[Author Prev][Author Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Author Index][Thread Index]

[tor-dev] Draft Proposal: Random Number Generation During Tor Voting



Hello there,

we are glad to release a first draft of our proposal on distributed random
generation using the Tor voting process. It specifies how Tor dirauths can
generate a fresh random value every day using a commit-and-reveal protocol. The
protocol piggybacks on top of the regular Tor voting procedure which happens
every hour.

Our proposal spends lots of effort resolving the various edge cases and
engineering issues that come up when you are trying to fit such a protocol into
the Tor voting system. It also introduces a new consensus flavor document which
is used to host shared randomness information, so that the regular consensus
does not get affected if this feature is flawed.

We are especially interested in feedback from people who are familiar with the
Tor voting protocol and can tell us whether we have messed something up, or
whether there are attacks that we did not consider.

We hope the document (and the illustration) is helpful for understanding the
protocol. Let us know if you have any questions, or suggestions for improving
the proposal.

We believe this proposal is fundamental for the security of hidden services and
for developing proposal 224, hence we invite everyone to provide feedback and
improvements.

Thanks!

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Filename: xxx-commit-reveal-consensus.txt
Title: Random Number Generation During Tor Voting
Authors: David Goulet, George Kadianakis
Created: 2015-08-03
Status: Draft

1. Introduction

1.1. Motivation

   For the next generation hidden services project, we need the Tor network to
   produce a fresh random value every day in such a way that it cannot be
   predicted in advance or influenced by an attacker.

   Currently we need this random value to make the HSDir hash ring
   unpredictable (#8244), which should resolve a wide class of hidden service
   DoS attacks and should make it harder for people to gauge the popularity
   and activity of target hidden services. Furthermore, this random value can
   be used by other Tor-related protocols (or even non-Tor-related) like
   OnioNS to introduce unpredictability to the protocol.

1.2. Previous work

   Proposal 225 specifies a commit-and-reveal protocol that can be run as an
   external script and have the results be fed to the directory authorities.
   However, directory authority operators feel unsafe running a third-party
   script that opens TCP ports and accepts connections from the Internet.
   Hence, this proposal aims to embed the commit-and-reveal idea in the Tor
   voting process which should makes it smoother to deploy and maintain.

   Another idea proposed specifically for Tor is Nick Hopper's "A threshold
   signature-based proposal for a shared RNG" which was never turned into an
   actual Tor proposal.

2. Overview

   This proposal alters the Tor consensus protocol such that a random number
   is generated by the directory authorities during the regular voting
   process. The distributed random generator scheme is based on a
   commit-and-reveal technique.

   The proposal also specifies how the final shared random value is embedded
   in consensus documents so that clients who need it can get it.

2.1. Ten thousand feet view

   Our commit-and-reveal protocol aims to produce a fresh shared random value
   everyday at 12:00UTC. The final fresh random value is embedded in the
   microdescriptor consensus document at that time.

   Our protocol uses a *new* consensus flavor document called "shared
   randomness document" (SR doc). We use a new consensus document as a way to
   keep ground truth state and also as a way to apply the majority (see
   section [MAJORITY]) rule on commit and reveal values. It also allows
   rebooting authorities to rejoin the protocol in some cases.

   Our protocol has two phases and uses the hourly voting procedure of Tor.
   Each phase lasts 12 hours, which means that 12 voting rounds happen in
   between. In short, the protocol works as follows:

      Commit phase:

        Starting at 12:00UTC and for a period of 12 hours, authorities every
        hour send their commitments in their votes. They also include any
        received commitments from other authorities, if available. From those
        votes, a shared random document consensus is computed containing the
        commitments decided by the majority.

      Reveal phase:

        At 00:00UTC, the reveal phase starts and lasts till the end of the
        protocol at 12:00UTC. In this stage, authorities must reveal the value
        they committed to in the previous phase. The commitment and revealed
        values from other authorities, when available, are also added to the
        vote. Then a shared random document consensus is computed containing
        the commitments and the revealed values agreed on.

      Shared Randomness Calculation:

        At 12:00UTC, the shared random value is computed from the agreed
        revealed values located in the shared random document and finally
        added to the microdescriptor consensus.

   This concludes the commit-and-reveal procedure at 12:00UTC everyday.

2.2. Commit & Reveal

   Our commit-and-reveal protocol aims to produce a fresh shared random value
   everyday at 12:00UTC. In the beginning of that time period, each authority
   generates a new random value and keeps it for the whole day.

   The authority cryptographically hashes the random value and calls the
   output its "commitment" value. The original random value is called the
   "reveal value". Given a reveal value you can verify that it corresponds to
   a given commitment value. However given a commitment value you cannot
   derive the underlying reveal value.

2.3. Microdescriptor Consensus [MDCONS]

   Every hour, the microdescriptor consensus documents need to include the
   shared random value of the day, as well as the shared random value of the
   previous day. That's because either of these values might be needed at a
   given time for a Tor client to access a hidden service according to section
   [TIME-OVERLAP] of proposal 224. These means that these two values also need
   to be included in votes and in SR documents as well.

   Microdescriptor consensuses include:

      (a) The shared random value of the current time period. This is derived
          from the reveal values sent by the authorities during the voting
          session.

      (b) The shared random value of the previous time period. This is the
          same shared random value that was included in the votes.

2.4. Shared Random Document [SRDOC]

   The Shared Random document is a consensus flavor that contains the current
   state of our commit & reveal protocol. Since it uses the consensus
   mechanism of Tor, we use it as a way to enforce majority voting on the
   commitments and reveals without messing with the actual network status
   consensus. See section [REBOOT] for detail on how this document is handled
   when an authority reboots.

   During the commitment phase, the SR doc is populated with the commitments
   of all authorities. Then during the reveal phase, it's also used to store
   the reveal values as well.

   As discussed previously, the shared random values from the current and
   previous time period must be present in the document at all times if they
   are available.

   A shared random document requires 50% + 1 authority signatures to be
   considered valid. As this proposal is being written, there are 9
   authorities thus we would need 5.

2.5. Protocol Illustration

   We have prepared an illustration to help you understand the protocol. You can
   find it here:
         https://people.torproject.org/~asn/hs_notes/shared_rand.jpg

   For every hour, it shows the authority votes and the resulting SR doc and
   microdescriptor consensus.  The chain 'A_1 -> c_1 -> r_1' denotes that the
   authority committed to the value c_1 which corresponds to the reveal value
   r_1.

   The illustration depicts the first 25 hours of running the protocol. It
   starts with the very first commit round, then moves on to the second commit
   round, and then skips directly to the last commit round. Then the reveal
   phase starts, where we again show the first, second and last rounds.

   After the reveal phase is done, we generate the shared randomness (SR_1)
   and we start the new commit phase. The illustration finishes with the
   second round of this new commit phase.

   We advice you to revisit this after you have read the whole document.

3. Protocol

   In this section we give a detailed specification of the protocol. We
   describe the protocol participants' logic and the messages they send. The
   encoding of the messages is specified in the next section ([SPEC]).

   Now we go through the phases of the protocol:

3.1 Commitment Phase [COMMITMENTPHASE]

   The commit phase lasts from 12:00UTC to 00:00UTC.

   The goal is that at the end of this phase, the shared random document MUST
   contain a single commitment value from each authority (or none, if that
   authority did not participate in this phase).

3.1.1. Voting During Commitment Phase

   During the commit phase, each authority includes in its votes:

    - A commitment value for this consensus period.
    - Any commitments received from other authorities.
    - The two previous shared random values produced by the protocol (if any).

   After all votes have been received or pulled in, the authorities
   collectively generate the shared random document containing the
   commitments.

3.1.2. Shared Random Document During Commitment Phase [SRDOCCOMMIT]

   During the commitment phase, the shared random document contains:

    - The commitments received by the majority of authorities
    - The two previous shared random values produced by the protocol (if any).

   A commitment should only be transcribed to the shared random document if
   and only if the majority of the voting authorities agreed that a particular
   commitment was sent by a particular authority. Appendix section
   [COMMITEXAMPLE] contains an example of this procedure.

   The commit phase lasts for 12 hours, so authorities have multiple chances
   to commit their values. An authority can commit a second value during a
   subsequent round of the commit phase, but only the last value should be
   transcribed to the shared random document and only if it has been seen by
   the majority.

   Also, an authority should not be able to register a commitment value for a
   different authority. Hence, an authority X should only vote and place in
   the SR doc commitments by authority Y, iff authority Y included that
   commitment in its vote.

3.1.3. First & Last Round Of Commitment Phase [FIRSTLASTROUND]

   It's worth mentioning that during the very first round of the commitment
   phase at 12:00UTC, each authority votes its own commitment and is unaware
   of the commitments of the other authorities. For this reason, it's unlikely
   that a majority opinion of commitments will be created at 12:00UTC. Instead
   authorities are expected to form a majority opinion and transcribe
   commitments to the SR doc during the voting period of 13:00UTC or at least
   until the reveal phase.

   Similarly, an authority will not be able to commit to a new value during
   the last round of the commitment phase. That's because there won't be
   enough time for the other authorities to form a majority opinion about this
   value before the reveal phase. Hence, Tor authorities SHOULD NOT commit new
   values during the last round of the commitment phase at 23:00UTC.

3.2 Reveal Phase

   The reveal phase lasts from 00:00UTC to 12:00UTC.

   Now that the commitments have been agreed on, it's time for authorities to
   reveal their random values.

3.2.1. Voting During Reveal Phase

   During the reveal phase, each authority includes in its votes:

    - Its reveal value that was previously committed in the commit phase.
    - All the commitments and reveals received from other authorities.
    - The two previous shared random values produced by the protocol (if any).

   The set of commitments have been established during the commitment phase
   and must remain the same. If an authority tries to change its commitment
   during the reveal phase or introduce a new commitment, the entire vote MUST
   be ignored for the purposes of this system. To do so, authorities during
   the first reveal round MUST check that received votes contain the same
   commitments as the last SR document of the commitment phase. In subsequent
   reveal rounds, authorities check the previous hour SR document for
   commitment validation.

   After all votes have been received, authorities generate the shared random
   document along with the consensus.

3.2.2. Shared Random Document During Reveal Phase [SRDOCREVEAL]

   During the reveal phase, the shared random document contains:

    - The commitments agreed on during the commitment phase.
    - The corresponding reveal values from the majority of authorities.
    - The two previous shared random values produced by this system (if any).

   Similar to the commitment phase, authorities transcribe reveal values to
   the shared random document if and only if the majority of the voting
   authorities have voted on that particular reveal value. An example of this
   can be seen in section [REVEALEXAMPLE].

   Section [FIRSTLASTROUND] also applies for the reveal phase. This means that
   Tor authorities SHOULD NOT reveal new values during the last round of the
   reveal phase at 11:00UTC.

3.3. Shared Random Value Calculation At 12:00UTC

   Finally, at 12:00UTC every day, authorities compute a fresh shared random
   value and this value must be added to the microdescriptor consensus so
   clients can use it.

   Authorities calculate the shared random value using the reveal values in
   the latest shared random document as specified in subsection [SRCALC].

   If the shared random value contains reveal contributions by less than 3
   directory authorities, it MUST NOT be created. Instead, the old shared
   random value should be used as specified in section [SRDISASTER].

   Authorities at 12:00UTC start including this new shared random value in
   their votes, replacing the one from two protocol runs ago. Authorities also
   start including this new shared random value in the SR document and in the
   microdescriptor consensus as well.

   Apart from that, authorities proceed voting normally as they would in the
   first round of the commitment phase (section [COMMITMENTPHASE]).

3.3.1. Shared Randomness Calculation [SRCALC]

   An authority that wants to derive the shared random value V, should use the
   appropriate reveal values for that time period and calculate V as follows:

      V = H(ID_a | R_a | ID_b | R_b | ...)

   where the ID_k value is the identity fingerprint of directory authority k
   and R_k is its corresponding reveal value of that authority for the current
   period. H is sha256 for protocol version 1.

   XXX Should the hashing here include more elements? Like the previous random
       value for chaining? Or the current date? See how the NIST beacon does it
       in case we can steal some additional RNG security properties:
               http://hackaday.com/2014/12/19/nist-randomness-beacon/

3.4. Bootstrapping Procedure

   As described in [MDCONS], two shared random values are required for the
   HSDir overlay periods to work properly as specified in proposal 224. Hence
   clients MUST NOT use the randomness of this system till it has bootstrapped
   completely; that is, until two shared random values are included in a
   consensus. This should happen after three 12:00UTC consensuses have been
   produced, which takes 48 hours.

3.5. Rebooting Directory Authorities [REBOOT]

   The shared randomness protocol must be able to support directory
   authorities who leave or join in the middle of the protocol execution.

   An authority that commits in the Commitment Phase and then leaves SHOULD
   store its reveal value on disk so that it continues participating in the
   protocol if it returns before or during the Reveal Phase. The reveal value
   MUST be stored timestamped to avoid sending it on wrong protocol runs.

   For this reason, other authorities should carry the commitment values of
   absent authorities in the shared randomness document until the end of the
   protocol. The shared randomness document can be used to verify that the
   commitment values are carried properly.

   An authority that misses the Commitment Phase cannot commit anymore, so
   it's unable to participate in the protocol for that run. Same thing for an
   authority that misses the Reveal phase. Authorities who do not participate
   in the protocol SHOULD still carry commits and reveals of others in their
   vote.

3.6. How we define majority [MAJORITY]

   The shared randomness protocol must be able to support directory
   authorities who participate in the consensus protocol but not in the shared
   randomness protocol. It must also be able to tolerate authorities who drop
   or join in the middle of the protocol.

   The security of this proposal strongly relies on forming majority opinion
   so it's important for the number of participants to always be well defined:

   In the voting session right before creating the SR doc, we define the
   number of active participants to be the number of directory authorities
   that included commit/reveal values in their votes.

   As specified in sections [SRDOCCOMMIT] and [SRDOCREVEAL], a commit/reveal
   value should be transcribed to the SR doc if and only if the majority voted
   for it. So for example, if there are 6 active participants, a commit value
   will only be transcribed if 4 or more participants agreed on it.

   Furthermore, as specified in section [SRDOC], the shared random document is
   considered valid only if it is signed by 50% + 1 authorities.

   XXX The number of active participants is dynamic as authorities leave and
       join the protocol. Since the number of active participants is dynamic ,
       an attacker could trick some authorities believing there are N
       participants and some others believing there are N-1 participants, by
       sending different votes to different auths. Should we worry? [asn]

       A way to avoid a dynamic number of participants could be to set the
       number of participants to be the number of auths who committed during the
       very first commitment phase round.

3.7. Shared Randomness Disaster Recovery [SRDISASTER]

   If the consensus at 12:00UTC fails to be created, then there will be no new
   shared random value for the day.

   Directory authorities should keep including the previous shared random
   values in the consensus till the next 12:00UTC commit-and-reveal session.
   The time period needs to be updated to reflect the current time period even
   if the random value stays the same.

   Clients should keep on using this shared random values.

4. Specification [SPEC]

4.1 Voting

   This section describes how commitments, reveals and SR values are encoded
   in votes. We describe how to encode both the authority's own
   commits/reveals and also the commits/reveals received from the other
   authorities. Commits and reveals share the same line, but reveals are
   optional.

4.1.1 Encoding the authority's own commit/reveal value

   An authority that wants to commit (or reveal) a value during a vote, should
   generate a random 256-bit value REVEAL, and include its commitment COMMIT
   in its 12:00UTC vote as follows:

      "shared-rand-commitment" SP algname SP COMMIT [SP REVEAL] NL

   During the Reveal Phase, an authority can also optionally reveal the value
   REVEAL. The "algname" is the hash algorithm that should be used to compute
   COMMIT and REVEAL if any. It should be "sha256" for this version.

   The commitment value COMMIT is constructed as follows:

      C = base64-encode( SHA256(REVEAL) )

4.1.2 Encoding commit/reveal values received by other authorities [COMMITOTHER]

   An authority puts in its vote the commitments and reveals it has seen from
   the other authorities. To do so, it includes the following in its votes:

      "shared-rand-received-commitment" SP identity SP algname SP COMMIT [SP REVEAL] NL

   when "identity" is the hex-encoded commitment's authority fingerprint and
   COMMIT is the received commitment value. Authorities can also optionally
   include the reveal value REVEAL. There MUST be only one line per authority
   else the vote is considered invalid. Finally, the "algname" is the hash
   algorithm that should be used to compute COMMIT and REVEAL if any.

4.1.3. Shared Random value

  Authorities include a shared random value in their votes using the following
  encoding for the previous and current value respectively:

     "shared-rand-previous-value" SP value NL
     "shared-rand-current-value" SP value NL

  where "value" is the actual shared random value. It's computed as specified
  in the section [SRCALC].

  To maintain consistent ordering, the shared random values of the previous
  period should be listed before the values of the current period.

4.2. Shared Random Document

   As a way to keep ground truth state in this protocol, we introduce a new
   consensus flavor document. We call it the "Shared Random Document". This
   document is only used by directory authorities.

   This new consensus flavor should be signed with the sha256 signature format
   as documented in proposal 162.

4.2.1 Format [SRFORMAT]

   This document has a very strict format because authorities need to generate
   the exact same document.

   It contains a preamble, a commitment and reveal section, a list of shared
   random values and finally a footer.

   The preamble (or header) contains the following items. They MUST occur in
   the order given here:

    "shared-random-version" SP version SP flavor NL

        [At start, exactly once.]

        A document format version. For this specification, version is "1". The
        flavor is always "shared-random".

    "created" SP YYYY-MM-DD SP HH:MM:SS NL

        [Exactly once]

        The creation time of this document.

    "valid-until" SP YYYY-MM-DD SP HH:MM:SS NL

        [Exactly once]

        After this time, this document is invalid and shouldn't be used nor
        trusted. The validity time period is 3 hours.

    "protocol-phase" SP phase NL

        [Exactly once]

        The current protocol phase when this document is generated. The accepted
        values are: "commitment" and "reveal".

   The following details the commitment and reveal section.

     "shared-rand-commitment" SP algname SP identity SP commitment-value
                              [SP revealed-value] NL

        [Exactly once per authority]

        This is the commitment or/and reveal value agreed upon by the majority
        from one authority. The algname is always "sha256" in version 1. The
        "identity" is the authority hex-encoded digest of the authority
        identity key of the signing authority from which the values are from.
        Finally, "{commitment|revealed}-value" is the value as specified in
        section [SPEC].

   Next is the shared random value section.

     "shared-rand-previous-value" SP value NL

        [At most once]

        This is the previous shared random value agreed on at the previous
        period. The "value" is defined in section [SRCALC].

     "shared-rand-current-value" SP value NL

        [At most once]

        This is the latest shared random value. The "value" is defined in
        section [SRCALC].

   Finally, the footer of the document:

     "shared-random-footer" NL

        [Exactly once]

        It contains one subsection, the authority signatures.

           "authority-signature" SP algname SP identity SP signing-key-digest
                                 NL Signature NL

              [Exactly once per authority]

              The "identity" is the hex-encoded digest of the authority
              identity key and the "signing-key-digest" is the hex-encoded
              digest of the current authority signing key of the signing
              authority.

              The "algname" item is the algorithm used to compute the hash of
              the document before signing it. As proposal 162 proposed,
              "sha256" should be used. The authority-signature entry MUST be
              ignored if "algname" is unrecognized.

              See dir-spec.txt for a specification for the Signature item.

4.3. Shared Random Value in Consensus [SRCONSENSUS]

   Authorities insert the two shared random values in the consensus following
   the same encoding format as in [SRFORMAT].

5. Security Analysis

5.1. Security of commit-and-reveal and future directions

   The security of commit-and-reveal protocols is well understood, and has
   certain flaws. Basically, the protocol is insecure to the extent that an
   adversary who controls b of the authorities gets to choose among 2^b
   outcomes for the result of the protocol. However, an attacker who is not a
   dirauth should not be able to influence the outcome at all.

   We believe that this system offers sufficient security especially compared
   to the current situation. More secure solutions require much more advanced
   crypto and more complex protocols so this seems like an acceptable solution
   for now.

5.2. Is there a need for a final agreement phase?

   Commit-and-reveal protocols usually also end with an agreement phase,
   during which participants agree on which reveal values should be used to
   make the shared random value.

   An agreement phase is needed, because if the protocol ended with the reveal
   phase, an evil authority could wait until the last reveal round, and reveal
   its value to half of the authorities. That would partition the authorities
   into two sets: the ones who think that the shared random value should
   contain this new reveal, and the rest who don't know about it. This would
   result in a tie and two different SR docs.

   However, we believe that an agreement phase is not necessary in our
   protocol since reveal values are transcribed in the SR document if only if
   the majority agrees. Hence, a tie is not enough to confuse the authorities
   since it's not majority and the offending value would just be discarded.

   That said, an attack that could still work here would be if an authority
   can make half of the authorities believe that the value should be
   discarded, and make the other half of the authorities believe that the
   value should be included. That could be achieved if the attacker could
   force honest authorities to send different votes to different authorities.
   We believe this should not be the case currently, but we should look more
   into this.

   XXX Needs feedback by a person who knows the voting protocol well!!!

5.3. Predicting the shared random value during reveal phase

   The reveal phase lasts 12 hours, and most authorities will send their
   reveal value on the first round of the reveal phase. This means that an
   attacker can predict the final shared random value about 12 hours before
   it's generated.

   This does not pose a problem for the HSDir hash ring, since we impose an
   uptime restriction on HSDir nodes, so 12 hours predictability is not an
   issue.

   Any other protocols using the shared random value from this system should
   be aware of this property.

6. Discussion

6.1. Why the added complexity from proposal 225?

   The complexity difference between this proposal and prop225 is in part
   because prop225 doesn't specify how the shared random value gets to the
   clients. This proposal spends lots of effort specifying how the two shared
   random values can always be readily accessible to clients.

6.2. Why do you do a commit-and-reveal protocol in 24 rounds?

   The reader might be wondering why we span the protocol over the course of a
   whole day (24 hours), when only 3 rounds would be sufficient to generate a
   shared random value.

   We decided to do it this way, because we piggyback on the Tor voting
   protocol which also happens every hour.

   We could instead only do the shared randomness protocol from 21:00 to 00:00
   every day. Or to do it multiple times a day.

   However, we decided that since the shared random value needs to be in every
   consensus anyway, carrying the commitments/reveals as well will not be a
   big problem. Also, this way we give more chances for a failing dirauth to
   recover and rejoin the protocol.

6.3. Why can't we recover if we fail to do a consensus at 12:00UTC?

   Section [SRDISASTER] specifies that if the 12:00UTC consensus or SR doc
   fails to be created, we fall back to the random value of the previous day
   meaning authorities will carry the last valid SR values from the previous
   microdescriptor consensus to the new one.

   Theoretically, we could recover by calculating the shared randomness of the
   day at 13:00UTC instead. However, adding such fallback logic would
   complicate the protocol even further, so we have not yet considered it.

7. Appendix

7.1. Example commitment majority [COMMITEXAMPLE]

   Here is an example of voting during the commitment phase. The table below
   represents the votes of 6 individual authorities A_i (one vote per column).

   Since it's the commitment phase, votes include the authorities commitments
   and all commitments received. For example, below all authorities believe
   that A_1 has registered the value 7 as its commitment.

    +------------+------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-----------+
    | A_1 vote   | A_2 vote   | A_3 vote    | A_4 vote    | A_5 vote    | A_6 vote  |
    +------------+------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-----------+
    | A_1 -> 7   | A_1 -> 7   | A_1 -> 7    | A_1 -> 7    |  A_1 -> 7   | A_1 -> 7  |
    | A_2 -> 66  | A_2 -> 66  | A_2 -> 42   | A_2 -> 42   |  A_2 -> 42  | A_2 -> 42 |
    | A_3 -> 16  | A_3 -> 16  | A_3 -> 16   | A_3 -> 16   |  A_3 -> 16  | A_3 -> 16 |
    | A_4 -> 22  | A_4 -> 22  | A_4 -> 22   | BLANK       |  A_4 -> 22  | BLANK     |
    | A_5 -> 9   | A_5 -> 9   | A_5 -> 9    | A_5 -> 9    |  A_5 -> 9   | A_5 -> 9  |
    | A_6 -> 33  | A_6 -> 33  | A_6 -> 33   | A_6 -> 33   |  A_6 -> 33  | BLANK     |
    +------------+------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-----------+

    In this case, following the majority rule, the final SR doc will contain:

                         +-------------+
                         | SR Document |
                         +-------------+
                         | A_1 -> 7    |
                         | A_2 -> 42   |
                         | A_3 -> 16   |
                         | A_4 -> 22   |
                         | A_5 -> 9    |
                         | A_6 -> 33   |
                         +-------------+

7.2. Example reveal phase [REVEALEXAMPLE]

   Here is an example of voting during the reveal phase.

   The table below represents 6 votes by 6 different authorities A_i (one vote
   per column). Since it's the reveal phase, votes include all reveals
   received (commitments have been hidden for simplicity). For example, below
   all authorities believe that A_1 has revealed the value 444.

   Let's say that a malicious dirauth is trying to partition the group into
   two sets, by sending different votes to different auths. The attacker has
   splitted the group into two sets, the auths who think that A_6 has revealed
   the value 123, and the rest who have not seen a reveal from A_6.

    +------------+------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+------------+
    | A_1 vote   | A_2 vote   | A_3 vote    | A_4 vote    | A_5 vote    | A_6 vote   |
    +------------+------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+------------+
    | A_1 -> 444 | A_1 -> 444 | A_1 -> 444  | A_1 -> 444  |  A_1 -> 444 | A_1 -> 444 |
    | A_2 -> 110 | A_2 -> 110 | A_2 -> 110  | A_2 -> 110  |  A_2 -> 110 | A_2 -> 110 |
    | A_3 -> 420 | A_3 -> 420 | A_3 -> 420  | A_3 -> 420  |  A_3 -> 420 | A_3 -> 420 |
    | BLANK      | BLANK      | A_4 -> 980  | BLANK       |  A_4 -> 980 | BLANK      |
    | A_5 -> 666 | A_5 -> 555 | A_5 -> 555  | A_5 -> 555  |  A_5 -> 555 | A_5 -> 555 |
    | A_6 -> 123 | A_6 -> 123 | A_6 -> 123  | BLANK       |  BLANK      | BLANK      |
    +------------+------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+------------+

   Following the rules of the reveal phase, the reveal of A_4 should be
   ignored since it was not voted by > 3 authorities. The reveal from A_6
   should also be ignored since it was only seen by half of the auths (3/6)
   which is not majority (it would require at least 4/6 votes).

   Hence, the final shared random document should contain:

                         +-------------+
                         | SR Document |
                         +-------------+
                         | A_1 -> 444  |
                         | A_2 -> 110  |
                         | A_3 -> 420  |
                         | BLANK       |
                         | A_5 -> 555  |
                         | BLANK       |
                         +-------------+
_______________________________________________
tor-dev mailing list
tor-dev@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-dev