reporting. The current list of statistics is
as follows:
Successful downloads and failures:
"complete": a client has finished the download successfully.
"timeout": a download did not finish within 10 minutes after
starting to send the response.
"running": a download is still running at the end of the
measurement period for less than 10 minutes after starting to
send the response.
Download times:
"min", "max": smallest and largest measured bandwidth in B/s.
"d[1-4,6-9]": 1st to 4th and 6th to 9th decile of measured
bandwidth in B/s. For a given decile i, i/10 of all downloads
had a smaller bandwidth than di, and (10-i)/10 of all downloads
had a larger bandwidth than di.
"q[1,3]": 1st and 3rd quartile of measured bandwidth in B/s. One
fourth of all downloads had a smaller bandwidth than q1, one
fourth of all downloads had a larger bandwidth than q3, and the
remaining half of all downloads had a bandwidth between q1 and
q3.
"md": median of measured bandwidth in B/s. Half of the downloads
had a smaller bandwidth than md, the other half had a larger
bandwidth than md.
"dirreq-read-history" YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS (NSEC s) NUM,NUM,NUM... NL
[At most once]
"dirreq-write-history" YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS (NSEC s) NUM,NUM,NUM... NL
[At most once]
Declare how much bandwidth the OR has spent on answering directory
requests. 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.
"entry-stats-end" YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS (NSEC s) NL
[At most once.]
YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS defines the end of the included measurement
interval of length NSEC seconds (86400 seconds by default).
An "entry-stats-end" line, as well as any other "entry-*"
line, is first added after the relay has been running for at least
24 hours.
"entry-ips" CC=NUM,CC=NUM,... NL
[At most once.]
List of mappings from two-letter country codes to the number of
unique IP addresses that have connected from that country to the
relay and which are no known other relays, rounded up to the
nearest multiple of 8.
"cell-stats-end" YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS (NSEC s) NL
[At most once.]
YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS defines the end of the included measurement
interval of length NSEC seconds (86400 seconds by default).
A "cell-stats-end" line, as well as any other "cell-*" line,
is first added after the relay has been running for at least 24
hours.
"cell-processed-cells" NUM,...,NUM NL
[At most once.]
Mean number of processed cells per circuit, subdivided into
deciles of circuits by the number of cells they have processed in
descending order from loudest to quietest circuits.
"cell-queued-cells" NUM,...,NUM NL
[At most once.]
Mean number of cells contained in queues by circuit decile. These
means are calculated by 1) determining the mean number of cells in
a single circuit between its creation and its termination and 2)
calculating the mean for all circuits in a given decile as
determined in "cell-processed-cells". Numbers have a precision of
two decimal places.
Note that this statistic can be inaccurate for circuits that had
queued cells at the start or end of the measurement interval.
"cell-time-in-queue" NUM,...,NUM NL
[At most once.]
Mean time cells spend in circuit queues in milliseconds. Times are
calculated by 1) determining the mean time cells spend in the
queue of a single circuit and 2) calculating the mean for all
circuits in a given decile as determined in
"cell-processed-cells".
Note that this statistic can be inaccurate for circuits that had
queued cells at the start or end of the measurement interval.
"cell-circuits-per-decile" NUM NL
[At most once.]
Mean number of circuits that are included in any of the deciles,
rounded up to the next integer.
"conn-bi-direct" YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS (NSEC s) BELOW,READ,WRITE,BOTH NL
[At most once]
Number of connections, split into 10-second intervals, that are
used uni-directionally or bi-directionally as observed in the NSEC
seconds (usually 86400 seconds) before YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS. Every
10 seconds, we determine for every connection whether we read and
wrote less than a threshold of 20 KiB (BELOW), read at least 10
times more than we wrote (READ), wrote at least 10 times more than
we read (WRITE), or read and wrote more than the threshold, but
not 10 times more in either direction (BOTH). After classifying a
connection, read and write counters are reset for the next
10-second interval.
This measurement includes both IPv4 and IPv6 connections.
"ipv6-conn-bi-direct" YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS (NSEC s) BELOW,READ,WRITE,BOTH NL
[At most once]
Number of IPv6 connections that are used uni-directionally or
bi-directionally. See "conn-bi-direct" for more details.
"exit-stats-end" YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS (NSEC s) NL
[At most once.]
YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS defines the end of the included measurement
interval of length NSEC seconds (86400 seconds by default).
An "exit-stats-end" line, as well as any other "exit-*" line, is
first added after the relay has been running for at least 24 hours
and only if the relay permits exiting (where exiting to a single
port and IP address is sufficient).
"exit-kibibytes-written" port=N,port=N,... NL
[At most once.]
"exit-kibibytes-read" port=N,port=N,... NL
[At most once.]
List of mappings from ports to the number of kibibytes that the
relay has written to or read from exit connections to that port,
rounded up to the next full kibibyte. Relays may limit the
number of listed ports and subsume any remaining kibibytes under
port "other".
"exit-streams-opened" port=N,port=N,... NL
[At most once.]
List of mappings from ports to the number of opened exit streams
to that port, rounded up to the nearest multiple of 4. Relays may
limit the number of listed ports and subsume any remaining opened
streams under port "other".
"hidserv-stats-end" YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS (NSEC s) NL
[At most once.]
"hidserv-v3-stats-end" YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS (NSEC s) NL
[At most once.]
YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS defines the end of the included measurement
interval of length NSEC seconds (86400 seconds by default).
A "hidserv-stats-end" line, as well as any other "hidserv-*" line,
is first added after the relay has been running for at least 24
hours.
(Introduced in tor-0.4.6.1-alpha)
"hidserv-rend-relayed-cells" SP NUM SP key=val SP key=val ... NL
[At most once.]
"hidserv-rend-v3-relayed-cells" SP NUM SP key=val SP key=val ... NL
[At most once.]
Approximate number of RELAY cells seen in either direction on a
circuit after receiving and successfully processing a RENDEZVOUS1
cell.
The original measurement value is obfuscated in several steps:
first, it is rounded up to the nearest multiple of 'bin_size'
which is reported in the key=val part of this line; second, a
(possibly negative) noise value is added to the result of the
first step by randomly sampling from a Laplace distribution with
mu = 0 and b = (delta_f / epsilon) with 'delta_f' and 'epsilon'
being reported in the key=val part, too; third, the result of the
previous obfuscation steps is truncated to the next smaller
integer and included as 'NUM'. Note that the overall reported
value can be negative.
(Introduced in tor-0.4.6.1-alpha)
"hidserv-dir-onions-seen" SP NUM SP key=val SP key=val ... NL
[At most once.]
"hidserv-dir-v3-onions-seen" SP NUM SP key=val SP key=val ... NL
[At most once.]
Approximate number of unique hidden-service identities seen in
descriptors published to and accepted by this hidden-service
directory.
The original measurement value is obfuscated in the same way as
the 'NUM' value reported in "hidserv-rend-relayed-cells", but
possibly with different parameters as reported in the key=val part
of this line. Note that the overall reported value can be
negative.
(Introduced in tor-0.4.6.1-alpha)
"transport" transportname address:port [arglist] NL
[Any number.]
Signals that the router supports the 'transportname' pluggable
transport in IP address 'address' and TCP port 'port'. A single
descriptor MUST not have more than one transport line with the
same 'transportname'.
Pluggable transports are only relevant to bridges, but these entries
can appear in non-bridge relays as well.
"padding-counts" YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS (NSEC s) key=NUM key=NUM ... NL
[At most once.]
YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS defines the end of the included measurement
interval of length NSEC seconds (86400 seconds by default). Counts
are reset to 0 at the end of this interval.
The keyword list is currently as follows:
bin-size
- The current rounding value for cell count fields (10000 by
default)
write-drop
- The number of RELAY_DROP cells this relay sent
write-pad
- The number of CELL_PADDING cells this relay sent
write-total
- The total number of cells this relay cent
read-drop
- The number of RELAY_DROP cells this relay received
read-pad
- The number of CELL_PADDING cells this relay received
read-total
- The total number of cells this relay received
enabled-read-pad
- The number of CELL_PADDING cells this relay received on
connections that support padding
enabled-read-total
- The total number of cells this relay received on connections
that support padding
enabled-write-pad
- The total number of cells this relay received on connections
that support padding
enabled-write-total
- The total number of cells sent by this relay on connections
that support padding
max-chanpad-timers
- The maximum number of timers that this relay scheduled for
padding in the previous NSEC interval
"overload-ratelimits" SP version SP YYYY-MM-DD SP HH:MM:SS
SP rate-limit SP burst-limit
SP read-overload-count SP write-overload-count NL
[At most once.]
Indicates that a bandwidth limit was exhausted for this relay.
The "rate-limit" and "burst-limit" are the raw values from the
BandwidthRate and BandwidthBurst found in the torrc configuration file.
The "{read|write}-overload-count" are the counts of how many times the
reported limits of burst/rate were exhausted and thus the maximum
between the read and write count occurrences. To make the counter more
meaningful and to avoid multiple connections saturating the counter
when a relay is overloaded, we only increment it once a minute.
The 'version' field is set to '1' for now.
(Introduced in tor-0.4.6.1-alpha)
"overload-fd-exhausted" SP version YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS NL
[At most once.]
Indicates that a file descriptor exhaustion was experienced by this
relay.
The timestamp indicates that the maximum was reached between the
timestamp and the "published" timestamp of the document.
This overload field should remain in place for 72 hours since last
triggered. If the limits are reached again in this period, the
timestamp is updated, and this 72 hour period restarts.
The 'version' field is set to '1' for the initial implementation which
detects fd exhaustion only when a socket open fails.
(Introduced in tor-0.4.6.1-alpha)
"router-sig-ed25519"
[As in router descriptors]
"router-signature" NL Signature NL
[At end, exactly once.]
[No extra arguments]
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.
2.1.3. Nonterminals in server descriptors
nickname ::= between 1 and 19 alphanumeric characters ([A-Za-z0-9]),
case-insensitive.
hexdigest ::= a '$', followed by 40 hexadecimal characters
([A-Fa-f0-9]). [Represents a relay 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.
Connections to port 0 are never permitted.]
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. Directory authority operation and formats
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.
3.1. Creating 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.
"dir-address" IPPort NL
[At most once]
An IP:Port for this authority's directory port.
"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.]
[No extra arguments]
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 UTC) when this document and corresponding key were
last generated.
Implementations SHOULD reject certificates that are published
too far in the future, though they MAY tolerate some clock skew.
"dir-key-expires" YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS NL
[Exactly once.]
A time (in UTC) after which this key is no longer valid.
Implementations SHOULD reject expired certificates, though they
MAY tolerate some clock skew.
"dir-signing-key" NL a key in PEM format
[Exactly once.]
[No extra arguments]
The directory server's public signing key. This key MUST be at
least 1024 bits, and MAY be longer.
"dir-key-crosscert" NL CrossSignature NL
[Exactly once.]
[No extra arguments]
CrossSignature is a signature, made using the certificate's signing
key, of the digest of the PKCS1-padded hash of the certificate's
identity key. For backward compatibility with broken versions of the
parser, we wrap the base64-encoded signature in -----BEGIN ID
SIGNATURE---- and -----END ID SIGNATURE----- tags. Implementations
MUST allow the "ID " portion to be omitted, however.
Implementations MUST verify that the signature is a correct signature
of the hash of the identity key using the signing key.
"dir-key-certification" NL Signature NL
[At end, exactly once.]
[No extra arguments]
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. Accepting server descriptor and extra-info document uploads
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
in question is not 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.
An authority also keeps a record of all the Ed25519/RSA1024
identity key pairs that it has seen before. It rejects any
descriptor that has a known Ed/RSA identity key that it has
already seen accompanied by a different RSA/Ed identity key
in an older descriptor.
At a future date, authorities will begin rejecting all
descriptors whose RSA key was previously accompanied by an
Ed25519 key, if the descriptor does not list an Ed25519 key.
At a future date, authorities will begin rejecting all descriptors
that do not list an Ed25519 key.
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, 2 hours.)
Differences between server descriptors are "non-cosmetic" if they would be
sufficient to force an upload as described in section 2.1 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.
3.3. Computing microdescriptors
Microdescriptors are a stripped-down version of server descriptors
generated by the directory authorities which may additionally contain
authority-generated information. Microdescriptors contain only the
most relevant parts that clients care about. Microdescriptors are
expected to be relatively static and only change about once per week.
Microdescriptors do not contain any information that clients need to
use to decide which servers to fetch information about, or which
servers to fetch information from.
Microdescriptors are a straight transform from the server descriptor
and the consensus method. Microdescriptors have no header or footer.
Microdescriptors are identified by the hash of its concatenated
elements without a signature by the router. Microdescriptors do not
contain any version information, because their version is determined
by the consensus method.
Starting with consensus method 8, microdescriptors contain the
following elements taken from or based on the server descriptor. Order
matters here, because different directory authorities must be able to
transform a given server descriptor and consensus method into the exact
same microdescriptor.
"onion-key" NL a public key in PEM format
[Exactly once, at start]
[No extra arguments]
The "onion-key" element as specified in section 2.1.1.
When generating microdescriptors for consensus method 30 or later,
the trailing = sign must be absent. For consensus method 29 or
earlier, the trailing = sign must be present.
"ntor-onion-key" SP base-64-encoded-key NL
[Exactly once]
The "ntor-onion-key" element as specified in section 2.1.1.
(Only included when generating microdescriptors for
consensus-method 16 or later.)
[Before Tor 0.4.5.1-alpha, this field was optional.]
"a" SP address ":" port NL
[Any number]
Additional advertised addresses for the OR.
Present currently only if the OR advertises at least one IPv6
address; currently, the first address is included and all others are
omitted. Any other IPv4 or IPv6 addresses should be ignored.
Address and port are as for "or-address" as specified in
section 2.1.1.
(Only included when generating microdescriptors for
consensus-methods 14 to 27.)
"family" names NL
[At most once]
The "family" element as specified in section 2.1.1.
When generating microdescriptors for consensus method 29 or later,
the following canonicalization algorithm is applied to improve
compression:
For all entries of the form $hexid=name or $hexid~name,
remove the =name or ~name portion.
Remove all entries of the form $hexid, where hexid is not
40 hexadecimal characters long.
If an entry is a valid nickname, put it into lower case.
If an entry is a valid $hexid, put it into upper case.
If there are any entries, add a single $hexid entry for
the relay in question, so that it is a member of its own
family.
Sort all entries in lexical order.
Remove duplicate entries.
(Note that if an entry is not of the form "nickname", "$hexid",
"$hexid=nickname" or "$hexid~nickname", then it will be unchanged:
this is what makes the algorithm forward-compatible.)
"p" SP ("accept" / "reject") SP PortList NL
[Exactly once.]
The exit-policy summary as specified in sections 3.4.1 and 3.8.2.
[With microdescriptors, clients don't learn exact exit policies:
clients can only guess whether a relay accepts their request, try the
BEGIN request, and might get end-reason-exit-policy if they guessed
wrong, in which case they'll have to try elsewhere.]
[In consensus methods before 5, this line was omitted.]
"p6" SP ("accept" / "reject") SP PortList NL
[At most once]
The IPv6 exit policy summary as specified in sections 3.4.1 and
3.8.2. A missing "p6" line is equivalent to "p6 reject 1-65535".
(Only included when generating microdescriptors for
consensus-method 15 or later.)
"id" SP "rsa1024" SP base64-encoded-identity-digest NL
[At most once]
The node identity digest (as described in tor-spec.txt), base64
encoded, without trailing =s. This line is included to prevent
collisions between microdescriptors.
Implementations SHOULD ignore these lines: they are
added to microdescriptors only to prevent collisions.
(Only included when generating microdescriptors for
consensus-method 18 or later.)
"id" SP "ed25519" SP base64-encoded-ed25519-identity NL
[At most once]
The node's master Ed25519 identity key, base64 encoded,
without trailing =s.
All implementations MUST ignore this key for any microdescriptor
whose corresponding entry in the consensus includes the
'NoEdConsensus' flag.
(Only included when generating microdescriptors for
consensus-method 21 or later.)
"id" SP keytype ... NL
[At most once per distinct keytype.]
Implementations MUST ignore "id" lines with unrecognized
key-types in place of "rsa1024" or "ed25519"
"pr" SP Entries NL
[Exactly once.]
The "proto" element as specified in section 2.1.1.
[Before Tor 0.4.5.1-alpha, this field was optional.]
(Note that with microdescriptors, clients do not learn the RSA identity of
their routers: they only learn a hash of the RSA identity key. This is
all they need to confirm the actual identity key when doing a TLS
handshake, and all they need to put the identity key digest in their
CREATE cells.)
3.4. Exchanging votes
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 SHOULD act according to interval and delays in the
latest consensus. Lacking a latest consensus, they SHOULD default to a
30-minute Interval, a 5 minute VotingDelay, and a 5 minute DistDelay.
Authorities MUST take pains to ensure that their clocks remain accurate
within a few seconds. (Running NTP is usually sufficient.)
The first voting period of each day begins at 00:00 (midnight) UTC. 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 (minus VoteSeconds+DistSeconds). It does this by making it
available at
http://<hostname>/tor/status-vote/next/authority.z
and sending it in an HTTP POST request to each other authority at the URL
http://<hostname>/tor/post/vote
If, at the start of the voting period, minus DistSeconds, an authority
does not have a current statement from another authority, the first
authority downloads the other's statement.
Once an authority has a vote from another authority, it makes it available
at
http://<hostname>/tor/status-vote/next/<fp>.z
where <fp> is the fingerprint of the other authority's identity key.
And at
http://<hostname>/tor/status-vote/next/d/<d>.z
where <d> is the digest of the vote document.
Also, once an authority receives a vote from another authority, it
examines it for new descriptors and fetches them from that authority.
This may be the only way for an authority to hear about relays that didn't
publish their descriptor to all authorities, and, while it's too late
for the authority to include relays in its current vote, it can include
them in its next vote. See section 3.6 below for details.
3.4.1. Vote and consensus status document formats
Votes and consensuses are more strictly formatted than 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 1.4 on the voting timeline.
Status documents contain a preamble, an authority section, a list of
router status entries, and one or more footer 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 SHOULD 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.
"consensus-methods" SP IntegerList NL
[At most once for votes; does not occur in consensuses.]
A space-separated list of supported methods for generating
consensuses from votes. See section 3.8.1 for details. Absence of
the line means that only method "1" is supported.
"consensus-method" SP Integer NL
[At most once for consensuses; does not occur in votes.]
[No extra arguments]
See section 3.8.1 for details.
(Only included when the vote is generated with consensus-method 2 or
later.)
"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. Before this time, the
consensus document produced from this vote is not officially in
use.
(Note that because of propagation delays, clients and relays
may see consensus documents that are up to `DistSeconds`
earlier than this time, and should not warn about them.)
See section 1.4 for voting timeline information.
"fresh-until" SP YYYY-MM-DD SP HH:MM:SS NL
[Exactly once.]
The time at which the next consensus should be produced; before this
time, there is no point in downloading another consensus, since there
won't be a new one. See section 1.4 for voting timeline information.
"valid-until" SP YYYY-MM-DD SP HH:MM:SS NL
[Exactly once.]
The end of the Interval for this vote. After this time, all
clients should try to find a more recent consensus. See section 1.4
for voting timeline information.
In practice, clients continue to use the consensus for up to 24 hours
after it is no longer valid, if no more recent consensus can be
downloaded.
"voting-delay" SP VoteSeconds SP DistSeconds NL
[Exactly once.]
VoteSeconds is the number of seconds that we will allow to collect
votes from all authorities; DistSeconds is the number of seconds
we'll allow to collect signatures from all authorities. See
section 1.4 for voting timeline information.
"client-versions" SP VersionList NL
[At most once.]
A comma-separated list of recommended Tor versions for client
usage, in ascending order. The versions are given as defined by
version-spec.txt. If absent, no opinion is held about client
versions.
"server-versions" SP VersionList NL
[At most once.]
A comma-separated list of recommended Tor versions for relay
usage, in ascending order. The versions are given as defined by
version-spec.txt. If absent, no opinion is held about server
versions.
"package" SP PackageName SP Version SP URL SP DIGESTS NL
[Any number of times.]
For this element:
PACKAGENAME = NONSPACE
VERSION = NONSPACE
URL = NONSPACE
DIGESTS = DIGEST | DIGESTS SP DIGEST
DIGEST = DIGESTTYPE "=" DIGESTVAL
NONSPACE = one or more non-space printing characters
DIGESTVAL = DIGESTTYPE = one or more non-space printing characters
other than "=".
Indicates that a package called "package" of version VERSION may be
found at URL, and its digest as computed with DIGESTTYPE is equal to
DIGESTVAL. In consensuses, these lines are sorted lexically by
"PACKAGENAME VERSION" pairs, and DIGESTTYPES must appear in ascending
order. A consensus must not contain the same "PACKAGENAME VERSION"
more than once. If a vote contains the same "PACKAGENAME VERSION"
more than once, all but the last is ignored.
Included in consensuses only for method 19 and later.
"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.
"flag-thresholds" SP Thresholds NL
[At most once for votes; does not occur in consensuses.]
A space-separated list of the internal performance thresholds
that the directory authority had at the moment it was forming
a vote.
The metaformat is:
Thresholds = Threshold | Threshold SP Thresholds
Threshold = ThresholdKey '=' ThresholdVal
ThresholdKey = (KeywordChar | "_") +
ThresholdVal = [0-9]+("."[0-9]+)? "%"?
Commonly used Thresholds at this point include:
"stable-uptime" -- Uptime (in seconds) required for a relay
to be marked as stable.
"stable-mtbf" -- MTBF (in seconds) required for a relay to be
marked as stable.
"enough-mtbf" -- Whether we have measured enough MTBF to look
at stable-mtbf instead of stable-uptime.
"fast-speed" -- Bandwidth (in bytes per second) required for
a relay to be marked as fast.
"guard-wfu" -- WFU (in seconds) required for a relay to be
marked as guard.
"guard-tk" -- Weighted Time Known (in seconds) required for a
relay to be marked as guard.
"guard-bw-inc-exits" -- If exits can be guards, then all guards
must have a bandwidth this high.
"guard-bw-exc-exits" -- If exits can't be guards, then all guards
must have a bandwidth this high.
"ignoring-advertised-bws" -- 1 if we have enough measured bandwidths
that we'll ignore the advertised bandwidth
claims of routers without measured bandwidth.
"recommended-client-protocols" SP Entries NL
"recommended-relay-protocols" SP Entries NL
"required-client-protocols" SP Entries NL
"required-relay-protocols" SP Entries NL
[At most once for each.]
The "proto" element as specified in section 2.1.1.
To vote on these entries, a protocol/version combination is included
only if it is listed by a majority of the voters.
These lines should be voted on. A majority of votes is sufficient to
make a protocol un-supported. A supermajority of authorities (2/3)
are needed to make a protocol required. The required protocols
should not be torrc-configurable, but rather should be hardwired in
the Tor code.
The tor-spec.txt section 9 details how a relay and a client should
behave when they encounter these lines in the consensus.
"params" SP [Parameters] NL
[At most once]
Parameter ::= Keyword '=' Int32
Int32 ::= A decimal integer between -2147483648 and 2147483647.
Parameters ::= Parameter | Parameters SP Parameter
The parameters list, if present, contains a space-separated list of
case-sensitive key-value pairs, sorted in lexical order by their
keyword (as ASCII byte strings). Each parameter has its own meaning.
(Only included when the vote is generated with consensus-method 7 or
later.)
See param-spec.txt for a list of parameters and their meanings.
"shared-rand-previous-value" SP NumReveals SP Value NL
[At most once]
NumReveals ::= An integer greater or equal to 0.
Value ::= Base64-encoded-data
The shared random value that was generated during the second-to-last
shared randomness protocol run. For example, if this document was
created on the 5th of November, this field carries the shared random
value generated during the protocol run of the 3rd of November.
See section [SRCALC] of srv-spec.txt for instructions on how to compute
this value, and see section [CONS] for why we include old shared random
values in votes and consensus.
Value is the actual shared random value encoded in base64. NumReveals
is the number of commits used to generate this SRV.
"shared-rand-current-value" SP NumReveals SP Value NL
[At most once]
NumReveals ::= An integer greater or equal to 0.
Value ::= Base64-encoded-data
The shared random value that was generated during the latest shared
randomness protocol run. For example, if this document was created on
the 5th of November, this field carries the shared random value
generated during the protocol run of the 4th of November
See section [SRCALC] of srv-spec.txt for instructions on how to compute
this value given the active commits.
Value is the actual shared random value encoded in base64. NumReveals
is the number of commits used to generate this SRV.
"bandwidth-file-headers" SP KeyValues NL
[At most once for votes; does not occur in consensuses.]
KeyValues ::= "" | KeyValue | KeyValues SP KeyValue
KeyValue ::= Keyword '=' Value
Value ::= ArgumentCharValue+
ArgumentCharValue ::= any printing ASCII character except NL and SP.
The headers from the bandwidth file used to generate this vote.
The bandwidth file headers are described in bandwidth-file-spec.txt.
If an authority is not configured with a V3BandwidthsFile, this line
SHOULD NOT appear in its vote.
If an authority is configured with a V3BandwidthsFile, but parsing
fails, this line SHOULD appear in its vote, but without any headers.
First-appeared: Tor 0.3.5.1-alpha.
"bandwidth-file-digest" 1*(SP algorithm "=" digest) NL
[At most once for votes; does not occur in consensuses.]
A digest of the bandwidth file used to generate this vote.
"algorithm" is the name of the hash algorithm producing "digest",
which can be "sha256" or another algorithm. "digest" is the
base64 encoding of the hash of the bandwidth file, with trailing =s
omitted.
If an authority is not configured with a V3BandwidthsFile, this line
SHOULD NOT appear in its vote.
If an authority is configured with a V3BandwidthsFile, but parsing
fails, this line SHOULD appear in its vote, with the digest(s) of the
unparseable file.
First-appeared: Tor 0.4.0.4-alpha
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 SP
orport NL
[Exactly once, at start]
Describes this authority. The nickname is a convenient identifier
for the authority. The identity is an uppercase hex fingerprint of
the authority's current (v3 authority) 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. The orport is the
port at that address where the authority listens for OR
connections.
"contact" SP string NL
[Exactly 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.
"legacy-dir-key" SP FINGERPRINT NL
[At most once]
Lists a fingerprint for an obsolete _identity_ key still used
by this authority to keep older clients working. This option
is used to keep key around for a little while in case the
authorities need to migrate many identity keys at once.
(Generally, this would only happen because of a security
vulnerability that affected multiple authorities, like the
Debian OpenSSL RNG bug of May 2008.)
"shared-rand-participate" NL
[At most once]
Denotes that the directory authority supports and can participate in the
shared random protocol.
"shared-rand-commit" SP Version SP AlgName SP Identity SP Commit [SP Reveal] NL
[Any number of times]
Version ::= An integer greater or equal to 0.
AlgName ::= 1*(ALPHA / DIGIT / "_" / "-")
Identity ::= 40 * HEXDIG
Commit ::= Base64-encoded-data
Reveal ::= Base64-encoded-data
Denotes a directory authority commit for the shared randomness
protocol, containing the commitment value and potentially also the
reveal value. See sections [COMMITREVEAL] and [VALIDATEVALUES] of
srv-spec.txt on how to generate and validate these values.
Version is the current shared randomness protocol version. AlgName is
the hash algorithm that is used (e.g. "sha3-256") and Identity is the
authority's SHA1 v3 identity fingerprint. Commit is the encoded
commitment value in base64. Reveal is optional and if it's set, it
contains the reveal value in base64.
If a vote contains multiple commits from the same authority, the
receiver MUST only consider the first commit listed.
"shared-rand-previous-value" SP NumReveals SP Value NL
[At most once]
See shared-rand-previous-value description above.
"shared-rand-current-value" SP NumReveals SP Value NL
[At most once]
See shared-rand-current-value description above.
The authority section of a consensus contains groups of the following items,
in the order given, with one group for each authority that contributed to
the consensus, with groups sorted by authority identity digest:
"dir-source" SP nickname SP identity SP address SP IP SP dirport SP
orport NL
[Exactly once, at start]
As in the authority section of a vote.
"contact" SP string NL
[Exactly once.]
As in the authority section of a vote.
"vote-digest" SP digest NL
[Exactly once.]
A digest of the vote from the authority that contributed to this
consensus, as signed (that is, not including the signature).
(Hex, upper-case.)
For each "legacy-dir-key" in the vote, there is an additional "dir-source"
line containing that legacy key's fingerprint, the authority's nickname
with "-legacy" appended, and all other fields as in the main "dir-source"
line for that authority. These "dir-source" lines do not have
corresponding "contact" or "vote-digest" entries.
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 (that is, not including the signature) by the RSA identity
key (see section 1.3.), encoded in base64.
"Publication" was once the publication time of the router's most
recent descriptor, in the form YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS, in UTC. Now
it is only used in votes, and may be set to a fixed value in
consensus documents. Implementations SHOULD ignore this value
in non-vote documents.
"IP" is its current IP address; ORPort is its current OR port,
"DirPort" is its current directory port, or "0" for "none".
"a" SP address ":" port NL
[Any number]
The first advertised IPv6 address for the OR, if it is reachable.
Present only if the OR advertises at least one IPv6 address, and the
authority believes that the first advertised address is reachable.
Any other IPv4 or IPv6 addresses should be ignored.
Address and port are as for "or-address" as specified in
section 2.1.1.
(Only included when the vote or consensus is generated with
consensus-method 14 or later.)
"s" SP Flags NL
[Exactly once.]
A series of space-separated status flags, in lexical order (as ASCII
byte strings). 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).
"Exit" if the router is more useful for building
general-purpose exit circuits than for relay circuits. The
path building algorithm uses this flag; see path-spec.txt.
"Fast" if the router is suitable for high-bandwidth circuits.
"Guard" if the router is suitable for use as an entry guard.
"HSDir" if the router is considered a v2 hidden service directory.
"MiddleOnly" if the router is considered unsuitable for
usage other than as a middle relay. Clients do not need
to handle this option, since when it is present, the authorities
will automatically vote against flags that would make the router
usable in other positions. (Since 0.4.7.2-alpha.)
"NoEdConsensus" if any Ed25519 key in the router's descriptor or
microdescriptor does not reflect authority consensus.
"Stable" if the router is suitable for long-lived circuits.
"StaleDesc" if the router should upload a new descriptor because
the old one is too old.
"Running" if the router is currently usable over all its published
ORPorts. (Authorities ignore IPv6 ORPorts unless configured to
check IPv6 reachability.) Relays without this flag are omitted
from the consensus, and current clients (since 0.2.9.4-alpha)
assume that every listed relay has this flag.
"Valid" if the router has been 'validated'. Clients before
0.2.9.4-alpha would not use routers without this flag by
default. Currently, relays without this flag are omitted
from the consensus, and current (post-0.2.9.4-alpha) clients
assume that every listed relay has this flag.
"V2Dir" if the router implements the v2 directory protocol or
higher.
"v" SP version NL
[At most once.]
The version of the Tor protocol that this relay 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."
Directory authorities SHOULD omit version strings they receive from
descriptors if they would cause "v" lines to be over 128 characters
long.
"pr" SP Entries NL
[At most once.]
The "proto" family element as specified in section 2.1.1.
During voting, authorities copy these lines immediately below the "v"
lines. When a descriptor does not contain a "proto" entry, the
authorities should reconstruct it using the approach described below
in section D. They are included in the consensus using the same rules
as currently used for "v" lines, if a sufficiently late consensus
method is in use.
"w" SP "Bandwidth=" INT [SP "Measured=" INT] [SP "Unmeasured=1"] NL
[At most once.]
An estimate of the bandwidth of this relay, in an arbitrary
unit (currently kilobytes per second). Used to weight router
selection. See section 3.4.2 for details on how the value of
Bandwidth is determined in a consensus.
Additionally, the Measured= keyword is present in votes by
participating bandwidth measurement authorities to indicate
a measured bandwidth currently produced by measuring stream
capacities. It does not occur in consensuses.
'Bandwidth=' and 'Measured=' values must be between 0 and
2^32 - 1 inclusive.
The "Unmeasured=1" value is included in consensuses generated
with method 17 or later when the 'Bandwidth=' value is not
based on a threshold of 3 or more measurements for this relay.
Other weighting keywords may be added later.
Clients MUST ignore keywords they do not recognize.
"p" SP ("accept" / "reject") SP PortList NL
[At most once.]
PortList = PortOrRange
PortList = PortList "," PortOrRange
PortOrRange = INT "-" INT / INT
A list of those ports that this router supports (if 'accept')
or does not support (if 'reject') for exit to "most
addresses".
"m" SP methods 1*(SP algorithm "=" digest) NL
[Any number, only in votes.]
Microdescriptor hashes for all consensus methods that an authority
supports and that use the same microdescriptor format. "methods"
is a comma-separated list of the consensus methods that the
authority believes will produce "digest". "algorithm" is the name
of the hash algorithm producing "digest", which can be "sha256" or
something else, depending on the consensus "methods" supporting
this algorithm. "digest" is the base64 encoding of the hash of
the router's microdescriptor with trailing =s omitted.
"id" SP "ed25519" SP ed25519-identity NL
"id" SP "ed25519" SP "none" NL
[vote only, at most once]
"stats" SP [KeyValues] NL
[At most once. Vote only]
KeyValue ::= Keyword '=' Number
Number ::= [0-9]+("."[0-9]+)?
KeyValues ::= KeyValue | KeyValues SP KeyValue
Line containing various statistics that an authority has computed for
this relay. Each stats is represented as a key + value. Reported keys
are:
"wfu" - Weighted Fractional Uptime
"tk" - Weighted Time Known
"mtbf" - Mean Time Between Failure (stability)
(As of tor-0.4.6.1-alpha)
The footer section is delineated in all votes and consensuses supporting
consensus method 9 and above with the following:
"directory-footer" NL
[No extra arguments]
It contains two subsections, a bandwidths-weights line and a
directory-signature. (Prior to consensus method 9, footers only contained
directory-signatures without a 'directory-footer' line or
bandwidth-weights.)
The bandwidths-weights line appears At Most Once for a consensus. It does
not appear in votes.
"bandwidth-weights" [SP Weights] NL
Weight ::= Keyword '=' Int32
Int32 ::= A decimal integer between -2147483648 and 2147483647.
Weights ::= Weight | Weights SP Weight
List of optional weights to apply to router bandwidths during path
selection. They are sorted in lexical order (as ASCII byte strings) and
values are divided by the consensus' "bwweightscale" param. Definition
of our known entries are...
Wgg - Weight for Guard-flagged nodes in the guard position
Wgm - Weight for non-flagged nodes in the guard Position
Wgd - Weight for Guard+Exit-flagged nodes in the guard Position
Wmg - Weight for Guard-flagged nodes in the middle Position
Wmm - Weight for non-flagged nodes in the middle Position
Wme - Weight for Exit-flagged nodes in the middle Position
Wmd - Weight for Guard+Exit flagged nodes in the middle Position
Weg - Weight for Guard flagged nodes in the exit Position
Wem - Weight for non-flagged nodes in the exit Position
Wee - Weight for Exit-flagged nodes in the exit Position
Wed - Weight for Guard+Exit-flagged nodes in the exit Position
Wgb - Weight for BEGIN_DIR-supporting Guard-flagged nodes
Wmb - Weight for BEGIN_DIR-supporting non-flagged nodes
Web - Weight for BEGIN_DIR-supporting Exit-flagged nodes
Wdb - Weight for BEGIN_DIR-supporting Guard+Exit-flagged nodes
Wbg - Weight for Guard flagged nodes for BEGIN_DIR requests
Wbm - Weight for non-flagged nodes for BEGIN_DIR requests
Wbe - Weight for Exit-flagged nodes for BEGIN_DIR requests
Wbd - Weight for Guard+Exit-flagged nodes for BEGIN_DIR requests
These values are calculated as specified in section 3.8.3.
The signature contains the following item, which appears Exactly Once
for a vote, and At Least Once for a consensus.
"directory-signature" [SP Algorithm] SP identity SP signing-key-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 "signing-key-digest" is the hex-encoded
digest of the current authority signing key of the signing authority.
The Algorithm is one of "sha1" or "sha256" if it is present;
implementations MUST ignore directory-signature entries with an
unrecognized Algorithm. "sha1" is the default, if no Algorithm is
given. The algorithm describes how to compute the hash of the
document before signing it.
"ns"-flavored consensus documents must contain only sha1 signatures.
Votes and microdescriptor documents may contain other signature
types. Note that only one signature from each authority should be
"counted" as meaning that the authority has signed the consensus.
(Tor clients before 0.2.3.x did not understand the 'algorithm'
field.)
3.4.2. Assigning flags in a vote
(This section describes how directory authorities choose which status
flags to apply to routers. 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.
When we speak of a router's bandwidth in this section, we mean either
its measured bandwidth, or its advertised bandwidth. If a sufficient
threshold (configurable with MinMeasuredBWsForAuthToIgnoreAdvertised,
500 by default) of routers have measured bandwidth values, then the
authority bases flags on _measured_ bandwidths, and treats nodes with
non-measured bandwidths as if their bandwidths were zero. Otherwise,
it uses measured bandwidths for nodes that have them, and advertised
bandwidths for other nodes.
When computing thresholds based on percentiles of nodes, an authority
only considers nodes that are active, that have not been
omitted as a sybil (see below), and whose bandwidth is at least
4 KB. Nodes that don't meet these criteria do not influence any
threshold calculations (including calculation of stability and uptime
and bandwidth thresholds) and also do not have their Exit status
change.
"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" --
"Unnamed" -- Directory authorities no longer assign these flags.
They were once used to determine whether a relay's nickname was
canonically linked to its public key.
"Running" -- A router is 'Running' if the authority managed to connect to
it successfully within the last 45 minutes on all its published ORPorts.
Authorities check reachability on:
* the IPv4 ORPort in the "r" line, and
* the IPv6 ORPort considered for the "a" line, if:
* the router advertises at least one IPv6 ORPort, and
* AuthDirHasIPv6Connectivity 1 is set on the authority.
A minority of voting authorities that set AuthDirHasIPv6Connectivity will
drop unreachable IPv6 ORPorts from the full consensus. Consensus method 27
in 0.3.3.x puts IPv6 ORPorts in the microdesc consensus, so that
authorities can drop unreachable IPv6 ORPorts from all consensus flavors.
Consensus method 28 removes IPv6 ORPorts from microdescriptors.
"Stable" -- A router is 'Stable' if it is active, and either its Weighted
MTBF is at least the median for known active routers or its Weighted MTBF
corresponds to at least 7 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.)
To calculate weighted MTBF, compute the weighted mean of the lengths
of all intervals when the router was observed to be up, weighting
intervals by $\alpha^n$, where $n$ is the amount of time that has
passed since the interval ended, and $\alpha$ is chosen so that
measurements over approximately one month old no longer influence the
weighted MTBF much.
[XXXX what happens when we have less than 4 days of MTBF info.]
"Exit" -- A router is called an 'Exit' iff it allows exits to at
least one /8 address space on each of ports 80 and 443. (Up until
Tor version 0.3.2, the flag was assigned if relays exit to at least
two of the ports 80, 443, and 6667.)
"Fast" -- A router is 'Fast' if it is active, and its bandwidth is either in
the top 7/8ths for known active routers or at least 100KB/s.
"Guard" -- A router is a possible Guard if all of the following apply:
- It is Fast,
- It is Stable,
- Its Weighted Fractional Uptime is at least the median for "familiar"
active routers,
- It is "familiar",
- Its bandwidth is at least AuthDirGuardBWGuarantee (if set, 2 MB by
default), OR its bandwidth is among the 25% fastest relays,
- It qualifies for the V2Dir flag as described below (this
constraint was added in 0.3.3.x, because in 0.3.0.x clients
started avoiding guards that didn't also have the V2Dir flag).
To calculate weighted fractional uptime, compute the fraction
of time that the router is up in any given day, weighting so that
downtime and uptime in the past counts less.
A node is 'familiar' if 1/8 of all active nodes have appeared more
recently than it, OR it has been around for a few weeks.
"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 or higher if it has
an open directory port OR a tunnelled-dir-server line in its router
descriptor, and it is running a version of the directory
protocol that supports the functionality clients need. (Currently, every
supported version of Tor supports the functionality that clients need,
but some relays might set "DirCache 0" or set really low rate limiting,
making them unqualified to be a directory mirror, i.e. they will omit
the tunnelled-dir-server line from their descriptor.)
"HSDir" -- A router is a v2 hidden service directory if it stores and
serves v2 hidden service descriptors, has the Stable and Fast flag, and the
authority believes that it's been up for at least 96 hours (or the current
value of MinUptimeHidServDirectoryV2).
"MiddleOnly" -- An authority should vote for this flag if it believes
that a relay is unsuitable for use except as a middle relay. When
voting for this flag, the authority should also vote against "Exit",
"Guard", "HsDir", and "V2Dir". When voting for this flag, if the
authority votes on the "BadExit" flag, the authority should vote in
favor of "BadExit". (This flag was added in 0.4.7.2-alpha.)
"NoEdConsensus" -- authorities should not vote on this flag; it is
produced as part of the consensus for consensus method 22 or later.
"StaleDesc" -- authorities should vote to assign this flag if the
published time on the descriptor is over 18 hours in the past. (This flag
was added in 0.4.0.1-alpha.)
"Sybil" -- authorities SHOULD NOT accept more than 2 relays on a single IP.
If this happens, the authority *should* vote for the excess relays, but
should omit the Running or Valid flags and instead should assign the "Sybil"
flag. When there are more than 2 (or AuthDirMaxServersPerAddr) relays to
choose from, authorities should first prefer authorities to non-authorities,
then prefer Running to non-Running, and then prefer high-bandwidth to
low-bandwidth relays. In this comparison, measured bandwidth is used unless
it is not present for a router, in which case advertised bandwidth is used.
Thus, the network-status vote includes all non-blacklisted,
non-expired, non-superseded descriptors.
The bandwidth in a "w" line should be taken as the best estimate
of the router's actual capacity that the authority has. For now,
this should be the lesser of the observed bandwidth and bandwidth
rate limit from the server descriptor. It is given in kilobytes
per second, and capped at some arbitrary value (currently 10 MB/s).
The Measured= keyword on a "w" line vote is currently computed
by multiplying the previous published consensus bandwidth by the
ratio of the measured average node stream capacity to the network
average. If 3 or more authorities provide a Measured= keyword for
a router, the authorities produce a consensus containing a "w"
Bandwidth= keyword equal to the median of the Measured= votes.
The ports listed in a "p" line should be taken as those ports for
which the router's exit policy permits 'most' addresses, ignoring any
accept not for all addresses, ignoring all rejects for private
netblocks. "Most" addresses are permitted if no more than 2^25
IPv4 addresses (two /8 networks) were blocked. The list is encoded
as described in section 3.8.2.
3.4.3. Serving bandwidth list files
If an authority has used a bandwidth list file to generate a vote
document it SHOULD make it available at
http://<hostname>/tor/status-vote/next/bandwidth.z
at the start of each voting period.
It MUST NOT attempt to send its bandwidth list file in a HTTP POST to
other authorities and it SHOULD NOT make bandwidth list files from other
authorities available.
If an authority makes this file available, it MUST be the bandwidth file
used to create the vote document available at
http://<hostname>/tor/status-vote/next/authority.z
To avoid inconsistent reads, authorities SHOULD only read the bandwidth
file once per voting period. Further processing and serving SHOULD use a
cached copy.
The bandwidth list format is described in bandwidth-file-spec.txt.
The standard URLs for bandwidth list files first-appeared in
Tor 0.4.0.4-alpha.
3.5. Downloading missing certificates from other directory authorities
XXX when to download certificates.
3.6. Downloading server descriptors from other directory authorities
Periodically (currently, every 10 seconds), directory authorities check
whether there are any specific descriptors that they do not have and that
they are not currently trying to download.
Authorities identify them by hash in vote (if publication date is more
recent than the descriptor we currently have).
[XXXX need a way to fetch descriptors ahead of the vote? v2 status docs can
do that for now.]
If so, the directory authority launches requests to the authorities for these
descriptors, such that each authority is only asked for descriptors listed
in its most recent vote. If 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 (consensus or vote) from that authority that lists the same
descriptor.
Directory authorities must potentially cache multiple descriptors for each
router. Authorities must not discard any descriptor listed by any recent
consensus. If there is enough space to store additional descriptors,
authorities 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.)
[XXXX define recent]
Authorities SHOULD NOT download descriptors for routers that they would
immediately reject for reasons listed in section 3.2.
3.7. Downloading extra-info documents from other directory authorities
Periodically, an authority checks whether it is missing any extra-info
documents: in other words, if it has any server descriptors with an
extra-info-digest field that does not match any of the extra-info
documents currently held. If so, it downloads whatever extra-info
documents are missing. We follow the same splitting and back-off rules
as in section 3.6.
3.8. Computing a consensus from a set of votes
Given a set of votes, authorities compute the contents of the consensus.
The consensus status, along with as many signatures as the server
currently knows (see section 3.10 below), should be available at
http://<hostname>/tor/status-vote/next/consensus.z
The contents of the consensus document are as follows:
The "valid-after", "valid-until", and "fresh-until" times are taken as
the median of the respective values from all the votes.
The times in the "voting-delay" line are taken as the median of the
VoteSeconds and DistSeconds times in the votes.
Known-flags is the union of all flags known by any voter.
Entries are given on the "params" line for every keyword on which a
majority of authorities (total authorities, not just those
participating in this vote) voted on, or if at least three
authorities voted for that parameter. The values given are the
low-median of all votes on that keyword.
(In consensus methods 7 to 11 inclusive, entries were given on
the "params" line for every keyword on which *any* authority voted,
the value given being the low-median of all votes on that keyword.)
"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.
With consensus method 19 or later, a package line is generated for a
given PACKAGENAME/VERSION pair if at least three authorities list such a
package in their votes. (Call these lines the "input" lines for
PACKAGENAME.) The consensus will contain every "package" line that is
listed verbatim by more than half of the authorities listing a line for
the PACKAGENAME/VERSION pair, and no others.
The authority item groups (dir-source, contact, fingerprint,
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. If the consensus
method is 3 or later, a dir-source line must be included for
every vote with legacy-key entry, using the legacy-key's
fingerprint, the voter's ordinary nickname with the string
"-legacy" appended, and all other fields as from the original
vote's dir-source line.
A router status entry:
* is included in the result if some router status entry with the same
identity is included by more than half of the authorities (total
authorities, not just those whose votes we have).
(Consensus method earlier than 21)
* is included according to the rules in section 3.8.0.1 and
3.8.0.2 below. (Consensus method 22 or later)
* For any given RSA identity digest, we include at most
one router status entry.
* For any given Ed25519 identity, we include at most one router
status entry.
* A router entry has a flag set if that 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
<descriptor digest, published time, nickname, IP, ports> tuple.
We choose the tuple for a given router as whichever tuple appears
for that router in the most votes. We break ties first in favor of
the more recently published, then in favor of smaller server
descriptor digest.
[
* The Named flag appears if it is included for this routerstatus by
_any_ authority, and if all authorities that list it list the same
nickname. However, if consensus-method 2 or later is in use, and
any authority calls this identity/nickname pair Unnamed, then
this routerstatus does not get the Named flag.
* If consensus-method 2 or later is in use, the Unnamed flag is
set for a routerstatus if any authorities have voted for a different
identities to be Named with that nickname, or if any authority
lists that nickname/ID pair as Unnamed.
(With consensus-method 1, Unnamed is set like any other flag.)
[But note that authorities no longer vote for the Named flag,
and the above two bulletpoints are now irrelevant.]
]
* The version is given as whichever version is listed by the most
voters, with ties decided in favor of more recent versions.
* If consensus-method 4 or later is in use, then routers that
do not have the Running flag are not listed at all.
* If consensus-method 5 or later is in use, then the "w" line
is generated using a low-median of the bandwidth values from
the votes that included "w" lines for this router.
* If consensus-method 5 or later is in use, then the "p" line
is taken from the votes that have the same policy summary
for the descriptor we are listing. (They should all be the
same. If they are not, we pick the most commonly listed
one, breaking ties in favor of the lexicographically larger
vote.) The port list is encoded as specified in section 3.8.2.
* If consensus-method 6 or later is in use and if 3 or more
authorities provide a Measured= keyword in their votes for
a router, the authorities produce a consensus containing a
Bandwidth= keyword equal to the median of the Measured= votes.
* If consensus-method 7 or later is in use, the params line is
included in the output.
* If the consensus method is under 11, bad exits are considered as
possible exits when computing bandwidth weights. Otherwise, if
method 11 or later is in use, any router that is determined to get
the BadExit flag doesn't count when we're calculating weights.
* If consensus method 12 or later is used, only consensus
parameters that more than half of the total number of
authorities voted for are included in the consensus.
[ As of 0.2.6.1-alpha, authorities no longer advertise or negotiate
any consensus methods lower than 13. ]
* If consensus method 13 or later is used, microdesc consensuses
omit any router for which no microdesc was agreed upon.
* If consensus method 14 or later is used, the ns consensus and
microdescriptors may include an "a" line for each router, listing
an IPv6 OR port.
* If consensus method 15 or later is used, microdescriptors
include "p6" lines including IPv6 exit policies.
* If consensus method 16 or later is used, ntor-onion-key
are included in microdescriptors
* If consensus method 17 or later is used, authorities impose a
maximum on the Bandwidth= values that they'll put on a 'w'
line for any router that doesn't have at least 3 measured
bandwidth values in votes. They also add an "Unmeasured=1"
flag to such 'w' lines.
* If consensus method 18 or later is used, authorities include
"id" lines in microdescriptors. This method adds RSA ids.
* If consensus method 19 or later is used, authorities may include
"package" lines in consensuses.
* If consensus method 20 or later is used, authorities may include
GuardFraction information in microdescriptors.
* If consensus method 21 or later is used, authorities may include
an "id" line for ed25519 identities in microdescriptors.
[ As of 0.2.8.2-alpha, authorities no longer advertise or negotiate
consensus method 21, because it contains bugs. ]
* If consensus method 22 or later is used, and the votes do not
produce a majority consensus about a relay's Ed25519 key (see
3.8.0.1 below), the consensus must include a NoEdConsensus flag on
the "s" line for every relay whose listed Ed key does not reflect
consensus.
* If consensus method 23 or later is used, authorities include
shared randomness protocol data on their votes and consensus.
* If consensus-method 24 or later is in use, then routers that
do not have the Valid flag are not listed at all.
[ As of 0.3.4.1-alpha, authorities no longer advertise or negotiate
any consensus methods lower than 25. ]
* If consensus-method 25 or later is in use, then we vote
on recommended-protocols and required-protocols lines in the
consensus. We also include protocols lines in routerstatus
entries.
* If consensus-method 26 or later is in use, then we initialize
bandwidth weights to 1 in our calculations, to avoid
division-by-zero errors on unusual networks.
* If consensus method 27 or later is used, the microdesc consensus
may include an "a" line for each router, listing an IPv6 OR port.
[ As of 0.4.3.1-alpha, authorities no longer advertise or negotiate
any consensus methods lower than 28. ]
* If consensus method 28 or later is used, microdescriptors no longer
include "a" lines.
* If consensus method 29 or later is used, microdescriptor "family"
lines are canonicalized to improve compression.
* If consensus method 30 or later is used, the base64 encoded
ntor-onion-key does not include the trailing = sign.
* If consensus method 31 or later is used, authorities parse the
"bwweightscale" and "maxunmeasuredbw" parameters correctly when
computing votes.
* If consensus method 32 or later is used, authorities handle the
"MiddleOnly" flag specially when computing a consensus. When the
voters agree to include "MiddleOnly" in a routerstatus, they
automatically remove "Exit", "Guard", "V2Dir", and "HSDir". If
the BadExit flag is included in the consensus, they automatically
add it to the routerstatus.
* If consensus method 33 or later is used, and the consensus
flavor is "microdesc", then the "Publication" field in the "r"
line is set to "2038-01-01 00:00:00".
The signatures at the end of a consensus document are sorted in
ascending order by identity digest.
All ties in computing medians are broken in favor of the smaller or
earlier item.
3.8.0.1. Deciding which Ids to include.
This sorting algorithm is used for consensus-method 22 and later.
First, consider each listing by tuple of <Ed,Rsa> identities, where 'Ed'
may be "None" if the voter included "id ed25519 none" to indicate that
the authority knows what ed25519 identities are, and thinks that the RSA
key doesn't have one.
For each such <Ed, RSA> tuple that is listed by more than half of the
total authorities (not just total votes), include it. (It is not
possible for any other <id-Ed, id-RSA'> to have as many votes.) If more
than half of the authorities list a single <Ed,Rsa> pair of this type, we
consider that Ed key to be "consensus"; see description of the
NoEdConsensus flag.
Log any other id-RSA values corresponding to an id-Ed we included, and any
other id-Ed values corresponding to an id-RSA we included.
For each <id-RSA> that is not yet included, if it is listed by more than
half of the total authorities, and we do not already have it listed with
some <id-Ed>, include it, but do not consider its Ed identity canonical.
3.8.0.2. Deciding which descriptors to include
Deciding which descriptors to include.
A tuple belongs to an <id-RSA, id-Ed> identity if it is a new tuple that
matches both ID parts, or if it is an old tuple (one with no Ed opinion)
that matches the RSA part. A tuple belongs to an <id-RSA> identity if its
RSA identity matches.
A tuple matches another tuple if all the fields that are present in both
tuples are the same.
For every included identity, consider the tuples belonging to that
identity. Group them into sets of matching tuples. Include the tuple
that matches the largest set, breaking ties in favor of the most recently
published, and then in favor of the smaller server descriptor digest.
3.8.1. Forward compatibility
Future versions of Tor will need to include new information in the
consensus documents, but it is important that all authorities (or at least
half) generate and sign the same signed consensus.
To achieve this, authorities list in their votes their supported methods
for generating consensuses from votes. Later methods will be assigned
higher numbers. Currently specified methods:
"1" -- The first implemented version.
"2" -- Added support for the Unnamed flag.
"3" -- Added legacy ID key support to aid in authority ID key rollovers
"4" -- No longer list routers that are not running in the consensus
"5" -- adds support for "w" and "p" lines.
"6" -- Prefers measured bandwidth values rather than advertised
"7" -- Provides keyword=integer pairs of consensus parameters
"8" -- Provides microdescriptor summaries
"9" -- Provides weights for selecting flagged routers in paths
"10" -- Fixes edge case bugs in router flag selection weights
"11" -- Don't consider BadExits when calculating bandwidth weights
"12" -- Params are only included if enough auths voted for them
"13" -- Omit router entries with missing microdescriptors.
"14" -- Adds support for "a" lines in ns consensuses and microdescriptors.
"15" -- Adds support for "p6" lines.
"16" -- Adds ntor keys to microdescriptors
"17" -- Adds "Unmeasured=1" flags to "w" lines
"18" -- Adds 'id' to microdescriptors.
"19" -- Adds "package" lines to consensuses
"20" -- Adds GuardFraction information to microdescriptors.
"21" -- Adds Ed25519 keys to microdescriptors.
"22" -- Instantiates Ed25519 voting algorithm correctly.
"23" -- Adds shared randomness protocol data.
"24" -- No longer lists routers that are not Valid in the consensus.
"25" -- Vote on recommended-protocols and required-protocols.
"26" -- Initialize bandwidth weights to 1 to avoid division-by-zero.
"27" -- Adds support for "a" lines in microdescriptor consensuses.
"28" -- Removes "a" lines from microdescriptors.
"29" -- Canonicalizes families in microdescriptors.
"30" -- Removes padding from ntor-onion-key.
"31" -- Uses correct parsing for bwweightscale and maxunmeasuredbw
when computing weights
Before generating a consensus, an authority must decide which consensus
method to use. To do this, it looks for the highest version number
supported by more than 2/3 of the authorities voting. If it supports this
method, then it uses it. Otherwise, it falls back to the newest consensus
method that it supports (which will probably not result in a sufficiently
signed consensus).
All authorities MUST support method 25; authorities SHOULD support
more recent methods as well. Authorities SHOULD NOT support or
advertise support for any method before 25. Clients MAY assume that
they will never see a current valid signed consensus for any method
before method 25.
(The consensuses generated by new methods must be parsable by
implementations that only understand the old methods, and must not cause
those implementations to compromise their anonymity. This is a means for
making changes in the contents of consensus; not for making
backward-incompatible changes in their format.)
The following methods have incorrect implementations; authorities SHOULD
NOT advertise support for them:
"21" -- Did not correctly enable support for ed25519 key collation.
3.8.2. Encoding port lists
Whether the summary shows the list of accepted ports or the list of
rejected ports depends on which list is shorter (has a shorter string
representation). In case of ties we choose the list of accepted
ports. As an exception to this rule an allow-all policy is
represented as "accept 1-65535" instead of "reject " and a reject-all
policy is similarly given as "reject 1-65535".
Summary items are compressed, that is instead of "80-88,89-100" there
only is a single item of "80-100", similarly instead of "20,21" a
summary will say "20-21".
Port lists are sorted in ascending order.
The maximum allowed length of a policy summary (including the "accept "
or "reject ") is 1000 characters. If a summary exceeds that length we
use an accept-style summary and list as much of the port list as is
possible within these 1000 bytes. [XXXX be more specific.]
3.8.3. Computing Bandwidth Weights
Let weight_scale = 10000, or the value of the "bwweightscale" parameter.
(Before consensus method 31 there was a bug in parsing bwweightscale, so
that if there were any consensus parameters after it alphabetically, it
would always be treated as 10000. A similar bug existed for
"maxunmeasuredbw".)
Starting with consensus method 26, G, M, E, and D are initialized to 1 and
T to 4. Prior consensus methods initialize them all to 0. With this change,
test tor networks that are small or new are much more likely to produce
bandwidth-weights in their consensus. The extra bandwidth has a negligible
impact on the bandwidth weights in the public tor network.
Let G be the total bandwidth for Guard-flagged nodes.
Let M be the total bandwidth for non-flagged nodes.
Let E be the total bandwidth for Exit-flagged nodes.
Let D be the total bandwidth for Guard+Exit-flagged nodes.
Let T = G+M+E+D
Let Wgd be the weight for choosing a Guard+Exit for the guard position.
Let Wmd be the weight for choosing a Guard+Exit for the middle position.
Let Wed be the weight for choosing a Guard+Exit for the exit position.
Let Wme be the weight for choosing an Exit for the middle position.
Let Wmg be the weight for choosing a Guard for the middle position.
Let Wgg be the weight for choosing a Guard for the guard position.
Let Wee be the weight for choosing an Exit for the exit position.
Balanced network conditions then arise from solutions to the following
system of equations:
Wgg*G + Wgd*D == M + Wmd*D + Wme*E + Wmg*G (guard bw = middle bw)
Wgg*G + Wgd*D == Wee*E + Wed*D (guard bw = exit bw)
Wed*D + Wmd*D + Wgd*D == D (aka: Wed+Wmd+Wdg = weight_scale)
Wmg*G + Wgg*G == G (aka: Wgg = weight_scale-Wmg)
Wme*E + Wee*E == E (aka: Wee = weight_scale-Wme)
We are short 2 constraints with the above set. The remaining constraints
come from examining different cases of network load. The following
constraints are used in consensus method 10 and above. There are another
incorrect and obsolete set of constraints used for these same cases in
consensus method 9. For those, see dir-spec.txt in Tor 0.2.2.10-alpha
to 0.2.2.16-alpha.
Case 1: E >= T/3 && G >= T/3 (Neither Exit nor Guard Scarce)
In this case, the additional two constraints are: Wmg == Wmd,
Wed == 1/3.
This leads to the solution:
Wgd = weight_scale/3
Wed = weight_scale/3
Wmd = weight_scale/3
Wee = (weight_scale*(E+G+M))/(3*E)
Wme = weight_scale - Wee
Wmg = (weight_scale*(2*G-E-M))/(3*G)
Wgg = weight_scale - Wmg
Case 2: E < T/3 && G < T/3 (Both are scarce)
Let R denote the more scarce class (Rare) between Guard vs Exit.
Let S denote the less scarce class.
Subcase a: R+D < S
In this subcase, we simply devote all of D bandwidth to the
scarce class.
Wgg = Wee = weight_scale
Wmg = Wme = Wmd = 0;
if E < G:
Wed = weight_scale
Wgd = 0
else:
Wed = 0
Wgd = weight_scale
Subcase b: R+D >= S
In this case, if M <= T/3, we have enough bandwidth to try to achieve
a balancing condition.
Add constraints Wgg = weight_scale, Wmd == Wgd to maximize bandwidth in
the guard position while still allowing exits to be used as middle nodes:
Wee = (weight_scale*(E - G + M))/E
Wed = (weight_scale*(D - 2*E + 4*G - 2*M))/(3*D)
Wme = (weight_scale*(G-M))/E
Wmg = 0
Wgg = weight_scale
Wmd = (weight_scale - Wed)/2
Wgd = (weight_scale - Wed)/2
If this system ends up with any values out of range (ie negative, or
above weight_scale), use the constraints Wgg == weight_scale and Wee ==
weight_scale, since both those positions are scarce:
Wgg = weight_scale
Wee = weight_scale
Wed = (weight_scale*(D - 2*E + G + M))/(3*D)
Wmd = (weight_Scale*(D - 2*M + G + E))/(3*D)
Wme = 0
Wmg = 0
Wgd = weight_scale - Wed - Wmd
If M > T/3, then the Wmd weight above will become negative. Set it to 0
in this case:
Wmd = 0
Wgd = weight_scale - Wed
Case 3: One of E < T/3 or G < T/3
Let S be the scarce class (of E or G).
Subcase a: (S+D) < T/3:
if G=S:
Wgg = Wgd = weight_scale;
Wmd = Wed = Wmg = 0;
// Minor subcase, if E is more scarce than M,
// keep its bandwidth in place.
if (E < M) Wme = 0;
else Wme = (weight_scale*(E-M))/(2*E);
Wee = weight_scale-Wme;
if E=S:
Wee = Wed = weight_scale;
Wmd = Wgd = Wme = 0;
// Minor subcase, if G is more scarce than M,
// keep its bandwidth in place.
if (G < M) Wmg = 0;
else Wmg = (weight_scale*(G-M))/(2*G);
Wgg = weight_scale-Wmg;
Subcase b: (S+D) >= T/3
if G=S:
Add constraints Wgg = weight_scale, Wmd == Wed to maximize bandwidth
in the guard position, while still allowing exits to be
used as middle nodes:
Wgg = weight_scale
Wgd = (weight_scale*(D - 2*G + E + M))/(3*D)
Wmg = 0
Wee = (weight_scale*(E+M))/(2*E)
Wme = weight_scale - Wee
Wmd = (weight_scale - Wgd)/2
Wed = (weight_scale - Wgd)/2
if E=S:
Add constraints Wee == weight_scale, Wmd == Wgd to maximize bandwidth
in the exit position:
Wee = weight_scale;
Wed = (weight_scale*(D - 2*E + G + M))/(3*D);
Wme = 0;
Wgg = (weight_scale*(G+M))/(2*G);
Wmg = weight_scale - Wgg;
Wmd = (weight_scale - Wed)/2;
Wgd = (weight_scale - Wed)/2;
To ensure consensus, all calculations are performed using integer math
with a fixed precision determined by the bwweightscale consensus
parameter (defaults at 10000, Min: 1, Max: INT32_MAX). (See note above
about parsing bug in bwweightscale before consensus method 31.)
For future balancing improvements, Tor clients support 11 additional weights
for directory requests and middle weighting. These weights are currently
set at weight_scale, with the exception of the following groups of
assignments:
Directory requests use middle weights:
Wbd=Wmd, Wbg=Wmg, Wbe=Wme, Wbm=Wmm
Handle bridges and strange exit policies:
Wgm=Wgg, Wem=Wee, Weg=Wed
3.9. Computing consensus flavors
Consensus flavors are variants of the consensus that clients can choose
to download and use instead of the unflavored consensus. The purpose
of a consensus flavor is to remove or replace information in the
unflavored consensus without forcing clients to download information
they would not use anyway.
Directory authorities can produce and serve an arbitrary number of
flavors of the same consensus. A downside of creating too many new
flavors is that clients will be distinguishable based on which flavor
they download. A new flavor should not be created when adding a field
instead wouldn't be too onerous.
Examples for consensus flavors include:
- Publishing hashes of microdescriptors instead of hashes of
full descriptors (see section 3.9.2).
- Including different digests of descriptors, instead of the
perhaps-soon-to-be-totally-broken SHA1.
Consensus flavors are derived from the unflavored consensus once the
voting process is complete. This is to avoid consensus synchronization
problems.
Every consensus flavor has a name consisting of a sequence of one
or more alphanumeric characters and dashes. For compatibility,
the original (unflavored) consensus type is called "ns".
The supported consensus flavors are defined as part of the
authorities' consensus method.
All consensus flavors have in common that their first line is
"network-status-version" where version is 3 or higher, and the flavor
is a string consisting of alphanumeric characters and dashes:
"network-status-version" SP version [SP flavor] NL
3.9.1. ns consensus
The ns consensus flavor is equivalent to the unflavored consensus.
When the flavor is omitted from the "network-status-version" line,
it should be assumed to be "ns". Some implementations may explicitly
state that the flavor is "ns" when generating consensuses, but should
accept consensuses where the flavor is omitted.
3.9.2. Microdescriptor consensus
The microdescriptor consensus is a consensus flavor that contains
microdescriptor hashes instead of descriptor hashes and that omits
exit-policy summaries which are contained in microdescriptors. The
microdescriptor consensus was designed to contain elements that are
small and frequently changing. Clients use the information in the
microdescriptor consensus to decide which servers to fetch information
about and which servers to fetch information from.
The microdescriptor consensus is based on the unflavored consensus with
the exceptions as follows:
"network-status-version" SP version SP "microdesc" NL
[At start, exactly once.]
The flavor name of a microdescriptor consensus is "microdesc".
Changes to router status entries are as follows:
"r" SP nickname SP identity SP publication SP IP SP ORPort
SP DirPort NL
[At start, exactly once.]
Similar to "r" lines in section 3.4.1, but without the digest element.
"a" SP address ":" port NL
[Any number]
Identical to the "r" lines in section 3.4.1.
(Only included when the vote is generated with consensus-method 14
or later, and the consensus is generated with consensus-method 27 or
later.)
"p" ... NL
[At most once]
Not currently generated.
Exit policy summaries are contained in microdescriptors and
therefore omitted in the microdescriptor consensus.
"m" SP digest NL
[Exactly once.*]
"digest" is the base64 of the SHA256 hash of the router's
microdescriptor with trailing =s omitted. For a given router
descriptor digest and consensus method there should only be a
single microdescriptor digest in the "m" lines of all votes.
If different votes have different microdescriptor digests for
the same descriptor digest and consensus method, at least one
of the authorities is broken. If this happens, the microdesc
consensus should contain whichever microdescriptor digest is
most common. If there is no winner, we break ties in the favor
of the lexically earliest.
[*Before consensus method 13, this field was sometimes erroneously
omitted.]
Additionally, a microdescriptor consensus SHOULD use the sha256 digest
algorithm for its signatures.
3.10. Exchanging detached signatures
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
[XXX Note why we support push-and-then-pull.]
All of the detached signatures it knows for consensus status should be
available at:
http://<hostname>/tor/status-vote/next/consensus-signatures.z
Assuming full connectivity, every authority should compute and sign the
same consensus including any flavors in each period. Therefore, it
isn't necessary to download the consensus or any flavors of it 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
"fresh-until" SP YYYY-MM-DD SP HH:MM:SS NL
"valid-until" SP YYYY-MM-DD SP HH:MM:SS NL
[As in the consensus]
"additional-digest" SP flavor SP algname SP digest NL
[Any number.]
For each supported consensus flavor, every directory authority
adds one or more "additional-digest" lines. "flavor" is the name
of the consensus flavor, "algname" is the name of the hash
algorithm that is used to generate the digest, and "digest" is the
hex-encoded digest.
The hash algorithm for the microdescriptor consensus flavor is
defined as SHA256 with algname "sha256".
"additional-signature" SP flavor SP algname SP identity SP
signing-key-digest NL signature.
[Any number.]
For each supported consensus flavor and defined digest algorithm,
every directory authority adds an "additional-signature" line.
"flavor" is the name of the consensus flavor. "algname" is the
name of the algorithm that was used to hash the identity and
signing keys, and to compute the signature. "identity" is the
hex-encoded digest of the authority identity key of the signing
authority, and "signing-key-digest" is the hex-encoded digest of
the current authority signing key of the signing authority.
The "sha256" signature format is defined as the RSA signature of
the OAEP+-padded SHA256 digest of the item to be signed. When
checking signatures, the signature MUST be treated as valid if the
signature material begins with SHA256(document), so that other
data can get added later.
[To be honest, I didn't fully understand the previous paragraph
and only copied it from the proposals. Review carefully. -KL]
"directory-signature"
[As in the consensus; the signature object is the same as in the
consensus document.]
3.11. Publishing the signed consensus
The voting period ends at the valid-after time. If the consensus has
been signed by a majority of authorities, these documents are made
available at
http://<hostname>/tor/status-vote/current/consensus.z
and
http://<hostname>/tor/status-vote/current/consensus-signatures.z
[XXX current/consensus-signatures is not currently implemented, as it
is not used in the voting protocol.]
[XXX possible future features include support for downloading old
consensuses.]
The other vote documents are analogously made available under
http://<hostname>/tor/status-vote/current/authority.z
http://<hostname>/tor/status-vote/current/<fp>.z
http://<hostname>/tor/status-vote/current/d/<d>.z
http://<hostname>/tor/status-vote/current/bandwidth.z
once the voting period ends, regardless of the number of signatures.
The authorities serve another consensus of each flavor "F" from the
locations
/tor/status-vote/(current|next)/consensus-F.z. and
/tor/status-vote/(current|next)/consensus-F/<FP1>+....z.
The standard URLs for bandwidth list files first-appeared in Tor 0.3.5.
4. Directory cache operation
All directory caches implement this section, except as noted.
4.1. Downloading consensus status documents from directory authorities
All directory caches try to keep a recent
network-status consensus document to serve to clients. A cache ALWAYS
downloads a network-status consensus if any of the following are true:
- The cache has no consensus document.
- The cache's consensus document is no longer valid.
Otherwise, the cache downloads a new consensus document at a randomly
chosen time in the first half-interval after its current consensus
stops being fresh. (This time is chosen at random to avoid swarming
the authorities at the start of each period. The interval size is
inferred from the difference between the valid-after time and the
fresh-until time on the consensus.)
[For example, if a cache has a consensus that became valid at 1:00,
and is fresh until 2:00, that cache will fetch a new consensus at
a random time between 2:00 and 2:30.]
Directory caches also fetch consensus flavors from the authorities.
Caches check the correctness of consensus flavors, but do not check
anything about an unrecognized consensus document beyond its digest and
length. Caches serve all consensus flavors from the same locations as
the directory authorities.
4.2. Downloading server descriptors from directory authorities
Periodically (currently, every 10 seconds), directory caches check
whether there are any specific descriptors that they do not have and that
they are not currently trying to download. Caches identify these
descriptors by hash in the recent network-status consensus documents.
If so, the directory cache launches requests to the authorities for these
descriptors.
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 consensus that lists the same descriptor.
Directory caches must potentially cache multiple descriptors for each
router. Caches must not discard any descriptor listed by any recent
consensus. If there is enough space to store additional descriptors,
caches 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.)
[XXXX define recent]
4.3. Downloading microdescriptors from directory authorities
Directory mirrors should fetch, cache, and serve each microdescriptor
from the authorities.
The microdescriptors with base64 hashes <D1>,<D2>,<D3> are available
at:
http://<hostname>/tor/micro/d/<D1>-<D2>-<D3>[.z]
<Dn> are base64 encoded with trailing =s omitted for size and for
consistency with the microdescriptor consensus format. -s are used
instead of +s to separate items, since the + character is used in
base64 encoding.
Directory mirrors should check to make sure that the microdescriptors
they're about to serve match the right hashes (either the hashes from
the fetch URL or the hashes from the consensus, respectively).
(NOTE: Due to squid proxy url limitations at most 92 microdescriptor hashes
can be retrieved in a single request.)
4.4. Downloading extra-info documents from directory authorities
Any cache that chooses to cache extra-info documents should implement this
section.
Periodically, the Tor instance checks whether it is missing any extra-info
documents: in other words, if it has any server descriptors with an
extra-info-digest field that does not match any of the extra-info
documents currently held. If so, it downloads whatever extra-info
documents are missing. Caches download from authorities. We follow the
same splitting and back-off rules as in section 4.2.
4.5. Consensus diffs
Instead of downloading an entire consensus, clients may download
a "diff" document containing an ed-style diff from a previous
consensus document. Caches (and authorities) make these diffs as
they learn about new consensuses. To do so, they must store a
record of older consensuses.
(Support for consensus diffs was added in 0.3.1.1-alpha, and is
advertised with the DirCache protocol version "2" or later.)
4.5.1. Consensus diff format
Consensus diffs are formatted as follows:
The first line is "network-status-diff-version 1" NL
The second line is
"hash" SP FromDigest SP ToDigest NL
where FromDigest is the hex-encoded SHA3-256 digest of the _signed
part_ of the consensus that the diff should be applied to, and
ToDigest is the hex-encoded SHA3-256 digest of the _entire_
consensus resulting from applying the diff. (See 3.4.1 for
information on that part of a consensus is signed.)
The third and subsequent lines encode the diff from FromDigest to
ToDigest in a limited subset of the ed diff format, as specified
in appendix E.
4.5.2. Serving and requesting diffs.
When downloading the current consensus, a client may include an
HTTP header of the form
X-Or-Diff-From-Consensus: HASH1, HASH2, ...
where the HASH values are hex-encoded SHA3-256 digests of the
_signed part_ of one or more consensuses that the client knows
about.
If a cache knows a consensus diff from one of those consensuses
to the most recent consensus of the requested flavor, it may
send that diff instead of the specified consensus.
Caches also serve diffs from the URIs:
/tor/status-vote/current/consensus/diff/<HASH>/<FPRLIST>.z
/tor/status-vote/current/consensus-<FLAVOR>/diff/<HASH>/<FPRLIST>.z
where FLAVOR is the consensus flavor, defaulting to "ns", and
FPRLIST is +-separated list of recognized authority identity
fingerprints as in appendix B.
4.6 Retrying failed downloads
See section 5.5 below; it applies to caches as well as clients.
5. Client operation
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 a list of directory authorities. Insofar as
possible, clients SHOULD all use the same list.
[Newer versions of Tor (0.2.8.1-alpha and later):
Each client also maintains a list of default fallback directory mirrors
(fallbacks). Each released version of Tor MAY have a different list,
depending on the mirrors that satisfy the fallback directory criteria at
release time.]
Clients try to have a live consensus network-status document at all times.
A network-status document is "live" if the time in its valid-after field
has passed, and the time in its valid-until field has not passed.
When a client has no consensus network-status document, it downloads it
from a randomly chosen fallback directory mirror or authority. Clients
prefer fallbacks to authorities, trying them earlier and more frequently.
In all other cases, the client downloads from caches randomly chosen from
among those believed to be V3 directory servers. (This information comes
from the network-status documents.)
After receiving any response client MUST discard any network-status
documents that it did not request.
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 a live network-status consensus document, and it has
descriptors for a significant proportion of the routers that it believes
are running (this is configurable using torrc options and consensus
parameters).
[Newer versions of Tor (0.2.6.2-alpha and later):
If the consensus contains Exits (the typical case), Tor will build both
exit and internal circuits. When bootstrap completes, Tor will be ready
to handle an application requesting an exit circuit to services like the
World Wide Web.
If the consensus does not contain Exits, Tor will only build internal
circuits. In this case, earlier statuses will have included "internal"
as indicated above. When bootstrap completes, Tor will be ready to handle
an application requesting an internal circuit to hidden services at
".onion" addresses.
If a future consensus contains Exits, exit circuits may become available.]
(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 or fallback, they should not need to go to the authority
directly again, and should only choose the fallback at random, based on its
consensus weight in the current consensus.)
To avoid swarming the caches whenever a consensus expires, the
clients download new consensuses at a randomly chosen time after the
caches are expected to have a fresh consensus, but before their
consensus will expire. (This time is chosen uniformly at random from
the interval between the time 3/4 into the first interval after the
consensus is no longer fresh, and 7/8 of the time remaining after
that before the consensus is invalid.)
[For example, if a client has a consensus that became valid at 1:00,
and is fresh until 2:00, and expires at 4:00, that client will fetch
a new consensus at a random time between 2:45 and 3:50, since 3/4
of the one-hour interval is 45 minutes, and 7/8 of the remaining 75
minutes is 65 minutes.]
Clients may choose to download the microdescriptor consensus instead
of the general network status consensus. In that case they should use
the same update strategy as for the normal consensus. They should not
download more than one consensus flavor.
When a client does not have a live consensus, it will generally use the
most recent consensus it has if that consensus is "reasonably live". A
"reasonably live" consensus is one that expired less than 24 hours ago.
5.2. Downloading server descriptors or microdescriptors
Clients try to have the best descriptor for each router. A descriptor is
"best" if:
* It is listed in the consensus 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 section 5.4.1 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.
When downloading multiple server 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 the client MUST discard any descriptors that
it did not request.
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.
Clients retain the most recent descriptor they have downloaded for each
router so long as it is listed in the consensus. If it is not listed,
they keep it so long as it is not too old (currently, ROUTER_MAX_AGE=48
hours) and no better router descriptor has been downloaded for the same
relay. Caches retain descriptors until they are at least
OLD_ROUTER_DESC_MAX_AGE=5 days old.
Clients which chose to download the microdescriptor consensus instead
of the general consensus must download the referenced microdescriptors
instead of server descriptors. Clients fetch and cache
microdescriptors preemptively from dir mirrors when starting up, like
they currently fetch descriptors. After bootstrapping, clients only
need to fetch the microdescriptors that have changed.
When a client gets a new microdescriptor consensus, it looks to see if
there are any microdescriptors it needs to learn, and launches a request
for them.
Clients maintain a cache of microdescriptors along with metadata like
when it was last referenced by a consensus, and which identity key
it corresponds to. They keep a microdescriptor until it hasn't been
mentioned in any consensus for a week. Future clients might cache them
for longer or shorter times.
5.3. Downloading extra-info documents
Any client that uses extra-info documents should implement this
section.
Note that generally, clients don't need extra-info documents.
Periodically, the Tor instance checks whether it is missing any extra-info
documents: in other words, if it has any server descriptors with an
extra-info-digest field that does not match any of the extra-info
documents currently held. If so, it downloads whatever extra-info
documents are missing. Clients try to download from caches.
We follow the same splitting and back-off rules as in section 5.2.
5.4. Using directory information
[XXX This subsection really belongs in path-spec.txt, not here. -KL]
Everyone besides directory authorities uses the approaches in this section
to decide which relays to use and what their keys are likely to be.
(Directory authorities just believe their own opinions, as in section 3.4.2
above.)
5.4.1. Choosing routers for circuits.
Circuits SHOULD NOT be built until the client has enough directory
information: a live consensus network status [XXXX fallback?] and
descriptors for at least 1/4 of the relays believed to be running.
A relay is "listed" if it is included by the consensus network-status
document. Clients SHOULD NOT use unlisted relays.
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.
See the "path-spec.txt" document for more details.
5.4.2. Managing naming
(This section is removed; authorities no longer assign the 'Named' flag.)
5.4.3. Software versions
An implementation of Tor SHOULD warn when it has fetched a consensus
network-status, and it is running a software version not listed.
5.4.4. Warning about a router's status.
(This section is removed; authorities no longer assign the 'Named' flag.)
5.5. Retrying failed downloads
This section applies to caches as well as to clients.
When a client fails to download a resource (a consensus, a router
descriptor, a microdescriptor, etc) it waits for a certain amount of
time before retrying the download. To determine the amount of time
to wait, clients use a randomized exponential backoff algorithm.
(Specifically, they use a variation of the "decorrelated jitter"
algorithm from
https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/architecture/exponential-backoff-and-jitter/ .)
The specific formula used to compute the 'i+1'th delay is:
Delay_{i+1} = MIN(cap, random_between(lower_bound, upper_bound)))
where upper_bound = MAX(lower_bound+1, Delay_i * 3)
lower_bound = MAX(1, base_delay).
The value of 'cap' is set to INT_MAX; the value of 'base_delay'
depends on what is being downloaded, whether the client is fully
bootstrapped, how the client is configured, and where it is
downloading from. Current base_delay values are:
Consensus objects, as a non-bridge cache:
0 (TestingServerConsensusDownloadInitialDelay)
Consensus objects, as a client or bridge that has bootstrapped:
0 (TestingClientConsensusDownloadInitialDelay)
Consensus objects, as a client or bridge that is bootstrapping,
when connecting to an authority because no "fallback" caches are
known:
0 (ClientBootstrapConsensusAuthorityOnlyDownloadInitialDelay)
Consensus objects, as a client or bridge that is bootstrapping,
when "fallback" caches are known but connecting to an authority
anyway:
6 (ClientBootstrapConsensusAuthorityDownloadInitialDelay)
Consensus objects, as a client or bridge that is bootstrapping,
when downloading from a "fallback" cache.
0 (ClientBootstrapConsensusFallbackDownloadInitialDelay)
Bridge descriptors, as a bridge-using client when at least one bridge
is usable:
10800 (TestingBridgeDownloadInitialDelay)
Bridge descriptors, otherwise:
0 (TestingBridgeBootstrapDownloadInitialDelay)
Other objects, as cache or authority:
0 (TestingServerDownloadInitialDelay)
Other objects, as client:
0 (TestingClientDownloadInitialDelay)
6. Standards compliance
All clients and servers MUST support HTTP 1.0. Clients and servers MAY
support later versions of HTTP as well.
6.1. HTTP headers
Servers SHOULD set Content-Encoding to the algorithm used to compress the
document(s) being served. Recognized algorithms are:
- "identity" -- RFC2616 section 3.5
- "deflate" -- RFC2616 section 3.5
- "gzip" -- RFC2616 section 3.5
- "x-zstd" -- The zstandard compression algorithm (www.zstd.net)
- "x-tor-lzma" -- The lzma compression algorithm, with a "preset"
value no higher than 6.
Clients SHOULD use Accept-Encoding on most directory requests to indicate
which of the above compression algorithms they support. If they omit it
(as Tor clients did before 0.3.1.1-alpha), then the server should serve
only "deflate" or "identity" encoded documents, based on the presence or
absence of the ".z" suffix on the requested URL.
Note that for anonymous directory requests (that is, requests made over
multi-hop circuits, like those for onion service lookups) implementations
SHOULD NOT advertise any Accept-Encoding values other than deflate. To do
so would be to create a fingerprinting opportunity.
When receiving multiple documents, clients MUST accept compressed
concatenated documents and concatenated compressed documents as
equivalent.
Servers MAY set the Content-Length: header. When they do, it should
match the number of compressed bytes that they are sending.
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 SHOULD disable caching of multiple network statuses or multiple
server descriptors. Servers MAY enable caching of single descriptors,
single network statuses, the list of all server descriptors, a v1
directory, or a v1 running routers document. XXX mention times.
6.2. HTTP status codes
Tor delivers the following status codes. Some were chosen without much
thought; other code SHOULD NOT rely on specific status codes yet.
200 -- the operation completed successfully
-- the user requested statuses or serverdescs, and none of the ones we
requested were found (0.2.0.4-alpha and earlier).
304 -- the client specified an if-modified-since time, and none of the
requested resources have changed since that time.
400 -- the request is malformed, or
-- the URL is for a malformed variation of one of the URLs we support,
or
-- the client tried to post to a non-authority, or
-- the authority rejected a malformed posted document, or
404 -- the requested document was not found.
-- the user requested statuses or serverdescs, and none of the ones
requested were found (0.2.0.5-alpha and later).
503 -- we are declining the request in order to save bandwidth
-- user requested some items that we ordinarily generate or store,
but we do not have any available.
A. Consensus-negotiation timeline.
Period begins: this is the Published time.
Everybody sends votes
Reconciliation: everybody tries to fetch missing votes.
consensus may exist at this point.
End of voting period:
everyone swaps signatures.
Now it's okay for caches to download
Now it's okay for clients to download.
Valid-after/valid-until switchover
B. General-use HTTP URLs
"Fingerprints" in these URLs are base16-encoded SHA1 hashes.
The most recent v3 consensus should be available at:
http://<hostname>/tor/status-vote/current/consensus.z
Similarly, the v3 microdescriptor consensus should be available at:
http://<hostname>/tor/status-vote/current/consensus-microdesc.z
Starting with Tor version 0.2.1.1-alpha is also available at:
http://<hostname>/tor/status-vote/current/consensus/<F1>+<F2>+<F3>.z
(NOTE: Due to squid proxy url limitations at most 96 fingerprints can be
retrieved in a single request.)
Where F1, F2, etc. are authority identity fingerprints the client trusts.
Servers will only return a consensus if more than half of the requested
authorities have signed the document, otherwise a 404 error will be sent
back. The fingerprints can be shortened to a length of any multiple of
two, using only the leftmost part of the encoded fingerprint. Tor uses
3 bytes (6 hex characters) of the fingerprint.
Clients SHOULD sort the fingerprints in ascending order. Server MUST
accept any order.
Clients SHOULD use this format when requesting consensus documents from
directory authority servers and from caches running a version of Tor
that is known to support this URL format.
A concatenated set of all the current key certificates should be available
at:
http://<hostname>/tor/keys/all.z
The key certificate for this server (if it is an authority) should be
available at:
http://<hostname>/tor/keys/authority.z
The key certificate for an authority whose authority identity fingerprint
is <F> should be available at:
http://<hostname>/tor/keys/fp/<F>.z
The key certificate whose signing key fingerprint is <F> should be
available at:
http://<hostname>/tor/keys/sk/<F>.z
The key certificate whose identity key fingerprint is <F> and whose signing
key fingerprint is <S> should be available at:
http://<hostname>/tor/keys/fp-sk/<F>-<S>.z
(As usual, clients may request multiple certificates using:
http://<hostname>/tor/keys/fp-sk/<F1>-<S1>+<F2>-<S2>.z )
[The above fp-sk format was not supported before Tor 0.2.1.9-alpha.]
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: Due to squid proxy url limitations at most 96 fingerprints can be
retrieved in a single request.
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
Extra-info documents are available at the URLS
http://<hostname>/tor/extra/d/...
http://<hostname>/tor/extra/fp/...
http://<hostname>/tor/extra/all[.z]
http://<hostname>/tor/extra/authority[.z]
(As for /tor/server/ URLs: supports fetching extra-info
documents by their digest, by the fingerprint of their servers,
or all at once. When serving by fingerprint, we serve the
extra-info that corresponds to the descriptor we would serve by
that fingerprint. Only directory authorities of version
0.2.0.1-alpha or later are guaranteed to support the first
three classes of URLs. Caches may support them, and MUST
support them if they have advertised "caches-extra-info".)
For debugging, directories SHOULD expose non-compressed objects at
URLs like the above, but without the final ".z". If the client uses
Accept-Encodings header, it should override the presence or absence
of the ".z" (see section 6.1).
Clients SHOULD use upper case letters (A-F) when base16-encoding
fingerprints. Servers MUST accept both upper and lower case fingerprints
in requests.
C. Converting a curve25519 public key to an ed25519 public key
Given an X25519 key, that is, an affine point (u,v) on the
Montgomery curve defined by
bv^2 = u(u^2 + au +1)
where
a = 486662
b = 1
and comprised of the compressed form (i.e. consisting of only the
u-coordinate), we can retrieve the y-coordinate of the affine point
(x,y) on the twisted Edwards form of the curve defined by
-x^2 + y^2 = 1 + d x^2 y^2
where
d = - 121665/121666
by computing
y = (u-1)/(u+1).
and then we can apply the usual curve25519 twisted Edwards point
decompression algorithm to find _an_ x-coordinate of an affine
twisted Edwards point to check signatures with. Signing keys for
ed25519 are compressed curve points in twisted Edwards form (so a
y-coordinate and the sign of the x-coordinate), and X25519 keys are
compressed curve points in Montgomery form (i.e. a u-coordinate).
However, note that compressed point in Montgomery form neglects to
encode what the sign of the corresponding twisted Edwards
x-coordinate would be. Thus, we need the sign of the x-coordinate
to do this operation; otherwise, we'll have two possible
x-coordinates that might have correspond to the ed25519 public key.
To get the sign, the easiest way is to take the corresponding
private key, feed it to the ed25519 public key generation
algorithm, and see what the sign is.
[Recomputing the sign bit from the private key every time sounds
rather strange and inefficient to me… —isis]
Note that in addition to its coordinates, an expanded Ed25519 private key
also has a 32-byte random value, "prefix", used to compute internal `r`
values in the signature. For security, this prefix value should be
derived deterministically from the curve25519 key. The Tor
implementation derives it as SHA512(private_key | STR)[0..32], where
STR is the nul-terminated string:
"Derive high part of ed25519 key from curve25519 key\0"
On the client side, where there is no access to the curve25519 private
keys, one may use the curve25519 public key's Montgomery u-coordinate to
recover the Montgomery v-coordinate by computing the right-hand side of
the Montgomery curve equation:
bv^2 = u(u^2 + au +1)
where
a = 486662
b = 1
Then, knowing the intended sign of the Edwards x-coordinate, one
may recover said x-coordinate by computing:
x = (u/v) * sqrt(-a - 2)
D. Inferring missing proto lines.
The directory authorities no longer allow versions of Tor before
0.2.4.18-rc. But right now, there is no version of Tor in the consensus
before 0.2.4.19. Therefore, we should disallow versions of Tor earlier
than 0.2.4.19, so that we can have the protocol list for all current Tor
versions include:
Cons=1-2 Desc=1-2 DirCache=1 HSDir=1 HSIntro=3 HSRend=1-2 Link=1-4
LinkAuth=1 Microdesc=1-2 Relay=1-2
For Desc, Microdesc and Cons, Tor versions before 0.2.7.stable should be
taken to only support version 1.
E. Limited ed diff format
We support the following format for consensus diffs. It's a
subset of the ed diff format, but clients MUST NOT accept other
ed commands.
We support the following ed commands, each on a line by itself:
- "<n1>d" Delete line n1
- "<n1>,<n2>d" Delete lines n1 through n2, inclusive
- "<n1>,$d" Delete line n1 through the end of the file, inclusive.
- "<n1>c" Replace line n1 with the following block
- "<n1>,<n2>c" Replace lines n1 through n2, inclusive, with the
following block.
- "<n1>a" Append the following block after line n1.
Note that line numbers always apply to the file after all previous
commands have already been applied. Note also that line numbers
are 1-indexed.
The commands MUST apply to the file from back to front, such that
lines are only ever referred to by their position in the original
file.
If there are any directory signatures on the original document, the
first command MUST be a "<n1>,$d" form to remove all of the directory
signatures. Using this format ensures that the client will
successfully apply the diff even if they have an unusual encoding for
the signatures.
The replace and append command take blocks. These blocks are simply
appended to the diff after the line with the command. A line with
just a period (".") ends the block (and is not part of the lines
to add). Note that it is impossible to insert a line with just
a single dot.
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