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rend-spec-v3.txt
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Tor Rendezvous Specification - Version 3
This document specifies how the hidden service version 3 protocol works. This
text used to be proposal 224-rend-spec-ng.txt.
Table of contents:
0. Hidden services: overview and preliminaries.
0.1. Improvements over previous versions.
0.2. Notation and vocabulary
0.3. Cryptographic building blocks
0.4. Protocol building blocks [BUILDING-BLOCKS]
0.5. Assigned relay cell types
0.6. Acknowledgments
1. Protocol overview
1.1. View from 10,000 feet
1.2. In more detail: naming hidden services [NAMING]
1.3. In more detail: Access control [IMD:AC]
1.4. In more detail: Distributing hidden service descriptors. [IMD:DIST]
1.5. In more detail: Scaling to multiple hosts
1.6. In more detail: Backward compatibility with older hidden service
1.7. In more detail: Keeping crypto keys offline
1.8. In more detail: Encryption Keys And Replay Resistance
1.9. In more detail: A menagerie of keys
1.9.1. In even more detail: Client authorization [CLIENT-AUTH]
2. Generating and publishing hidden service descriptors [HSDIR]
2.1. Deriving blinded keys and subcredentials [SUBCRED]
2.2. Locating, uploading, and downloading hidden service descriptors
2.2.1. Dividing time into periods [TIME-PERIODS]
2.2.2. When to publish a hidden service descriptor [WHEN-HSDESC]
2.2.3. Where to publish a hidden service descriptor [WHERE-HSDESC]
2.2.4. Using time periods and SRVs to fetch/upload HS descriptors
2.2.5. Expiring hidden service descriptors [EXPIRE-DESC]
2.2.6. URLs for anonymous uploading and downloading
2.3. Publishing shared random values [PUB-SHAREDRANDOM]
2.3.1. Client behavior in the absence of shared random values
2.3.2. Hidden services and changing shared random values
2.4. Hidden service descriptors: outer wrapper [DESC-OUTER]
2.5. Hidden service descriptors: encryption format [HS-DESC-ENC]
2.5.1. First layer of encryption [HS-DESC-FIRST-LAYER]
2.5.1.1. First layer encryption logic
2.5.1.2. First layer plaintext format
2.5.1.3. Client behavior
2.5.1.4. Obfuscating the number of authorized clients
2.5.2. Second layer of encryption [HS-DESC-SECOND-LAYER]
2.5.2.1. Second layer encryption keys
2.5.2.2. Second layer plaintext format
2.5.3. Deriving hidden service descriptor encryption keys [HS-DESC-ENCRYPTION-KEYS]
3. The introduction protocol [INTRO-PROTOCOL]
3.1. Registering an introduction point [REG_INTRO_POINT]
3.1.1. Extensible ESTABLISH_INTRO protocol. [EST_INTRO]
3.1.1.1. Denial-of-Server Defense Extension. [EST_INTRO_DOS_EXT]
3.1.2. Registering an introduction point on a legacy Tor node [LEGACY_EST_INTRO]
3.1.3. Acknowledging establishment of introduction point [INTRO_ESTABLISHED]
3.2. Sending an INTRODUCE1 cell to the introduction point. [SEND_INTRO1]
3.2.1. INTRODUCE1 cell format [FMT_INTRO1]
3.2.2. INTRODUCE_ACK cell format. [INTRO_ACK]
3.3. Processing an INTRODUCE2 cell at the hidden service. [PROCESS_INTRO2]
3.3.1. Introduction handshake encryption requirements [INTRO-HANDSHAKE-REQS]
3.3.2. Example encryption handshake: ntor with extra data [NTOR-WITH-EXTRA-DATA]
3.4. Authentication during the introduction phase. [INTRO-AUTH]
3.4.1. Ed25519-based authentication.
4. The rendezvous protocol
4.1. Establishing a rendezvous point [EST_REND_POINT]
4.2. Joining to a rendezvous point [JOIN_REND]
4.2.1. Key expansion
4.3. Using legacy hosts as rendezvous points
5. Encrypting data between client and host
6. Encoding onion addresses [ONIONADDRESS]
7. Open Questions:
-1. Draft notes
This document describes a proposed design and specification for
hidden services in Tor version 0.2.5.x or later. It's a replacement
for the current rend-spec.txt, rewritten for clarity and for improved
design.
Look for the string "TODO" below: it describes gaps or uncertainties
in the design.
Change history:
2013-11-29: Proposal first numbered. Some TODO and XXX items remain.
2014-01-04: Clarify some unclear sections.
2014-01-21: Fix a typo.
2014-02-20: Move more things to the revised certificate format in the
new updated proposal 220.
2015-05-26: Fix two typos.
0. Hidden services: overview and preliminaries.
Hidden services aim to provide responder anonymity for bidirectional
stream-based communication on the Tor network. Unlike regular Tor
connections, where the connection initiator receives anonymity but
the responder does not, hidden services attempt to provide
bidirectional anonymity.
Participants:
Operator -- A person running a hidden service
Host, "Server" -- The Tor software run by the operator to provide
a hidden service.
User -- A person contacting a hidden service.
Client -- The Tor software running on the User's computer
Hidden Service Directory (HSDir) -- A Tor node that hosts signed
statements from hidden service hosts so that users can make
contact with them.
Introduction Point -- A Tor node that accepts connection requests
for hidden services and anonymously relays those requests to the
hidden service.
Rendezvous Point -- A Tor node to which clients and servers
connect and which relays traffic between them.
0.1. Improvements over previous versions.
Here is a list of improvements of this proposal over the legacy hidden
services:
a) Better crypto (replaced SHA1/DH/RSA1024 with SHA3/ed25519/curve25519)
b) Improved directory protocol leaking less to directory servers.
c) Improved directory protocol with smaller surface for targeted attacks.
d) Better onion address security against impersonation.
e) More extensible introduction/rendezvous protocol.
f) Offline keys for onion services
g) Advanced client authorization
0.2. Notation and vocabulary
Unless specified otherwise, all multi-octet integers are big-endian.
We write sequences of bytes in two ways:
1. A sequence of two-digit hexadecimal values in square brackets,
as in [AB AD 1D EA].
2. A string of characters enclosed in quotes, as in "Hello". The
characters in these strings are encoded in their ascii
representations; strings are NOT nul-terminated unless
explicitly described as NUL terminated.
We use the words "byte" and "octet" interchangeably.
We use the vertical bar | to denote concatenation.
We use INT_N(val) to denote the network (big-endian) encoding of the
unsigned integer "val" in N bytes. For example, INT_4(1337) is [00 00
05 39]. Values are truncated like so: val % (2 ^ (N * 8)). For example,
INT_4(42) is 42 % 4294967296 (32 bit).
0.3. Cryptographic building blocks
This specification uses the following cryptographic building blocks:
* A pseudorandom number generator backed by a strong entropy source.
The output of the PRNG should always be hashed before being posted on
the network to avoid leaking raw PRNG bytes to the network
(see [PRNG-REFS]).
* A stream cipher STREAM(iv, k) where iv is a nonce of length
S_IV_LEN bytes and k is a key of length S_KEY_LEN bytes.
* A public key signature system SIGN_KEYGEN()->seckey, pubkey;
SIGN_SIGN(seckey,msg)->sig; and SIGN_CHECK(pubkey, sig, msg) ->
{ "OK", "BAD" }; where secret keys are of length SIGN_SECKEY_LEN
bytes, public keys are of length SIGN_PUBKEY_LEN bytes, and
signatures are of length SIGN_SIG_LEN bytes.
This signature system must also support key blinding operations
as discussed in appendix [KEYBLIND] and in section [SUBCRED]:
SIGN_BLIND_SECKEY(seckey, blind)->seckey2 and
SIGN_BLIND_PUBKEY(pubkey, blind)->pubkey2 .
* A public key agreement system "PK", providing
PK_KEYGEN()->seckey, pubkey; PK_VALID(pubkey) -> {"OK", "BAD"};
and PK_HANDSHAKE(seckey, pubkey)->output; where secret keys are
of length PK_SECKEY_LEN bytes, public keys are of length
PK_PUBKEY_LEN bytes, and the handshake produces outputs of
length PK_OUTPUT_LEN bytes.
* A cryptographic hash function H(d), which should be preimage and
collision resistant. It produces hashes of length HASH_LEN
bytes.
* A cryptographic message authentication code MAC(key,msg) that
produces outputs of length MAC_LEN bytes.
* A key derivation function KDF(message, n) that outputs n bytes.
As a first pass, I suggest:
* Instantiate STREAM with AES256-CTR.
* Instantiate SIGN with Ed25519 and the blinding protocol in
[KEYBLIND].
* Instantiate PK with Curve25519.
* Instantiate H with SHA3-256.
* Instantiate KDF with SHAKE-256.
* Instantiate MAC(key=k, message=m) with H(k_len | k | m),
where k_len is htonll(len(k)).
For legacy purposes, we specify compatibility with older versions of
the Tor introduction point and rendezvous point protocols. These used
RSA1024, DH1024, AES128, and SHA1, as discussed in
rend-spec.txt.
As in [proposal 220], all signatures are generated not over strings
themselves, but over those strings prefixed with a distinguishing
value.
0.4. Protocol building blocks [BUILDING-BLOCKS]
In sections below, we need to transmit the locations and identities
of Tor nodes. We do so in the link identification format used by
EXTEND2 cells in the Tor protocol.
NSPEC (Number of link specifiers) [1 byte]
NSPEC times:
LSTYPE (Link specifier type) [1 byte]
LSLEN (Link specifier length) [1 byte]
LSPEC (Link specifier) [LSLEN bytes]
Link specifier types are as described in tor-spec.txt. Every set of
link specifiers MUST include at minimum specifiers of type [00]
(TLS-over-TCP, IPv4), [02] (legacy node identity) and [03] (ed25519
identity key).
As of 0.4.1.1-alpha, Tor includes both IPv4 and IPv6 link specifiers
in v3 onion service protocol link specifier lists. All available
addresses SHOULD be included as link specifiers, regardless of the
address that Tor actually used to connect/extend to the remote relay.
We also incorporate Tor's circuit extension handshakes, as used in
the CREATE2 and CREATED2 cells described in tor-spec.txt. In these
handshakes, a client who knows a public key for a server sends a
message and receives a message from that server. Once the exchange is
done, the two parties have a shared set of forward-secure key
material, and the client knows that nobody else shares that key
material unless they control the secret key corresponding to the
server's public key.
0.5. Assigned relay cell types
These relay cell types are reserved for use in the hidden service
protocol.
32 -- RELAY_COMMAND_ESTABLISH_INTRO
Sent from hidden service host to introduction point;
establishes introduction point. Discussed in
[REG_INTRO_POINT].
33 -- RELAY_COMMAND_ESTABLISH_RENDEZVOUS
Sent from client to rendezvous point; creates rendezvous
point. Discussed in [EST_REND_POINT].
34 -- RELAY_COMMAND_INTRODUCE1
Sent from client to introduction point; requests
introduction. Discussed in [SEND_INTRO1]
35 -- RELAY_COMMAND_INTRODUCE2
Sent from introduction point to hidden service host; requests
introduction. Same format as INTRODUCE1. Discussed in
[FMT_INTRO1] and [PROCESS_INTRO2]
36 -- RELAY_COMMAND_RENDEZVOUS1
Sent from hidden service host to rendezvous point;
attempts to join host's circuit to
client's circuit. Discussed in [JOIN_REND]
37 -- RELAY_COMMAND_RENDEZVOUS2
Sent from rendezvous point to client;
reports join of host's circuit to
client's circuit. Discussed in [JOIN_REND]
38 -- RELAY_COMMAND_INTRO_ESTABLISHED
Sent from introduction point to hidden service host;
reports status of attempt to establish introduction
point. Discussed in [INTRO_ESTABLISHED]
39 -- RELAY_COMMAND_RENDEZVOUS_ESTABLISHED
Sent from rendezvous point to client; acknowledges
receipt of ESTABLISH_RENDEZVOUS cell. Discussed in
[EST_REND_POINT]
40 -- RELAY_COMMAND_INTRODUCE_ACK
Sent from introduction point to client; acknowledges
receipt of INTRODUCE1 cell and reports success/failure.
Discussed in [INTRO_ACK]
0.6. Acknowledgments
This design includes ideas from many people, including
Christopher Baines,
Daniel J. Bernstein,
Matthew Finkel,
Ian Goldberg,
George Kadianakis,
Aniket Kate,
Tanja Lange,
Robert Ransom,
Roger Dingledine,
Aaron Johnson,
Tim Wilson-Brown ("teor"),
special (John Brooks),
s7r
It's based on Tor's original hidden service design by Roger
Dingledine, Nick Mathewson, and Paul Syverson, and on improvements to
that design over the years by people including
Tobias Kamm,
Thomas Lauterbach,
Karsten Loesing,
Alessandro Preite Martinez,
Robert Ransom,
Ferdinand Rieger,
Christoph Weingarten,
Christian Wilms,
We wouldn't be able to do any of this work without good attack
designs from researchers including
Alex Biryukov,
Lasse Øverlier,
Ivan Pustogarov,
Paul Syverson,
Ralf-Philipp Weinmann,
See [ATTACK-REFS] for their papers.
Several of these ideas have come from conversations with
Christian Grothoff,
Brian Warner,
Zooko Wilcox-O'Hearn,
And if this document makes any sense at all, it's thanks to
editing help from
Matthew Finkel,
George Kadianakis,
Peter Palfrader,
Tim Wilson-Brown ("teor"),
[XXX Acknowledge the huge bunch of people working on 8106.]
[XXX Acknowledge the huge bunch of people working on 8244.]
Please forgive me if I've missed you; please forgive me if I've
misunderstood your best ideas here too.
1. Protocol overview
In this section, we outline the hidden service protocol. This section
omits some details in the name of simplicity; those are given more
fully below, when we specify the protocol in more detail.
1.1. View from 10,000 feet
A hidden service host prepares to offer a hidden service by choosing
several Tor nodes to serve as its introduction points. It builds
circuits to those nodes, and tells them to forward introduction
requests to it using those circuits.
Once introduction points have been picked, the host builds a set of
documents called "hidden service descriptors" (or just "descriptors"
for short) and uploads them to a set of HSDir nodes. These documents
list the hidden service's current introduction points and describe
how to make contact with the hidden service.
When a client wants to connect to a hidden service, it first chooses
a Tor node at random to be its "rendezvous point" and builds a
circuit to that rendezvous point. If the client does not have an
up-to-date descriptor for the service, it contacts an appropriate
HSDir and requests such a descriptor.
The client then builds an anonymous circuit to one of the hidden
service's introduction points listed in its descriptor, and gives the
introduction point an introduction request to pass to the hidden
service. This introduction request includes the target rendezvous
point and the first part of a cryptographic handshake.
Upon receiving the introduction request, the hidden service host
makes an anonymous circuit to the rendezvous point and completes the
cryptographic handshake. The rendezvous point connects the two
circuits, and the cryptographic handshake gives the two parties a
shared key and proves to the client that it is indeed talking to the
hidden service.
Once the two circuits are joined, the client can send Tor RELAY cells
to the server. RELAY_BEGIN cells open streams to an external process
or processes configured by the server; RELAY_DATA cells are used to
communicate data on those streams, and so forth.
1.2. In more detail: naming hidden services [NAMING]
A hidden service's name is its long term master identity key. This is
encoded as a hostname by encoding the entire key in Base 32, including a
version byte and a checksum, and then appending the string ".onion" at the
end. The result is a 56-character domain name.
(This is a change from older versions of the hidden service protocol,
where we used an 80-bit truncated SHA1 hash of a 1024 bit RSA key.)
The names in this format are distinct from earlier names because of
their length. An older name might look like:
unlikelynamefora.onion
yyhws9optuwiwsns.onion
And a new name following this specification might look like:
l5satjgud6gucryazcyvyvhuxhr74u6ygigiuyixe3a6ysis67ororad.onion
Please see section [ONIONADDRESS] for the encoding specification.
1.3. In more detail: Access control [IMD:AC]
Access control for a hidden service is imposed at multiple points through
the process above. Furthermore, there is also the option to impose
additional client authorization access control using pre-shared secrets
exchanged out-of-band between the hidden service and its clients.
The first stage of access control happens when downloading HS descriptors.
Specifically, in order to download a descriptor, clients must know which
blinded signing key was used to sign it. (See the next section for more info
on key blinding.)
To learn the introduction points, clients must decrypt the body of the
hidden service descriptor. To do so, clients must know the _unblinded_
public key of the service, which makes the descriptor unusable by entities
without that knowledge (e.g. HSDirs that don't know the onion address).
Also, if optional client authorization is enabled, hidden service
descriptors are superencrypted using each authorized user's identity x25519
key, to further ensure that unauthorized entities cannot decrypt it.
In order to make the introduction point send a rendezvous request to the
service, the client needs to use the per-introduction-point authentication
key found in the hidden service descriptor.
The final level of access control happens at the server itself, which may
decide to respond or not respond to the client's request depending on the
contents of the request. The protocol is extensible at this point: at a
minimum, the server requires that the client demonstrate knowledge of the
contents of the encrypted portion of the hidden service descriptor. If
optional client authorization is enabled, the service may additionally
require the client to prove knowledge of a pre-shared private key.
1.4. In more detail: Distributing hidden service descriptors. [IMD:DIST]
Periodically, hidden service descriptors become stored at different
locations to prevent a single directory or small set of directories
from becoming a good DoS target for removing a hidden service.
For each period, the Tor directory authorities agree upon a
collaboratively generated random value. (See section 2.3 for a
description of how to incorporate this value into the voting
practice; generating the value is described in other proposals,
including [SHAREDRANDOM-REFS].) That value, combined with hidden service
directories' public identity keys, determines each HSDir's position
in the hash ring for descriptors made in that period.
Each hidden service's descriptors are placed into the ring in
positions based on the key that was used to sign them. Note that
hidden service descriptors are not signed with the services' public
keys directly. Instead, we use a key-blinding system [KEYBLIND] to
create a new key-of-the-day for each hidden service. Any client that
knows the hidden service's credential can derive these blinded
signing keys for a given period. It should be impossible to derive
the blinded signing key lacking that credential.
The body of each descriptor is also encrypted with a key derived from
the credential.
To avoid a "thundering herd" problem where every service generates
and uploads a new descriptor at the start of each period, each
descriptor comes online at a time during the period that depends on
its blinded signing key. The keys for the last period remain valid
until the new keys come online.
1.5. In more detail: Scaling to multiple hosts
This design is compatible with our current approaches for scaling hidden
services. Specifically, hidden service operators can use onionbalance to
achieve high availability between multiple nodes on the HSDir
layer. Furthermore, operators can use proposal 255 to load balance their
hidden services on the introduction layer. See [SCALING-REFS] for further
discussions on this topic and alternative designs.
1.6. In more detail: Backward compatibility with older hidden service
protocols
This design is incompatible with the clients, server, and hsdir node
protocols from older versions of the hidden service protocol as
described in rend-spec.txt. On the other hand, it is designed to
enable the use of older Tor nodes as rendezvous points and
introduction points.
1.7. In more detail: Keeping crypto keys offline
In this design, a hidden service's secret identity key may be
stored offline. It's used only to generate blinded signing keys,
which are used to sign descriptor signing keys.
In order to operate a hidden service, the operator can generate in
advance a number of blinded signing keys and descriptor signing
keys (and their credentials; see [DESC-OUTER] and [HS-DESC-ENC]
below), and their corresponding descriptor encryption keys, and
export those to the hidden service hosts.
As a result, in the scenario where the Hidden Service gets
compromised, the adversary can only impersonate it for a limited
period of time (depending on how many signing keys were generated
in advance).
It's important to not send the private part of the blinded signing
key to the Hidden Service since an attacker can derive from it the
secret master identity key. The secret blinded signing key should
only be used to create credentials for the descriptor signing keys.
(NOTE: although the protocol allows them, offline keys are not
implemented as of 0.3.2.1-alpha.)
1.8. In more detail: Encryption Keys And Replay Resistance
To avoid replays of an introduction request by an introduction point,
a hidden service host must never accept the same request
twice. Earlier versions of the hidden service design used an
authenticated timestamp here, but including a view of the current
time can create a problematic fingerprint. (See proposal 222 for more
discussion.)
1.9. In more detail: A menagerie of keys
[In the text below, an "encryption keypair" is roughly "a keypair you
can do Diffie-Hellman with" and a "signing keypair" is roughly "a
keypair you can do ECDSA with."]
Public/private keypairs defined in this document:
Master (hidden service) identity key -- A master signing keypair
used as the identity for a hidden service. This key is long
term and not used on its own to sign anything; it is only used
to generate blinded signing keys as described in [KEYBLIND]
and [SUBCRED]. The public key is encoded in the ".onion"
address according to [NAMING].
Blinded signing key -- A keypair derived from the identity key,
used to sign descriptor signing keys. It changes periodically for
each service. Clients who know a 'credential' consisting of the
service's public identity key and an optional secret can derive
the public blinded identity key for a service. This key is used
as an index in the DHT-like structure of the directory system
(see [SUBCRED]).
Descriptor signing key -- A key used to sign hidden service
descriptors. This is signed by blinded signing keys. Unlike
blinded signing keys and master identity keys, the secret part
of this key must be stored online by hidden service hosts. The
public part of this key is included in the unencrypted section
of HS descriptors (see [DESC-OUTER]).
Introduction point authentication key -- A short-term signing
keypair used to identify a hidden service to a given
introduction point. A fresh keypair is made for each
introduction point; these are used to sign the request that a
hidden service host makes when establishing an introduction
point, so that clients who know the public component of this key
can get their introduction requests sent to the right
service. No keypair is ever used with more than one introduction
point. (previously called a "service key" in rend-spec.txt)
Introduction point encryption key -- A short-term encryption
keypair used when establishing connections via an introduction
point. Plays a role analogous to Tor nodes' onion keys. A fresh
keypair is made for each introduction point.
Symmetric keys defined in this document:
Descriptor encryption keys -- A symmetric encryption key used to
encrypt the body of hidden service descriptors. Derived from the
current period and the hidden service credential.
Public/private keypairs defined elsewhere:
Onion key -- Short-term encryption keypair
(Node) identity key
Symmetric key-like things defined elsewhere:
KH from circuit handshake -- An unpredictable value derived as
part of the Tor circuit extension handshake, used to tie a request
to a particular circuit.
1.9.1. In even more detail: Client authorization keys [CLIENT-AUTH]
When client authorization is enabled, each authorized client of a hidden
service has two more asymmetric keypairs which are shared with the hidden
service. An entity without those keys is not able to use the hidden
service. Throughout this document, we assume that these pre-shared keys are
exchanged between the hidden service and its clients in a secure out-of-band
fashion.
Specifically, each authorized client possesses:
- An x25519 keypair used to compute decryption keys that allow the client to
decrypt the hidden service descriptor. See [HS-DESC-ENC].
- An ed25519 keypair which allows the client to compute signatures which
prove to the hidden service that the client is authorized. These
signatures are inserted into the INTRODUCE1 cell, and without them the
introduction to the hidden service cannot be completed. See [INTRO-AUTH].
The right way to exchange these keys is to have the client generate keys and
send the corresponding public keys to the hidden service out-of-band. An
easier but less secure way of doing this exchange would be to have the
hidden service generate the keypairs and pass the corresponding private keys
to its clients. See section [CLIENT-AUTH-MGMT] for more details on how these
keys should be managed.
[TODO: Also specify stealth client authorization.]
(NOTE: client authorization is implemented as of 0.3.5.1-alpha.)
2. Generating and publishing hidden service descriptors [HSDIR]
Hidden service descriptors follow the same metaformat as other Tor
directory objects. They are published anonymously to Tor servers with the
HSDir flag, HSDir=2 protocol version and tor version >= 0.3.0.8 (because a
bug was fixed in this version).
2.1. Deriving blinded keys and subcredentials [SUBCRED]
In each time period (see [TIME-PERIODS] for a definition of time
periods), a hidden service host uses a different blinded private key
to sign its directory information, and clients use a different
blinded public key as the index for fetching that information.
For a candidate for a key derivation method, see Appendix [KEYBLIND].
Additionally, clients and hosts derive a subcredential for each
period. Knowledge of the subcredential is needed to decrypt hidden
service descriptors for each period and to authenticate with the
hidden service host in the introduction process. Unlike the
credential, it changes each period. Knowing the subcredential, even
in combination with the blinded private key, does not enable the
hidden service host to derive the main credential--therefore, it is
safe to put the subcredential on the hidden service host while
leaving the hidden service's private key offline.
The subcredential for a period is derived as:
subcredential = H("subcredential" | credential | blinded-public-key).
In the above formula, credential corresponds to:
credential = H("credential" | public-identity-key)
where public-identity-key is the public identity master key of the hidden
service.
2.2. Locating, uploading, and downloading hidden service descriptors
[HASHRING]
To avoid attacks where a hidden service's descriptor is easily
targeted for censorship, we store them at different directories over
time, and use shared random values to prevent those directories from
being predictable far in advance.
Which Tor servers hosts a hidden service depends on:
* the current time period,
* the daily subcredential,
* the hidden service directories' public keys,
* a shared random value that changes in each time period,
* a set of network-wide networkstatus consensus parameters.
(Consensus parameters are integer values voted on by authorities
and published in the consensus documents, described in
dir-spec.txt, section 3.3.)
Below we explain in more detail.
2.2.1. Dividing time into periods [TIME-PERIODS]
To prevent a single set of hidden service directory from becoming a
target by adversaries looking to permanently censor a hidden service,
hidden service descriptors are uploaded to different locations that
change over time.
The length of a "time period" is controlled by the consensus
parameter 'hsdir-interval', and is a number of minutes between 30 and
14400 (10 days). The default time period length is 1440 (one day).
Time periods start at the Unix epoch (Jan 1, 1970), and are computed by
taking the number of minutes since the epoch and dividing by the time
period. However, we want our time periods to start at 12:00UTC every day, so
we subtract a "rotation time offset" of 12*60 minutes from the number of
minutes since the epoch, before dividing by the time period (effectively
making "our" epoch start at Jan 1, 1970 12:00UTC).
Example: If the current time is 2016-04-13 11:15:01 UTC, making the seconds
since the epoch 1460546101, and the number of minutes since the epoch
24342435. We then subtract the "rotation time offset" of 12*60 minutes from
the minutes since the epoch, to get 24341715. If the current time period
length is 1440 minutes, by doing the division we see that we are currently
in time period number 16903.
Specifically, time period #16903 began 16903*1440*60 + (12*60*60) seconds
after the epoch, at 2016-04-12 12:00 UTC, and ended at 16904*1440*60 +
(12*60*60) seconds after the epoch, at 2016-04-13 12:00 UTC.
2.2.2. When to publish a hidden service descriptor [WHEN-HSDESC]
Hidden services periodically publish their descriptor to the responsible
HSDirs. The set of responsible HSDirs is determined as specified in
[WHERE-HSDESC].
Specifically, every time a hidden service publishes its descriptor, it also
sets up a timer for a random time between 60 minutes and 120 minutes in the
future. When the timer triggers, the hidden service needs to publish its
descriptor again to the responsible HSDirs for that time period.
[TODO: Control republish period using a consensus parameter?]
2.2.2.1. Overlapping descriptors
Hidden services need to upload multiple descriptors so that they can be
reachable to clients with older or newer consensuses than them. Services
need to upload their descriptors to the HSDirs _before_ the beginning of
each upcoming time period, so that they are readily available for clients to
fetch them. Furthermore, services should keep uploading their old descriptor
even after the end of a time period, so that they can be reachable by
clients that still have consensuses from the previous time period.
Hence, services maintain two active descriptors at every point. Clients on
the other hand, don't have a notion of overlapping descriptors, and instead
always download the descriptor for the current time period and shared random
value. It's the job of the service to ensure that descriptors will be
available for all clients. See section [FETCHUPLOADDESC] for how this is
achieved.
[TODO: What to do when we run multiple hidden services in a single host?]
2.2.3. Where to publish a hidden service descriptor [WHERE-HSDESC]
This section specifies how the HSDir hash ring is formed at any given
time. Whenever a time value is needed (e.g. to get the current time period
number), we assume that clients and services use the valid-after time from
their latest live consensus.
The following consensus parameters control where a hidden service
descriptor is stored;
hsdir_n_replicas = an integer in range [1,16] with default value 2.
hsdir_spread_fetch = an integer in range [1,128] with default value 3.
hsdir_spread_store = an integer in range [1,128] with default value 4.
(Until 0.3.2.8-rc, the default was 3.)
To determine where a given hidden service descriptor will be stored
in a given period, after the blinded public key for that period is
derived, the uploading or downloading party calculates:
for replicanum in 1...hsdir_n_replicas:
hs_index(replicanum) = H("store-at-idx" |
blinded_public_key |
INT_8(replicanum) |
INT_8(period_length) |
INT_8(period_num) )
where blinded_public_key is specified in section [KEYBLIND], period_length
is the length of the time period in minutes, and period_num is calculated
using the current consensus "valid-after" as specified in section
[TIME-PERIODS].
Then, for each node listed in the current consensus with the HSDir flag,
we compute a directory index for that node as:
hsdir_index(node) = H("node-idx" | node_identity |
shared_random_value |
INT_8(period_num) |
INT_8(period_length) )
where shared_random_value is the shared value generated by the authorities
in section [PUB-SHAREDRANDOM], and node_identity is the ed25519 identity
key of the node.
Finally, for replicanum in 1...hsdir_n_replicas, the hidden service
host uploads descriptors to the first hsdir_spread_store nodes whose
indices immediately follow hs_index(replicanum). If any of those
nodes have already been selected for a lower-numbered replica of the
service, any nodes already chosen are disregarded (i.e. skipped over)
when choosing a replica's hsdir_spread_store nodes.
When choosing an HSDir to download from, clients choose randomly from
among the first hsdir_spread_fetch nodes after the indices. (Note
that, in order to make the system better tolerate disappearing
HSDirs, hsdir_spread_fetch may be less than hsdir_spread_store.)
Again, nodes from lower-numbered replicas are disregarded when
choosing the spread for a replica.
2.2.4. Using time periods and SRVs to fetch/upload HS descriptors [FETCHUPLOADDESC]
Hidden services and clients need to make correct use of time periods (TP)
and shared random values (SRVs) to successfully fetch and upload
descriptors. Furthermore, to avoid problems with skewed clocks, both clients
and services use the 'valid-after' time of a live consensus as a way to take
decisions with regards to uploading and fetching descriptors. By using the
consensus times as the ground truth here, we minimize the desynchronization
of clients and services due to system clock. Whenever time-based decisions
are taken in this section, assume that they are consensus times and not
system times.
As [PUB-SHAREDRANDOM] specifies, consensuses contain two shared random
values (the current one and the previous one). Hidden services and clients
are asked to match these shared random values with descriptor time periods
and use the right SRV when fetching/uploading descriptors. This section
attempts to precisely specify how this works.
Let's start with an illustration of the system:
+------------------------------------------------------------------+
| |
| 00:00 12:00 00:00 12:00 00:00 12:00 |
| SRV#1 TP#1 SRV#2 TP#2 SRV#3 TP#3 |
| |
| $==========|-----------$===========|-----------$===========| |
| |
| |
+------------------------------------------------------------------+
Legend: [TP#1 = Time Period #1]
[SRV#1 = Shared Random Value #1]
["$" = descriptor rotation moment]
2.2.4.1. Client behavior for fetching descriptors [CLIENTFETCH]
And here is how clients use TPs and SRVs to fetch descriptors:
Clients always aim to synchronize their TP with SRV, so they always want to
use TP#N with SRV#N: To achieve this wrt time periods, clients always use
the current time period when fetching descriptors. Now wrt SRVs, if a client
is in the time segment between a new time period and a new SRV (i.e. the
segments drawn with "-") it uses the current SRV, else if the client is in a
time segment between a new SRV and a new time period (i.e. the segments
drawn with "="), it uses the previous SRV.
Example:
+------------------------------------------------------------------+
| |
| 00:00 12:00 00:00 12:00 00:00 12:00 |
| SRV#1 TP#1 SRV#2 TP#2 SRV#3 TP#3 |
| |
| $==========|-----------$===========|-----------$===========| |
| ^ ^ |
| C1 C2 |
+------------------------------------------------------------------+
If a client (C1) is at 13:00 right after TP#1, then it will use TP#1 and
SRV#1 for fetching descriptors. Also, if a client (C2) is at 01:00 right
after SRV#2, it will still use TP#1 and SRV#1.
2.2.4.2. Service behavior for uploading descriptors [SERVICEUPLOAD]
As discussed above, services maintain two active descriptors at any time. We
call these the "first" and "second" service descriptors. Services rotate
their descriptor every time they receive a consensus with a valid_after time
past the next SRV calculation time. They rotate their descriptors by
discarding their first descriptor, pushing the second descriptor to the
first, and rebuilding their second descriptor with the latest data.
Services like clients also employ a different logic for picking SRV and TP
values based on their position in the graph above. Here is the logic:
2.2.4.2.1. First descriptor upload logic [FIRSTDESCUPLOAD]
Here is the service logic for uploading its first descriptor:
When a service is in the time segment between a new time period a new SRV
(i.e. the segments drawn with "-"), it uses the previous time period and
previous SRV for uploading its first descriptor: that's meant to cover
for clients that have a consensus that is still in the previous time period.
Example: Consider in the above illustration that the service is at 13:00
right after TP#1. It will upload its first descriptor using TP#0 and SRV#0.
So if a client still has a 11:00 consensus it will be able to access it
based on the client logic above.
Now if a service is in the time segment between a new SRV and a new time
period (i.e. the segments drawn with "=") it uses the current time period
and the previous SRV for its first descriptor: that's meant to cover clients
with an up-to-date consensus in the same time period as the service.
Example:
+------------------------------------------------------------------+
| |
| 00:00 12:00 00:00 12:00 00:00 12:00 |
| SRV#1 TP#1 SRV#2 TP#2 SRV#3 TP#3 |
| |
| $==========|-----------$===========|-----------$===========| |
| ^ |
| S |
+------------------------------------------------------------------+
Consider that the service is at 01:00 right after SRV#2: it will upload its
first descriptor using TP#1 and SRV#1.
2.2.4.2.2. Second descriptor upload logic [SECONDDESCUPLOAD]
Here is the service logic for uploading its second descriptor:
When a service is in the time segment between a new time period a new SRV
(i.e. the segments drawn with "-"), it uses the current time period and
current SRV for uploading its second descriptor: that's meant to cover for
clients that have an up-to-date consensus on the same TP as the service.
Example: Consider in the above illustration that the service is at 13:00
right after TP#1: it will upload its second descriptor using TP#1 and SRV#1.
Now if a service is in the time segment between a new SRV and a new time
period (i.e. the segments drawn with "=") it uses the next time period and
the current SRV for its second descriptor: that's meant to cover clients
with a newer consensus than the service (in the next time period).
Example:
+------------------------------------------------------------------+
| |
| 00:00 12:00 00:00 12:00 00:00 12:00 |
| SRV#1 TP#1 SRV#2 TP#2 SRV#3 TP#3 |
| |
| $==========|-----------$===========|-----------$===========| |
| ^ |
| S |
+------------------------------------------------------------------+
Consider that the service is at 01:00 right after SRV#2: it will upload its
second descriptor using TP#2 and SRV#2.
2.2.5. Expiring hidden service descriptors [EXPIRE-DESC]
Hidden services set their descriptor's "descriptor-lifetime" field to 180
minutes (3 hours). Hidden services ensure that their descriptor will remain
valid in the HSDir caches, by republishing their descriptors periodically as
specified in [WHEN-HSDESC].
Hidden services MUST also keep their introduction circuits alive for as long
as descriptors including those intro points are valid (even if that's after
the time period has changed).
2.2.6. URLs for anonymous uploading and downloading
Hidden service descriptors conforming to this specification are uploaded
with an HTTP POST request to the URL /tor/hs/<version>/publish relative to
the hidden service directory's root, and downloaded with an HTTP GET
request for the URL /tor/hs/<version>/<z> where <z> is a base64 encoding of
the hidden service's blinded public key and <version> is the protocol
version which is "3" in this case.
These requests must be made anonymously, on circuits not used for
anything else.
2.2.7. Client-side validation of onion addresses
When a Tor client receives a prop224 onion address from the user, it
MUST first validate the onion address before attempting to connect or
fetch its descriptor. If the validation fails, the client MUST
refuse to connect.