Silk Road forums
Discussion => Silk Road discussion => Topic started by: kmfkewm on February 11, 2012, 11:07 am
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It will take care of the mysterious SR down time:
Adjust the number of introduction points that a hidden service
will try to maintain based on how long its introduction points
remain in use and how many introductions they handle. Fixes
part of bug 3825.
and will also reduce the impact of a pretty substantial anonymity vulnerability that is currently effecting SR clients....clients would be suggested to switch to this version of Tor to fully protect themselves from this as well.
it may seem better to use only stable versions but I think going to this alpha version is probably the best choice. Or you could wait for these changes to work their way into stable. It will immediately significantly reduce down time if SR server switches to this version though, and it will also offer some protection to SR clients.
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By mysterious down time, do you mean simply how you have to refresh your identity sometimes to continue using the site/forum?
Because other than that, I haven't noticed any downtime recently, and I tend to check it pretty frequently.
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Hadn't the timeout to SR caused by nodes in circuit losing internet connectivity? New identity builds new circuit, so that's why it helps.
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The timeout to SR is because its introduction nodes are being DDOSED by clients. Clients who have already established circuits to SR will be able to keep surfing it, but clients who need to connect to introduction nodes are incapable of establishing new circuits. This is why it appears to be down for some people during the same time period that it is obviously up for others. Changing to a new circuit will not help at all. tor-2.3.11-alpha has hidden services dynamically modify the number of introduction nodes they use based on the number of clients that connect to them.
It is also bad for client anonymity when the introduction nodes go down, next time you can't get SR to load check your Tor circuits. If it is down for the reason I just mentioned and not actual server down time, you will notice that your client is building a fucking lot of circuits that all fail one after the other. It may build a hundred or more failed circuits in just a few minutes. This is because when introduction points are down Tor essentially treats them as a failed circuit and tries again and again to connect to them but they are still down. tor-2.3.11-alpha stops attempting to connect to introduction nodes after far fewer circuits. BTW this means that during periods when introduction nodes are down if you keep trying to connect to SR you are quickly going to be traceable to your entry guards, your client goes into hyper mode and builds way more circuits than it should be building. In essence your anonymity will be decreased to barely more than that of a hidden services.
SR loads fine for me most of the time, but during certain times of day (obviously when a lot of people are trying to connect to it) it is frequently down. If you live in an uncommon time zone and are surfing SR while the majority of users are sleeping or working, you probably will not notice this as much.
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Ok, thanks! This is some good in-depth info. Although the communication is not decrypted, there is not much .onion sites who will cause Tor client such behavior, right?
Any idea when this will be implemented in stable Tor release?
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Ok, thanks! This is some good in-depth info. Although the communication is not decrypted, there is not much .onion sites who will cause Tor client such behavior, right?
Any idea when this will be implemented in stable Tor release?
I don't know when it will be implemented in stable. Only hidden services with a lot of people using them at the same time will have this naturally arise with no malicious party, although it is possible for an attacker to take steps to trigger the bug themselves.