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[tor-bugs] #6800 [Tor Relay]: An attacker can flood network with new relays to make us stop using bwauth weights

#6800: An attacker can flood network with new relays to make us stop using bwauth
weights
-----------------------+----------------------------------------------------
 Reporter:  arma       |          Owner:                    
     Type:  defect     |         Status:  new               
 Priority:  normal     |      Milestone:  Tor: 0.2.4.x-final
Component:  Tor Relay  |        Version:                    
 Keywords:             |         Parent:                    
   Points:             |   Actualpoints:                    
-----------------------+----------------------------------------------------
 The bwauths don't write out any opinions if they have stats on less than
 some fraction (60%) of the relays.

 So an attacker could induce this result by signing up n new relays to go
 with the n current relays, causing all the bwauths to stop outputting
 opinions.

 In the current case that means we default to using the values in the relay
 descriptors. Inefficient but not so bad.

 In the future case (once we merge #2286), it means we default to capping
 all new relays to a low number until the bwauths catch up again.

 Authorities are willing to use the last published opinions file for 3 days
 before they give up on it.

 Is this a stable enough defense? During the flood the already-established
 relays would continue to have the most recent bwauth weights, and the
 bwauths have 3 days to catch up. Sounds plausible, but I'd like a few more
 opinions.

-- 
Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/6800>
Tor Bug Tracker & Wiki <https://trac.torproject.org/>
The Tor Project: anonymity online
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