Hello Nick, Thanks for your response. This is very helpful and somewhat in line with my expectations. I will forward this thread to the IETF list, please let me know if there is more to add.
Thanks John -----Original Message----- From: Nick Mathewson <[email protected]> Reply-To: <[email protected]> Date: Sunday 16 February 2014 03:51 To: <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [tor-dev] Registering special-use domain names of peer-to-peer name systems with IETF >On Thu, Feb 13, 2014 at 9:06 AM, John Bond <[email protected]> wrote: >> Hello All, >> >> Im writing to the list in response to IETF submission made by christian. > >Hi, John! This deserves a much longer response than I can give it >right now. (I'm getting ready to head to Iceland for the developers >meeting next week.) But let me see what I can figure out today, under >the theory that a prompt reply is often better than a perfect one. > >> This has created much debate on the DNSOPS mailing list[1] and has also >> seen another draft to be proposed[2]. I will start by saying I see >>merit >> in both drafts being proposed[3][4] and don¹t necessarily see them as >> being mutually exclusive. However the discussions on the list seem to >> keep coming back to one question would it be feasible for you to >> retrospectively change the anchor of .onion to some other TLD. E.g. >> .onion.arpa. There is much speculation on this questions however it >> appears that the question has not been directly asked on this list. >> >> Therefore I would like to ask the following. >> >> - What would be the barriers both, technical and political, for tor to >> change the anchor it uses from .onion to something else (whatever that >>may >> be)? > >Technically, we'd need to add the new address type as a supported >address type, and then, after a year or three, we'd have to stop >supporting the old type. I imagine we'd want to do a coordinated, >flag-day style transition, because otherwise we'd run into problems >with the new addresses not getting intercepted by older versions of >Tor. > >To expand, suppose that we transition to .onion.newtld. This problem, >among others, would occur: Old versions of Tor that did not know >about .onion.newtld would try to connect to those addresses by making >requests to exit nodes through the Tor network. Those exit nodes could >learn more about who was connecting to .onion addresses. > >We could mitigate this problem, by having a flag day after which all >supported Tor versions start accepting the new addresses. But then >we'd need to have a long delay after the new addresses were supported >by everybody to make everybody stop using the old addresses, before we >could remove the old anchor. > > > > >> - If such a change where to happen what would be an acceptable timeline >> for new software to stop supporting the old anchor? > >New software couldn't stop supporting the old anchor until people >stopped using it. > >People couldn't stop using it until they could know that all existing >software would support the new anchor. > >People couldn't know that until all current software was unsupported. >That works out to a few years in practice. (This is somewhat >dependent on the Debian release cycle in practice; they take security >patches, but this sure wouldn't be a security patch.) > > >So, a full transition would require: > a few months to spec and implement the transition > a few years for all previous versions to stop shippin > a year or two after that for people to update all existing links >everywhere. > >At least, that's what I'd assume. Perhaps there's a faster way I'm not >seeing. > >> - If the .onion is unsuccessful in its request to be reserver under the >> mechanism laid out in rfc 6761[5]. Would there be any motivation to >> change the anchor so that it conformed to a different policy and >>therefore >> allow operators and developers to prevent leakage of this name on the >> internet > >I imagine there would be some interest, but it would depend on the >benefits. > >> - Are there any privacy concerns caused by .onion names leaking on to >>the >> internet in the form of a DNS QNAME by software trying to resolve the >>name > >Yes. In the current hidden service design, it is confidential which >user wants to visit which address; sending a DNS query with a .onion >address in it is privacy failure. > >Moreover, in the proposed next-generation hidden service design, the >address itself is confidential: it is part of a credential that allows >users who know it to tell that the hidden service exists. > >> - If an organisation where to obtain the .onion name under the gTLD >> programme are there any privacy concerns considering the organisation >> could now answer the DNS queries mentioned above. I.e. If a user >>requested >> notatrap.onion without tor configured instead of getting no response the >> could be redirected to a site controlled by the new owner of the .onion >> domain. > >There would indeed be such a privacy concern. Moreover, if we stopped >supporting the old .onion name in Tor, such an organization could >intercept requests even for Tor users, if users had any stale links or >addresses using the old TLD. > >Personally, I would consider any such organization to have obviously >hostile intent, and I would consider any granting of such a gTLD to be >a transparent message, saying "we don't care about the well-being of >Tor users at all." > >Anyway, that's my saturday night answer. Perhaps others will think >more and come up with better answers soon. > >best wishes, >-- >Nick >_______________________________________________ >tor-dev mailing list >[email protected] >https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-dev > _______________________________________________ tor-dev mailing list [email protected] https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-dev
