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- $Id$
- Tor Protocol Specification
- Roger Dingledine
- Nick Mathewson
- Note: This document specifies Tor as currently implemented in versions
- 0.1.2.1-alpha and earlier. Current protocol designs are described in
- tor-spec.txt.
- 0. Preliminaries
- 0.1. Notation and encoding
- PK -- a public key.
- SK -- a private key.
- K -- a key for a symmetric cypher.
- a|b -- concatenation of 'a' and 'b'.
- [A0 B1 C2] -- a three-byte sequence, containing the bytes with
- hexadecimal values A0, B1, and C2, in that order.
- All numeric values are encoded in network (big-endian) order.
- H(m) -- a cryptographic hash of m.
- 0.2. Security parameters
- Tor uses a stream cipher, a public-key cipher, the Diffie-Hellman
- protocol, and a hash function.
- KEY_LEN -- the length of the stream cipher's key, in bytes.
- PK_ENC_LEN -- the length of a public-key encrypted message, in bytes.
- PK_PAD_LEN -- the number of bytes added in padding for public-key
- encryption, in bytes. (The largest number of bytes that can be encrypted
- in a single public-key operation is therefore PK_ENC_LEN-PK_PAD_LEN.)
- DH_LEN -- the number of bytes used to represent a member of the
- Diffie-Hellman group.
- DH_SEC_LEN -- the number of bytes used in a Diffie-Hellman private key (x).
- HASH_LEN -- the length of the hash function's output, in bytes.
- CELL_LEN -- The length of a Tor cell, in bytes.
- 0.3. Ciphers
- For a stream cipher, we use 128-bit AES in counter mode, with an IV of all
- 0 bytes.
- For a public-key cipher, we use RSA with 1024-bit keys and a fixed
- exponent of 65537. We use OAEP padding, with SHA-1 as its digest
- function. (For OAEP padding, see
- ftp://ftp.rsasecurity.com/pub/pkcs/pkcs-1/pkcs-1v2-1.pdf)
- For Diffie-Hellman, we use a generator (g) of 2. For the modulus (p), we
- use the 1024-bit safe prime from rfc2409, (section 6.2) whose hex
- representation is:
- "FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFC90FDAA22168C234C4C6628B80DC1CD129024E08"
- "8A67CC74020BBEA63B139B22514A08798E3404DDEF9519B3CD3A431B"
- "302B0A6DF25F14374FE1356D6D51C245E485B576625E7EC6F44C42E9"
- "A637ED6B0BFF5CB6F406B7EDEE386BFB5A899FA5AE9F24117C4B1FE6"
- "49286651ECE65381FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF"
- As an optimization, implementations SHOULD choose DH private keys (x) of
- 320 bits. Implementations that do this MUST never use any DH key more
- than once.
- For a hash function, we use SHA-1.
- KEY_LEN=16.
- DH_LEN=128; DH_GROUP_LEN=40.
- PK_ENC_LEN=128; PK_PAD_LEN=42.
- HASH_LEN=20.
- When we refer to "the hash of a public key", we mean the SHA-1 hash of the
- DER encoding of an ASN.1 RSA public key (as specified in PKCS.1).
- All "random" values should be generated with a cryptographically strong
- random number generator, unless otherwise noted.
- The "hybrid encryption" of a byte sequence M with a public key PK is
- computed as follows:
- 1. If M is less than PK_ENC_LEN-PK_PAD_LEN, pad and encrypt M with PK.
- 2. Otherwise, generate a KEY_LEN byte random key K.
- Let M1 = the first PK_ENC_LEN-PK_PAD_LEN-KEY_LEN bytes of M,
- and let M2 = the rest of M.
- Pad and encrypt K|M1 with PK. Encrypt M2 with our stream cipher,
- using the key K. Concatenate these encrypted values.
- [XXX Note that this "hybrid encryption" approach does not prevent
- an attacker from adding or removing bytes to the end of M. It also
- allows attackers to modify the bytes not covered by the OAEP --
- see Goldberg's PET2006 paper for details. We will add a MAC to this
- scheme one day. -RD]
- 0.4. Other parameter values
- CELL_LEN=512
- 1. System overview
- Tor is a distributed overlay network designed to anonymize
- low-latency TCP-based applications such as web browsing, secure shell,
- and instant messaging. Clients choose a path through the network and
- build a ``circuit'', in which each node (or ``onion router'' or ``OR'')
- in the path knows its predecessor and successor, but no other nodes in
- the circuit. Traffic flowing down the circuit is sent in fixed-size
- ``cells'', which are unwrapped by a symmetric key at each node (like
- the layers of an onion) and relayed downstream.
- 2. Connections
- There are two ways to connect to an onion router (OR). The first is
- as an onion proxy (OP), which allows the OP to authenticate the OR
- without authenticating itself. The second is as another OR, which
- allows mutual authentication.
- Tor uses TLS for link encryption. All implementations MUST support
- the TLS ciphersuite "TLS_EDH_RSA_WITH_DES_192_CBC3_SHA", and SHOULD
- support "TLS_DHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA" if it is available.
- Implementations MAY support other ciphersuites, but MUST NOT
- support any suite without ephemeral keys, symmetric keys of at
- least KEY_LEN bits, and digests of at least HASH_LEN bits.
- An OP or OR always sends a two-certificate chain, consisting of a
- certificate using a short-term connection key and a second, self-
- signed certificate containing the OR's identity key. The commonName of the
- first certificate is the OR's nickname, and the commonName of the second
- certificate is the OR's nickname, followed by a space and the string
- "<identity>".
- All parties receiving certificates must confirm that the identity key is
- as expected. (When initiating a connection, the expected identity key is
- the one given in the directory; when creating a connection because of an
- EXTEND cell, the expected identity key is the one given in the cell.) If
- the key is not as expected, the party must close the connection.
- All parties SHOULD reject connections to or from ORs that have malformed
- or missing certificates. ORs MAY accept or reject connections from OPs
- with malformed or missing certificates.
- Once a TLS connection is established, the two sides send cells
- (specified below) to one another. Cells are sent serially. All
- cells are CELL_LEN bytes long. Cells may be sent embedded in TLS
- records of any size or divided across TLS records, but the framing
- of TLS records MUST NOT leak information about the type or contents
- of the cells.
- TLS connections are not permanent. An OP or an OR may close a
- connection to an OR if there are no circuits running over the
- connection, and an amount of time (KeepalivePeriod, defaults to 5
- minutes) has passed.
- (As an exception, directory servers may try to stay connected to all of
- the ORs -- though this will be phased out for the Tor 0.1.2.x release.)
- 3. Cell Packet format
- The basic unit of communication for onion routers and onion
- proxies is a fixed-width "cell". Each cell contains the following
- fields:
- CircID [2 bytes]
- Command [1 byte]
- Payload (padded with 0 bytes) [CELL_LEN-3 bytes]
- [Total size: CELL_LEN bytes]
- The CircID field determines which circuit, if any, the cell is
- associated with.
- The 'Command' field holds one of the following values:
- 0 -- PADDING (Padding) (See Sec 6.2)
- 1 -- CREATE (Create a circuit) (See Sec 4.1)
- 2 -- CREATED (Acknowledge create) (See Sec 4.1)
- 3 -- RELAY (End-to-end data) (See Sec 4.5 and 5)
- 4 -- DESTROY (Stop using a circuit) (See Sec 4.4)
- 5 -- CREATE_FAST (Create a circuit, no PK) (See Sec 4.1)
- 6 -- CREATED_FAST (Circuit created, no PK) (See Sec 4.1)
- 7 -- HELLO (Introduce the OR) (See Sec 7.1)
- The interpretation of 'Payload' depends on the type of the cell.
- PADDING: Payload is unused.
- CREATE: Payload contains the handshake challenge.
- CREATED: Payload contains the handshake response.
- RELAY: Payload contains the relay header and relay body.
- DESTROY: Payload contains a reason for closing the circuit.
- (see 4.4)
- Upon receiving any other value for the command field, an OR must
- drop the cell.
- The payload is padded with 0 bytes.
- PADDING cells are currently used to implement connection keepalive.
- If there is no other traffic, ORs and OPs send one another a PADDING
- cell every few minutes.
- CREATE, CREATED, and DESTROY cells are used to manage circuits;
- see section 4 below.
- RELAY cells are used to send commands and data along a circuit; see
- section 5 below.
- HELLO cells are used to introduce parameters and characteristics of
- Tor clients and servers when connections are established.
- 4. Circuit management
- 4.1. CREATE and CREATED cells
- Users set up circuits incrementally, one hop at a time. To create a
- new circuit, OPs send a CREATE cell to the first node, with the
- first half of the DH handshake; that node responds with a CREATED
- cell with the second half of the DH handshake plus the first 20 bytes
- of derivative key data (see section 4.2). To extend a circuit past
- the first hop, the OP sends an EXTEND relay cell (see section 5)
- which instructs the last node in the circuit to send a CREATE cell
- to extend the circuit.
- The payload for a CREATE cell is an 'onion skin', which consists
- of the first step of the DH handshake data (also known as g^x).
- This value is hybrid-encrypted (see 0.3) to Bob's public key, giving
- an onion-skin of:
- PK-encrypted:
- Padding padding [PK_PAD_LEN bytes]
- Symmetric key [KEY_LEN bytes]
- First part of g^x [PK_ENC_LEN-PK_PAD_LEN-KEY_LEN bytes]
- Symmetrically encrypted:
- Second part of g^x [DH_LEN-(PK_ENC_LEN-PK_PAD_LEN-KEY_LEN)
- bytes]
- The relay payload for an EXTEND relay cell consists of:
- Address [4 bytes]
- Port [2 bytes]
- Onion skin [DH_LEN+KEY_LEN+PK_PAD_LEN bytes]
- Identity fingerprint [HASH_LEN bytes]
- The port and address field denote the IPV4 address and port of the next
- onion router in the circuit; the public key hash is the hash of the PKCS#1
- ASN1 encoding of the next onion router's identity (signing) key. (See 0.3
- above.) (Including this hash allows the extending OR verify that it is
- indeed connected to the correct target OR, and prevents certain
- man-in-the-middle attacks.)
- The payload for a CREATED cell, or the relay payload for an
- EXTENDED cell, contains:
- DH data (g^y) [DH_LEN bytes]
- Derivative key data (KH) [HASH_LEN bytes] <see 4.2 below>
- The CircID for a CREATE cell is an arbitrarily chosen 2-byte integer,
- selected by the node (OP or OR) that sends the CREATE cell. To prevent
- CircID collisions, when one OR sends a CREATE cell to another, it chooses
- from only one half of the possible values based on the ORs' public
- identity keys: if the sending OR has a lower key, it chooses a CircID with
- an MSB of 0; otherwise, it chooses a CircID with an MSB of 1.
- Public keys are compared numerically by modulus.
- As usual with DH, x and y MUST be generated randomly.
- 4.1.1. CREATE_FAST/CREATED_FAST cells
- When initializing the first hop of a circuit, the OP has already
- established the OR's identity and negotiated a secret key using TLS.
- Because of this, it is not always necessary for the OP to perform the
- public key operations to create a circuit. In this case, the
- OP MAY send a CREATE_FAST cell instead of a CREATE cell for the first
- hop only. The OR responds with a CREATED_FAST cell, and the circuit is
- created.
- A CREATE_FAST cell contains:
- Key material (X) [HASH_LEN bytes]
- A CREATED_FAST cell contains:
- Key material (Y) [HASH_LEN bytes]
- Derivative key data [HASH_LEN bytes] (See 4.2 below)
- The values of X and Y must be generated randomly.
- [Versions of Tor before 0.1.0.6-rc did not support these cell types;
- clients should not send CREATE_FAST cells to older Tor servers.]
- 4.2. Setting circuit keys
- Once the handshake between the OP and an OR is completed, both can
- now calculate g^xy with ordinary DH. Before computing g^xy, both client
- and server MUST verify that the received g^x or g^y value is not degenerate;
- that is, it must be strictly greater than 1 and strictly less than p-1
- where p is the DH modulus. Implementations MUST NOT complete a handshake
- with degenerate keys. Implementations MUST NOT discard other "weak"
- g^x values.
- (Discarding degenerate keys is critical for security; if bad keys
- are not discarded, an attacker can substitute the server's CREATED
- cell's g^y with 0 or 1, thus creating a known g^xy and impersonating
- the server. Discarding other keys may allow attacks to learn bits of
- the private key.)
- (The mainline Tor implementation, in the 0.1.1.x-alpha series, discarded
- all g^x values less than 2^24, greater than p-2^24, or having more than
- 1024-16 identical bits. This served no useful purpose, and we stopped.)
- If CREATE or EXTEND is used to extend a circuit, the client and server
- base their key material on K0=g^xy, represented as a big-endian unsigned
- integer.
- If CREATE_FAST is used, the client and server base their key material on
- K0=X|Y.
- From the base key material K0, they compute KEY_LEN*2+HASH_LEN*3 bytes of
- derivative key data as
- K = H(K0 | [00]) | H(K0 | [01]) | H(K0 | [02]) | ...
- The first HASH_LEN bytes of K form KH; the next HASH_LEN form the forward
- digest Df; the next HASH_LEN 41-60 form the backward digest Db; the next
- KEY_LEN 61-76 form Kf, and the final KEY_LEN form Kb. Excess bytes from K
- are discarded.
- KH is used in the handshake response to demonstrate knowledge of the
- computed shared key. Df is used to seed the integrity-checking hash
- for the stream of data going from the OP to the OR, and Db seeds the
- integrity-checking hash for the data stream from the OR to the OP. Kf
- is used to encrypt the stream of data going from the OP to the OR, and
- Kb is used to encrypt the stream of data going from the OR to the OP.
- 4.3. Creating circuits
- When creating a circuit through the network, the circuit creator
- (OP) performs the following steps:
- 1. Choose an onion router as an exit node (R_N), such that the onion
- router's exit policy includes at least one pending stream that
- needs a circuit (if there are any).
- 2. Choose a chain of (N-1) onion routers
- (R_1...R_N-1) to constitute the path, such that no router
- appears in the path twice.
- 3. If not already connected to the first router in the chain,
- open a new connection to that router.
- 4. Choose a circID not already in use on the connection with the
- first router in the chain; send a CREATE cell along the
- connection, to be received by the first onion router.
- 5. Wait until a CREATED cell is received; finish the handshake
- and extract the forward key Kf_1 and the backward key Kb_1.
- 6. For each subsequent onion router R (R_2 through R_N), extend
- the circuit to R.
- To extend the circuit by a single onion router R_M, the OP performs
- these steps:
- 1. Create an onion skin, encrypted to R_M's public key.
- 2. Send the onion skin in a relay EXTEND cell along
- the circuit (see section 5).
- 3. When a relay EXTENDED cell is received, verify KH, and
- calculate the shared keys. The circuit is now extended.
- When an onion router receives an EXTEND relay cell, it sends a CREATE
- cell to the next onion router, with the enclosed onion skin as its
- payload. The initiating onion router chooses some circID not yet
- used on the connection between the two onion routers. (But see
- section 4.1. above, concerning choosing circIDs based on
- lexicographic order of nicknames.)
- When an onion router receives a CREATE cell, if it already has a
- circuit on the given connection with the given circID, it drops the
- cell. Otherwise, after receiving the CREATE cell, it completes the
- DH handshake, and replies with a CREATED cell. Upon receiving a
- CREATED cell, an onion router packs it payload into an EXTENDED relay
- cell (see section 5), and sends that cell up the circuit. Upon
- receiving the EXTENDED relay cell, the OP can retrieve g^y.
- (As an optimization, OR implementations may delay processing onions
- until a break in traffic allows time to do so without harming
- network latency too greatly.)
- 4.4. Tearing down circuits
- Circuits are torn down when an unrecoverable error occurs along
- the circuit, or when all streams on a circuit are closed and the
- circuit's intended lifetime is over. Circuits may be torn down
- either completely or hop-by-hop.
- To tear down a circuit completely, an OR or OP sends a DESTROY
- cell to the adjacent nodes on that circuit, using the appropriate
- direction's circID.
- Upon receiving an outgoing DESTROY cell, an OR frees resources
- associated with the corresponding circuit. If it's not the end of
- the circuit, it sends a DESTROY cell for that circuit to the next OR
- in the circuit. If the node is the end of the circuit, then it tears
- down any associated edge connections (see section 5.1).
- After a DESTROY cell has been processed, an OR ignores all data or
- destroy cells for the corresponding circuit.
- To tear down part of a circuit, the OP may send a RELAY_TRUNCATE cell
- signaling a given OR (Stream ID zero). That OR sends a DESTROY
- cell to the next node in the circuit, and replies to the OP with a
- RELAY_TRUNCATED cell.
- When an unrecoverable error occurs along one connection in a
- circuit, the nodes on either side of the connection should, if they
- are able, act as follows: the node closer to the OP should send a
- RELAY_TRUNCATED cell towards the OP; the node farther from the OP
- should send a DESTROY cell down the circuit.
- The payload of a RELAY_TRUNCATED or DESTROY cell contains a single octet,
- describing why the circuit is being closed or truncated. When sending a
- TRUNCATED or DESTROY cell because of another TRUNCATED or DESTROY cell,
- the error code should be propagated. The origin of a circuit always sets
- this error code to 0, to avoid leaking its version.
- The error codes are:
- 0 -- NONE (No reason given.)
- 1 -- PROTOCOL (Tor protocol violation.)
- 2 -- INTERNAL (Internal error.)
- 3 -- REQUESTED (A client sent a TRUNCATE command.)
- 4 -- HIBERNATING (Not currently operating; trying to save bandwidth.)
- 5 -- RESOURCELIMIT (Out of memory, sockets, or circuit IDs.)
- 6 -- CONNECTFAILED (Unable to reach server.)
- 7 -- OR_IDENTITY (Connected to server, but its OR identity was not
- as expected.)
- 8 -- OR_CONN_CLOSED (The OR connection that was carrying this circuit
- died.)
- [Versions of Tor prior to 0.1.0.11 didn't send reasons; implementations
- MUST accept empty TRUNCATED and DESTROY cells.]
- 4.5. Routing relay cells
- When an OR receives a RELAY cell, it checks the cell's circID and
- determines whether it has a corresponding circuit along that
- connection. If not, the OR drops the RELAY cell.
- Otherwise, if the OR is not at the OP edge of the circuit (that is,
- either an 'exit node' or a non-edge node), it de/encrypts the payload
- with the stream cipher, as follows:
- 'Forward' relay cell (same direction as CREATE):
- Use Kf as key; decrypt.
- 'Back' relay cell (opposite direction from CREATE):
- Use Kb as key; encrypt.
- Note that in counter mode, decrypt and encrypt are the same operation.
- The OR then decides whether it recognizes the relay cell, by
- inspecting the payload as described in section 5.1 below. If the OR
- recognizes the cell, it processes the contents of the relay cell.
- Otherwise, it passes the decrypted relay cell along the circuit if
- the circuit continues. If the OR at the end of the circuit
- encounters an unrecognized relay cell, an error has occurred: the OR
- sends a DESTROY cell to tear down the circuit.
- When a relay cell arrives at an OP, the OP decrypts the payload
- with the stream cipher as follows:
- OP receives data cell:
- For I=N...1,
- Decrypt with Kb_I. If the payload is recognized (see
- section 5.1), then stop and process the payload.
- For more information, see section 5 below.
- 5. Application connections and stream management
- 5.1. Relay cells
- Within a circuit, the OP and the exit node use the contents of
- RELAY packets to tunnel end-to-end commands and TCP connections
- ("Streams") across circuits. End-to-end commands can be initiated
- by either edge; streams are initiated by the OP.
- The payload of each unencrypted RELAY cell consists of:
- Relay command [1 byte]
- 'Recognized' [2 bytes]
- StreamID [2 bytes]
- Digest [4 bytes]
- Length [2 bytes]
- Data [CELL_LEN-14 bytes]
- The relay commands are:
- 1 -- RELAY_BEGIN [forward]
- 2 -- RELAY_DATA [forward or backward]
- 3 -- RELAY_END [forward or backward]
- 4 -- RELAY_CONNECTED [backward]
- 5 -- RELAY_SENDME [forward or backward]
- 6 -- RELAY_EXTEND [forward]
- 7 -- RELAY_EXTENDED [backward]
- 8 -- RELAY_TRUNCATE [forward]
- 9 -- RELAY_TRUNCATED [backward]
- 10 -- RELAY_DROP [forward or backward]
- 11 -- RELAY_RESOLVE [forward]
- 12 -- RELAY_RESOLVED [backward]
- Commands labelled as "forward" must only be sent by the originator
- of the circuit. Commands labelled as "backward" must only be sent by
- other nodes in the circuit back to the originator. Commands marked
- as either can be sent either by the originator or other nodes.
- The 'recognized' field in any unencrypted relay payload is always set
- to zero; the 'digest' field is computed as the first four bytes of
- the running digest of all the bytes that have been destined for
- this hop of the circuit or originated from this hop of the circuit,
- seeded from Df or Db respectively (obtained in section 4.2 above),
- and including this RELAY cell's entire payload (taken with the digest
- field set to zero).
- When the 'recognized' field of a RELAY cell is zero, and the digest
- is correct, the cell is considered "recognized" for the purposes of
- decryption (see section 4.5 above).
- (The digest does not include any bytes from relay cells that do
- not start or end at this hop of the circuit. That is, it does not
- include forwarded data. Therefore if 'recognized' is zero but the
- digest does not match, the running digest at that node should
- not be updated, and the cell should be forwarded on.)
- All RELAY cells pertaining to the same tunneled stream have the
- same stream ID. StreamIDs are chosen arbitrarily by the OP. RELAY
- cells that affect the entire circuit rather than a particular
- stream use a StreamID of zero.
- The 'Length' field of a relay cell contains the number of bytes in
- the relay payload which contain real payload data. The remainder of
- the payload is padded with NUL bytes.
- If the RELAY cell is recognized but the relay command is not
- understood, the cell must be dropped and ignored. Its contents
- still count with respect to the digests, though. [Before
- 0.1.1.10, Tor closed circuits when it received an unknown relay
- command. Perhaps this will be more forward-compatible. -RD]
- 5.2. Opening streams and transferring data
- To open a new anonymized TCP connection, the OP chooses an open
- circuit to an exit that may be able to connect to the destination
- address, selects an arbitrary StreamID not yet used on that circuit,
- and constructs a RELAY_BEGIN cell with a payload encoding the address
- and port of the destination host. The payload format is:
- ADDRESS | ':' | PORT | [00]
- where ADDRESS can be a DNS hostname, or an IPv4 address in
- dotted-quad format, or an IPv6 address surrounded by square brackets;
- and where PORT is encoded in decimal.
- [What is the [00] for? -NM]
- [It's so the payload is easy to parse out with string funcs -RD]
- Upon receiving this cell, the exit node resolves the address as
- necessary, and opens a new TCP connection to the target port. If the
- address cannot be resolved, or a connection can't be established, the
- exit node replies with a RELAY_END cell. (See 5.4 below.)
- Otherwise, the exit node replies with a RELAY_CONNECTED cell, whose
- payload is in one of the following formats:
- The IPv4 address to which the connection was made [4 octets]
- A number of seconds (TTL) for which the address may be cached [4 octets]
- or
- Four zero-valued octets [4 octets]
- An address type (6) [1 octet]
- The IPv6 address to which the connection was made [16 octets]
- A number of seconds (TTL) for which the address may be cached [4 octets]
- [XXXX Versions of Tor before 0.1.1.6 ignore and do not generate the TTL
- field. No version of Tor currently generates the IPv6 format.
- Tor servers before 0.1.2.0 set the TTL field to a fixed value. Later
- versions set the TTL to the last value seen from a DNS server, and expire
- their own cached entries after a fixed interval. This prevents certain
- attacks.]
- The OP waits for a RELAY_CONNECTED cell before sending any data.
- Once a connection has been established, the OP and exit node
- package stream data in RELAY_DATA cells, and upon receiving such
- cells, echo their contents to the corresponding TCP stream.
- RELAY_DATA cells sent to unrecognized streams are dropped.
- Relay RELAY_DROP cells are long-range dummies; upon receiving such
- a cell, the OR or OP must drop it.
- 5.3. Closing streams
- When an anonymized TCP connection is closed, or an edge node
- encounters error on any stream, it sends a 'RELAY_END' cell along the
- circuit (if possible) and closes the TCP connection immediately. If
- an edge node receives a 'RELAY_END' cell for any stream, it closes
- the TCP connection completely, and sends nothing more along the
- circuit for that stream.
- The payload of a RELAY_END cell begins with a single 'reason' byte to
- describe why the stream is closing, plus optional data (depending on
- the reason.) The values are:
- 1 -- REASON_MISC (catch-all for unlisted reasons)
- 2 -- REASON_RESOLVEFAILED (couldn't look up hostname)
- 3 -- REASON_CONNECTREFUSED (remote host refused connection) [*]
- 4 -- REASON_EXITPOLICY (OR refuses to connect to host or port)
- 5 -- REASON_DESTROY (Circuit is being destroyed)
- 6 -- REASON_DONE (Anonymized TCP connection was closed)
- 7 -- REASON_TIMEOUT (Connection timed out, or OR timed out
- while connecting)
- 8 -- (unallocated) [**]
- 9 -- REASON_HIBERNATING (OR is temporarily hibernating)
- 10 -- REASON_INTERNAL (Internal error at the OR)
- 11 -- REASON_RESOURCELIMIT (OR has no resources to fulfill request)
- 12 -- REASON_CONNRESET (Connection was unexpectedly reset)
- 13 -- REASON_TORPROTOCOL (Sent when closing connection because of
- Tor protocol violations.)
- (With REASON_EXITPOLICY, the 4-byte IPv4 address or 16-byte IPv6 address
- forms the optional data; no other reason currently has extra data.
- As of 0.1.1.6, the body also contains a 4-byte TTL.)
- OPs and ORs MUST accept reasons not on the above list, since future
- versions of Tor may provide more fine-grained reasons.
- [*] Older versions of Tor also send this reason when connections are
- reset.
- [**] Due to a bug in versions of Tor through 0095, error reason 8 must
- remain allocated until that version is obsolete.
- --- [The rest of this section describes unimplemented functionality.]
- Because TCP connections can be half-open, we follow an equivalent
- to TCP's FIN/FIN-ACK/ACK protocol to close streams.
- An exit connection can have a TCP stream in one of three states:
- 'OPEN', 'DONE_PACKAGING', and 'DONE_DELIVERING'. For the purposes
- of modeling transitions, we treat 'CLOSED' as a fourth state,
- although connections in this state are not, in fact, tracked by the
- onion router.
- A stream begins in the 'OPEN' state. Upon receiving a 'FIN' from
- the corresponding TCP connection, the edge node sends a 'RELAY_FIN'
- cell along the circuit and changes its state to 'DONE_PACKAGING'.
- Upon receiving a 'RELAY_FIN' cell, an edge node sends a 'FIN' to
- the corresponding TCP connection (e.g., by calling
- shutdown(SHUT_WR)) and changing its state to 'DONE_DELIVERING'.
- When a stream in already in 'DONE_DELIVERING' receives a 'FIN', it
- also sends a 'RELAY_FIN' along the circuit, and changes its state
- to 'CLOSED'. When a stream already in 'DONE_PACKAGING' receives a
- 'RELAY_FIN' cell, it sends a 'FIN' and changes its state to
- 'CLOSED'.
- If an edge node encounters an error on any stream, it sends a
- 'RELAY_END' cell (if possible) and closes the stream immediately.
- 5.4. Remote hostname lookup
- To find the address associated with a hostname, the OP sends a
- RELAY_RESOLVE cell containing the hostname to be resolved. (For a reverse
- lookup, the OP sends a RELAY_RESOLVE cell containing an in-addr.arpa
- address.) The OR replies with a RELAY_RESOLVED cell containing a status
- byte, and any number of answers. Each answer is of the form:
- Type (1 octet)
- Length (1 octet)
- Value (variable-width)
- TTL (4 octets)
- "Length" is the length of the Value field.
- "Type" is one of:
- 0x00 -- Hostname
- 0x04 -- IPv4 address
- 0x06 -- IPv6 address
- 0xF0 -- Error, transient
- 0xF1 -- Error, nontransient
- If any answer has a type of 'Error', then no other answer may be given.
- The RELAY_RESOLVE cell must use a nonzero, distinct streamID; the
- corresponding RELAY_RESOLVED cell must use the same streamID. No stream
- is actually created by the OR when resolving the name.
- 6. Flow control
- 6.1. Link throttling
- Each node should do appropriate bandwidth throttling to keep its
- user happy.
- Communicants rely on TCP's default flow control to push back when they
- stop reading.
- 6.2. Link padding
- Currently nodes are not required to do any sort of link padding or
- dummy traffic. Because strong attacks exist even with link padding,
- and because link padding greatly increases the bandwidth requirements
- for running a node, we plan to leave out link padding until this
- tradeoff is better understood.
- 6.3. Circuit-level flow control
- To control a circuit's bandwidth usage, each OR keeps track of
- two 'windows', consisting of how many RELAY_DATA cells it is
- allowed to package for transmission, and how many RELAY_DATA cells
- it is willing to deliver to streams outside the network.
- Each 'window' value is initially set to 1000 data cells
- in each direction (cells that are not data cells do not affect
- the window). When an OR is willing to deliver more cells, it sends a
- RELAY_SENDME cell towards the OP, with Stream ID zero. When an OR
- receives a RELAY_SENDME cell with stream ID zero, it increments its
- packaging window.
- Each of these cells increments the corresponding window by 100.
- The OP behaves identically, except that it must track a packaging
- window and a delivery window for every OR in the circuit.
- An OR or OP sends cells to increment its delivery window when the
- corresponding window value falls under some threshold (900).
- If a packaging window reaches 0, the OR or OP stops reading from
- TCP connections for all streams on the corresponding circuit, and
- sends no more RELAY_DATA cells until receiving a RELAY_SENDME cell.
- [this stuff is badly worded; copy in the tor-design section -RD]
- 6.4. Stream-level flow control
- Edge nodes use RELAY_SENDME cells to implement end-to-end flow
- control for individual connections across circuits. Similarly to
- circuit-level flow control, edge nodes begin with a window of cells
- (500) per stream, and increment the window by a fixed value (50)
- upon receiving a RELAY_SENDME cell. Edge nodes initiate RELAY_SENDME
- cells when both a) the window is <= 450, and b) there are less than
- ten cell payloads remaining to be flushed at that edge.
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