121-hidden-service-authentication.txt 40 KB

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  1. Filename: 121-hidden-service-authentication.txt
  2. Title: Hidden Service Authentication
  3. Version: $Revision$
  4. Last-Modified: $Date$
  5. Author: Tobias Kamm, Thomas Lauterbach, Karsten Loesing, Ferdinand Rieger,
  6. Christoph Weingarten
  7. Created: 10-Sep-2007
  8. Status: Open
  9. Target: 0.2.1.x
  10. Change history:
  11. 26-Sep-2007 Initial proposal for or-dev
  12. 08-Dec-2007 Incorporated comments by Nick posted to or-dev on 10-Oct-2007
  13. 15-Dec-2007 Rewrote complete proposal for better readability, modified
  14. authentication protocol, merged in personal notes
  15. 24-Dec-2007 Replaced misleading term "authentication" by "authorization"
  16. and added some clarifications (comments by Sven Kaffille)
  17. 28-Apr-2008 Updated most parts of the concrete authorization protocol
  18. 04-Jul-2008 Add a simple algorithm to delay descriptor publication for
  19. different clients of a hidden service
  20. 19-Jul-2008 Added INTRODUCE1V cell type (1.2), improved replay
  21. protection for INTRODUCE2 cells (1.3), described limitations
  22. for auth protocols (1.6), improved hidden service protocol
  23. without client authorization (2.1), added second, more
  24. scalable authorization protocol (2.2), rewrote existing
  25. authorization protocol (2.3); changes based on discussion
  26. with Nick
  27. 31-Jul-2008 Limit maximum descriptor size to 20 kilobytes to prevent
  28. abuse.
  29. 01-Aug-2008 Use first part of Diffie-Hellman handshake for replay
  30. protection instead of rendezvous cookie.
  31. 01-Aug-2008 Remove improved hidden service protocol without client
  32. authorization (2.1). It might get implemented in proposal
  33. 142.
  34. Overview:
  35. This proposal deals with a general infrastructure for performing
  36. authorization (not necessarily implying authentication) of requests to
  37. hidden services at three points: (1) when downloading and decrypting
  38. parts of the hidden service descriptor, (2) at the introduction point,
  39. and (3) at Bob's Tor client before contacting the rendezvous point. A
  40. service provider will be able to restrict access to his service at these
  41. three points to authorized clients only. Further, the proposal contains
  42. specific authorization protocols as instances that implement the
  43. presented authorization infrastructure.
  44. This proposal is based on v2 hidden service descriptors as described in
  45. proposal 114 and introduced in version 0.2.0.10-alpha.
  46. The proposal is structured as follows: The next section motivates the
  47. integration of authorization mechanisms in the hidden service protocol.
  48. Then we describe a general infrastructure for authorization in hidden
  49. services, followed by specific authorization protocols for this
  50. infrastructure. At the end we discuss a number of attacks and non-attacks
  51. as well as compatibility issues.
  52. Motivation:
  53. The major part of hidden services does not require client authorization
  54. now and won't do so in the future. To the contrary, many clients would
  55. not want to be (pseudonymously) identifiable by the service (though this
  56. is unavoidable to some extent), but rather use the service
  57. anonymously. These services are not addressed by this proposal.
  58. However, there may be certain services which are intended to be accessed
  59. by a limited set of clients only. A possible application might be a
  60. wiki or forum that should only be accessible for a closed user group.
  61. Another, less intuitive example might be a real-time communication
  62. service, where someone provides a presence and messaging service only to
  63. his buddies. Finally, a possible application would be a personal home
  64. server that should be remotely accessed by its owner.
  65. Performing authorization for a hidden service within the Tor network, as
  66. proposed here, offers a range of advantages compared to allowing all
  67. client connections in the first instance and deferring authorization to
  68. the transported protocol:
  69. (1) Reduced traffic: Unauthorized requests would be rejected as early as
  70. possible, thereby reducing the overall traffic in the network generated
  71. by establishing circuits and sending cells.
  72. (2) Better protection of service location: Unauthorized clients could not
  73. force Bob to create circuits to their rendezvous points, thus preventing
  74. the attack described by Øverlier and Syverson in their paper "Locating
  75. Hidden Servers" even without the need for guards.
  76. (3) Hiding activity: Apart from performing the actual authorization, a
  77. service provider could also hide the mere presence of his service from
  78. unauthorized clients when not providing hidden service descriptors to
  79. them, rejecting unauthorized requests already at the introduction
  80. point (ideally without leaking presence information at any of these
  81. points), or not answering unauthorized introduction requests.
  82. (4) Better protection of introduction points: When providing hidden
  83. service descriptors to authorized clients only and encrypting the
  84. introduction points as described in proposal 114, the introduction points
  85. would be unknown to unauthorized clients and thereby protected from DoS
  86. attacks.
  87. (5) Protocol independence: Authorization could be performed for all
  88. transported protocols, regardless of their own capabilities to do so.
  89. (6) Ease of administration: A service provider running multiple hidden
  90. services would be able to configure access at a single place uniformly
  91. instead of doing so for all services separately.
  92. (7) Optional QoS support: Bob could adapt his node selection algorithm
  93. for building the circuit to Alice's rendezvous point depending on a
  94. previously guaranteed QoS level, thus providing better latency or
  95. bandwidth for selected clients.
  96. A disadvantage of performing authorization within the Tor network is
  97. that a hidden service cannot make use of authorization data in
  98. the transported protocol. Tor hidden services were designed to be
  99. independent of the transported protocol. Therefore it's only possible to
  100. either grant or deny access to the whole service, but not to specific
  101. resources of the service.
  102. Authorization often implies authentication, i.e. proving one's identity.
  103. However, when performing authorization within the Tor network, untrusted
  104. points should not gain any useful information about the identities of
  105. communicating parties, neither server nor client. A crucial challenge is
  106. to remain anonymous towards directory servers and introduction points.
  107. However, trying to hide identity from the hidden service is a futile
  108. task, because a client would never know if he is the only authorized
  109. client and therefore perfectly identifiable. Therefore, hiding client
  110. identity from the hidden service is not aimed by this proposal.
  111. The current implementation of hidden services does not provide any kind
  112. of authorization. The hidden service descriptor version 2, introduced by
  113. proposal 114, was designed to use a descriptor cookie for downloading and
  114. decrypting parts of the descriptor content, but this feature is not yet
  115. in use. Further, most relevant cell formats specified in rend-spec
  116. contain fields for authorization data, but those fields are neither
  117. implemented nor do they suffice entirely.
  118. Details:
  119. 1. General infrastructure for authorization to hidden services
  120. We spotted three possible authorization points in the hidden service
  121. protocol:
  122. (1) when downloading and decrypting parts of the hidden service
  123. descriptor,
  124. (2) at the introduction point, and
  125. (3) at Bob's Tor client before contacting the rendezvous point.
  126. The general idea of this proposal is to allow service providers to
  127. restrict access to some or all of these points to authorized clients
  128. only.
  129. 1.1. Client authorization at directory
  130. Since the implementation of proposal 114 it is possible to combine a
  131. hidden service descriptor with a so-called descriptor cookie. If done so,
  132. the descriptor cookie becomes part of the descriptor ID, thus having an
  133. effect on the storage location of the descriptor. Someone who has learned
  134. about a service, but is not aware of the descriptor cookie, won't be able
  135. to determine the descriptor ID and download the current hidden service
  136. descriptor; he won't even know whether the service has uploaded a
  137. descriptor recently. Descriptor IDs are calculated as follows (see
  138. section 1.2 of rend-spec for the complete specification of v2 hidden
  139. service descriptors):
  140. descriptor-id =
  141. H(service-id | H(time-period | descriptor-cookie | replica))
  142. Currently, service-id is equivalent to permanent-id which is calculated
  143. as in the following formula. But in principle it could be any public
  144. key.
  145. permanent-id = H(permanent-key)[:10]
  146. The second purpose of the descriptor cookie is to encrypt the list of
  147. introduction points, including optional authorization data. Hence, the
  148. hidden service directories won't learn any introduction information from
  149. storing a hidden service descriptor. This feature is implemented but
  150. unused at the moment, so that this proposal will harness the advantages
  151. of proposal 114.
  152. The descriptor cookie can be used for authorization by keeping it secret
  153. from everyone but authorized clients. A service could then decide whether
  154. to publish hidden service descriptors using that descriptor cookie later
  155. on. An authorized client being aware of the descriptor cookie would be
  156. able to download and decrypt the hidden service descriptor.
  157. The number of concurrently used descriptor cookies for one hidden service
  158. is not restricted. A service could use a single descriptor cookie for all
  159. users, a distinct cookie per user, or something in between, like one
  160. cookie per group of users. It is up to the specific protocol and how it
  161. is applied by a service provider.
  162. Two or more hidden service descriptors for different groups or users
  163. should not be uploaded at the same time. A directory node could conclude
  164. easily that the descriptors, were issued by the same hidden service, thus
  165. being able to link the two groups or users. Therefore, descriptors for
  166. different users or clients that ought to be stored on the same directory
  167. are delayed, so that only one descriptor is uploaded to a directory at a
  168. time. The remaining descriptors are uploaded with a delay of 30 seconds.
  169. Further, descriptors for different groups or users that are to be stored
  170. on different directories are delayed for a random time of up to 30
  171. seconds to hide relations from colluding directories. Certainly, this
  172. does not prevent linking entirely, but it makes it somewhat harder.
  173. There is a conflict between hiding links between clients and making a
  174. service available in a timely manner.
  175. Although this part of the proposal is meant to describe a general
  176. infrastructure for authorization, changing the way of using the
  177. descriptor cookie to look up hidden service descriptors, e.g. applying
  178. some sort of asymmetric crypto system, would require in-depth changes
  179. that would be incompatible to v2 hidden service descriptors. On the
  180. contrary, using another key for en-/decrypting the introduction point
  181. part of a hidden service descriptor, e.g. a different symmetric key or
  182. asymmetric encryption, would be easy to implement and compatible to v2
  183. hidden service descriptors as understood by hidden service directories
  184. (clients and servers would have to be upgraded anyway for using the new
  185. features).
  186. An adversary could try to abuse the fact that introduction points can be
  187. encrypted by storing arbitrary, unrelated data in the hidden service
  188. directory. This abuse can be limited by setting a hard descriptor size
  189. limit, forcing the adversary to split data into multiple chunks. There
  190. are some limitations that make splitting data across multiple descriptors
  191. unattractive: 1) The adversary would not be able to choose descriptor IDs
  192. freely and have to implement an own indexing structure. 2) Validity of
  193. descriptors is limited to at most 24 hours after which descriptors need
  194. to be republished.
  195. The regular descriptor size in bytes is 745 + num_ipos * 837 + auth_data.
  196. A large descriptor with 7 introduction points and 5 kilobytes of
  197. authorization data would be 11724 bytes in size. The upper size limit of
  198. descriptors should be set to 20 kilobytes, which limits the effect of
  199. abuse while retaining enough flexibility in designing authorization
  200. protocols.
  201. 1.2. Client authorization at introduction point
  202. The next possible authorization point after downloading and decrypting
  203. a hidden service descriptor is the introduction point. It may be important
  204. for authorization, because it bears the last chance of hiding presence
  205. of a hidden service from unauthorized clients. Further, performing
  206. authorization at the introduction point might reduce traffic in the
  207. network, because unauthorized requests would not be passed to the
  208. hidden service. This applies to those clients who are aware of a
  209. descriptor cookie and thereby of the hidden service descriptor, but do
  210. not have authorization data to pass the introduction point or access the
  211. service (such a situation might occur when authorization data for
  212. authorization at the directory is not issued on a per-user base as
  213. opposed to authorization data for authorization at the introduction
  214. point).
  215. It is important to note that the introduction point must be considered
  216. untrustworthy, and therefore cannot replace authorization at the hidden
  217. service itself. Nor should the introduction point learn any sensitive
  218. identifiable information from either server or client.
  219. In order to perform authorization at the introduction point, three
  220. message formats need to be modified: (1) v2 hidden service descriptors,
  221. (2) ESTABLISH_INTRO cells, and (3) INTRODUCE1 cells.
  222. A v2 hidden service descriptor needs to contain authorization data that
  223. is introduction-point-specific and sometimes also authorization data
  224. that is introduction-point-independent. Therefore, v2 hidden service
  225. descriptors as specified in section 1.2 of rend-spec already contain two
  226. reserved fields "intro-authorization" and "service-authorization"
  227. (originally, the names of these fields were "...-authentication")
  228. containing an authorization type number and arbitrary authorization
  229. data. We propose that authorization data consists of base64 encoded
  230. objects of arbitrary length, surrounded by "-----BEGIN MESSAGE-----" and
  231. "-----END MESSAGE-----". This will increase the size of hidden service
  232. descriptors, which however is possible, as there is no strict upper
  233. limit.
  234. The current ESTABLISH_INTRO cells as described in section 1.3 of
  235. rend-spec do not contain either authorization data or version
  236. information. Therefore, we propose a new version 1 of the ESTABLISH_INTRO
  237. cells adding these two issues as follows:
  238. V Format byte: set to 255 [1 octet]
  239. V Version byte: set to 1 [1 octet]
  240. KL Key length [2 octets]
  241. PK Bob's public key [KL octets]
  242. HS Hash of session info [20 octets]
  243. AUTHT The auth type that is supported [1 octet]
  244. AUTHL Length of auth data [2 octets]
  245. AUTHD Auth data [variable]
  246. SIG Signature of above information [variable]
  247. From the format it is possible to determine the maximum allowed size for
  248. authorization data: given the fact that cells are 512 octets long, of
  249. which 498 octets are usable (see section 6.1 of tor-spec), and assuming
  250. 1024 bit = 128 octet long keys, there are 215 octets left for
  251. authorization data. Hence, authorization protocols are bound to use no
  252. more than these 215 octets, regardless of the number of clients that
  253. shall be authenticated at the introduction point. Otherwise, one would
  254. need to send multiple ESTABLISH_INTRO cells or split them up, what we do
  255. not specify here.
  256. In order to understand a v1 ESTABLISH_INTRO cell, the implementation of
  257. a relay must have a certain Tor version. Hidden services need to be able
  258. to distinguish relays being capable of understanding the new v1 cell
  259. formats and perform authorization. We propose to use the version number
  260. that is contained in networkstatus documents to find capable
  261. introduction points.
  262. The current INTRODUCE1 cells as described in section 1.8 of rend-spec is
  263. not designed to carry authorization data and has no version number, too.
  264. Unfortunately, unversioned INTRODUCE1 cells consist only of a fixed-size,
  265. seemingly random PK_ID, followed by the encrypted INTRODUCE2 cell. This
  266. makes it impossible to distinguish unversioned INTRODUCE1 cells from any
  267. later format. In particular, it is not possible to introduce some kind of
  268. format and version byte for newer versions of this cell. That's probably
  269. where the comment "[XXX011 want to put intro-level auth info here, but no
  270. version. crap. -RD]" that was part of rend-spec some time ago comes from.
  271. We propose that new versioned INTRODUCE1 cells use the new cell type 41
  272. RELAY_INTRODUCE1V (where V stands for versioned):
  273. Cleartext
  274. V Version byte: set to 1 [1 octet]
  275. PK_ID Identifier for Bob's PK [20 octets]
  276. AUTHT The auth type that is supported [1 octet]
  277. AUTHL Length of auth data [2 octets]
  278. AUTHD Auth data [variable]
  279. Encrypted to Bob's PK:
  280. (RELAY_INTRODUCE2 cell)
  281. The maximum length of contained authorization data depends on the length
  282. of the contained INTRODUCE2 cell. A calculation follows below when
  283. describing the INTRODUCE2 cell format we propose to use.
  284. 1.3. Client authorization at hidden service
  285. The time when a hidden service receives an INTRODUCE2 cell constitutes
  286. the last possible authorization point during the hidden service
  287. protocol. Performing authorization here is easier than at the other two
  288. authorization points, because there are no possibly untrusted entities
  289. involved.
  290. In general, a client that is successfully authorized at the introduction
  291. point should be granted access at the hidden service, too. Otherwise, the
  292. client would receive a positive INTRODUCE_ACK cell from the introduction
  293. point and conclude that it may connect to the service, but the request
  294. will be dropped without notice. This would appear as a failure to
  295. clients. Therefore, the number of cases in which a client successfully
  296. passes the introduction point, but fails at the hidden service should be
  297. zero. However, this does not lead to the conclusion, that the
  298. authorization data used at the introduction point and the hidden service
  299. must be the same, but only that both authorization data should lead to
  300. the same authorization result.
  301. Authorization data is transmitted from client to server via an
  302. INTRODUCE2 cell that is forwarded by the introduction point. There are
  303. versions 0 to 2 specified in section 1.8 of rend-spec, but none of these
  304. contains fields for carrying authorization data. We propose a slightly
  305. modified version of v3 INTRODUCE2 cells that is specified in section
  306. 1.8.1 and which is not implemented as of December 2007. In contrast to
  307. the specified v3 we avoid specifying (and implementing) IPv6 capabilities,
  308. because Tor relays will be required to support IPv4 addresses for a long
  309. time in the future, so that this seems unnecessary at the moment. The
  310. proposed format of v3 INTRODUCE2 cells is as follows:
  311. VER Version byte: set to 3. [1 octet]
  312. AUTHT The auth type that is used [1 octet]
  313. AUTHL Length of auth data [2 octets]
  314. AUTHD Auth data [variable]
  315. TS Timestamp (seconds since 1-1-1970) [4 octets]
  316. IP Rendezvous point's address [4 octets]
  317. PORT Rendezvous point's OR port [2 octets]
  318. ID Rendezvous point identity ID [20 octets]
  319. KLEN Length of onion key [2 octets]
  320. KEY Rendezvous point onion key [KLEN octets]
  321. RC Rendezvous cookie [20 octets]
  322. g^x Diffie-Hellman data, part 1 [128 octets]
  323. The maximum possible length of authorization data is related to the
  324. enclosing INTRODUCE1V cell. A v3 INTRODUCE2 cell with
  325. 1024 bit = 128 octets long public keys without any authorization data
  326. occupies 306 octets (AUTHL is only used when AUTHT has a value != 0),
  327. plus 58 octets for hybrid public key encryption (see
  328. section 5.1 of tor-spec on hybrid encryption of CREATE cells). The
  329. surrounding INTRODUCE1V cell requires 24 octets. This leaves only 110
  330. of the 498 available octets free, which must be shared between
  331. authorization data to the introduction point _and_ to the hidden
  332. service.
  333. When receiving a v3 INTRODUCE2 cell, Bob checks whether a client has
  334. provided valid authorization data to him. He also requires that the
  335. timestamp is no more than 30 minutes in the past or future and that the
  336. first part of the Diffie-Hellman handshake has not been used in the past
  337. 60 minutes to prevent replay attacks by rogue introduction points. (The
  338. reason for not using the rendezvous cookie to detect replays---even
  339. though it is only sent once in the current design---is that it might be
  340. desirable to re-use rendezvous cookies for multiple introduction requests
  341. in the future.) If all checks pass, Bob builds a circuit to the provided
  342. rendezvous point and otherwise drops the cell.
  343. 1.4. Summary of authorization data fields
  344. In summary, the proposed descriptor format and cell formats provide the
  345. following fields for carrying authorization data:
  346. (1) The v2 hidden service descriptor contains:
  347. - a descriptor cookie that is used for the lookup process, and
  348. - an arbitrary encryption schema to ensure authorization to access
  349. introduction information (currently symmetric encryption with the
  350. descriptor cookie).
  351. (2) For performing authorization at the introduction point we can use:
  352. - the fields intro-authorization and service-authorization in
  353. hidden service descriptors,
  354. - a maximum of 215 octets in the ESTABLISH_INTRO cell, and
  355. - one part of 110 octets in the INTRODUCE1V cell.
  356. (3) For performing authorization at the hidden service we can use:
  357. - the fields intro-authorization and service-authorization in
  358. hidden service descriptors,
  359. - the other part of 110 octets in the INTRODUCE2 cell.
  360. It will also still be possible to access a hidden service without any
  361. authorization or only use a part of the authorization infrastructure.
  362. However, this requires to consider all parts of the infrastructure. For
  363. example, authorization at the introduction point relying on confidential
  364. intro-authorization data transported in the hidden service descriptor
  365. cannot be performed without using an encryption schema for introduction
  366. information.
  367. 1.5. Managing authorization data at servers and clients
  368. In order to provide authorization data at the hidden server and the
  369. authenticated clients, we propose to use files---either the tor
  370. configuration file or separate files. The exact format of these special
  371. files depends on the authorization protocol used.
  372. Currently, rend-spec contains the proposition to encode client-side
  373. authorization data in the URL, like in x.y.z.onion. This was never used
  374. and is also a bad idea, because in case of HTTP the requested URL may be
  375. contained in the Host and Referer fields.
  376. 1.6. Limitations for authorization protocols
  377. There are two limitations of the current hidden service protocol for
  378. authorization protocols that shall be identified here.
  379. 1. The three cell types ESTABLISH_INTRO, INTRODUCE1V, and INTRODUCE2
  380. restricts the amount of data that can be used for authorization.
  381. This forces authorization protocols that require per-user
  382. authorization data at the introduction point to restrict the number
  383. of authorized clients artifically. A possible solution could be to
  384. split contents among multiple cells and reassemble them at the
  385. introduction points.
  386. 2. The current hidden service protocol does not specify cell types to
  387. perform interactive authorization between client and introduction
  388. point or hidden service. If there should be an authorization
  389. protocol that requires interaction, new cell types would have to be
  390. defined and integrated into the hidden service protocol.
  391. 2. Specific authorization protocol instances
  392. In the following we present two specific authorization protocols that
  393. make use of (parts of) the new authorization infrastructure:
  394. 1. The first protocol allows a service provider to restrict access
  395. to clients with a previously received secret key only, but does not
  396. attempt to hide service activity from others.
  397. 2. The second protocol, albeit being feasible for a limited set of about
  398. 16 clients, performs client authorization and hides service activity
  399. from everyone but the authorized clients.
  400. These two protocol instances are intended to extend existing hidden
  401. service protocol versions 0 and 2 and shall therefore be considered
  402. hidden service protocol version 3. All changes in this version 3 are
  403. designed to be fully backward-compatible to version 2 and can be run in
  404. parallel to version 0.
  405. 2.1. Service with large-scale client authorization
  406. The first client authorization protocol aims at performing access control
  407. while consuming as little additional resources as possible. A service
  408. provider should be able to permit access to a large number of clients
  409. while denying access for everyone else. However, the price for
  410. scalability is that the service won't be able to hide its activity from
  411. unauthorized or formerly authorized clients.
  412. The main idea of this protocol is to encrypt the introduction-point part
  413. in hidden service descriptors to authorized clients using symmetric keys.
  414. This ensures that nobody else but authorized clients can learn which
  415. introduction points a service currently uses, nor can someone send a
  416. valid INTRODUCE1 message without knowing the introduction key. Therefore,
  417. a subsequent authorization at the introduction point is not required.
  418. A service provider generates symmetric "descriptor cookies" for his
  419. clients and distributes them outside of Tor. The suggested key size is
  420. 128 bits, so that descriptor cookies can be encoded in 22 base64 chars
  421. (which can hold up to 22 * 5 = 132 bits, leaving 4 bits to encode the
  422. authorization type "1" and allow a client to distinguish this
  423. authorization protocol from others like the one proposed below).
  424. Typically, the contact information for a hidden service using this
  425. authorization protocol looks like this:
  426. v2cbb2l4lsnpio4q.onion Ll3X7Xgz9eHGKCCnlFH0uz
  427. When generating a hidden service descriptor, the service encrypts the
  428. introduction-point part with a single randomly generated symmetric
  429. 128-bit session key using AES-CTR as described for v2 hidden service
  430. descriptors in rend-spec. Afterwards, the service encrypts the session
  431. key to all descriptor cookies using AES.
  432. ### What would be a simple solution to include n encrypted session keys
  433. ### in the descriptor? The format may be binary and has no strict upper
  434. ### size limit. An authorized client should be able to efficiently find
  435. ### the session key that is encrypted for him/her. It should be
  436. ### impossible to track certain authorized clients over time by finding
  437. ### that the session key was encrypted for them in different descriptors.
  438. ### It should be hard to determine the exact number of authorized
  439. ### clients.
  440. ###
  441. ### Here comes the voodoo I've conceived:
  442. ###
  443. ### ATYPE Authorization type: set to 1. [1 octet]
  444. ### ALEN Number of authorized clients div 16 [1 octet]
  445. ### for each symmetric descriptor cookie:
  446. ### ID Client ID: H(descriptor cookie | IV)[:4] [4 octets]
  447. ### SKEY Session key encrypted with descriptor cookie [16 octets]
  448. ### (end of client-specific part)
  449. ### RND Random data [(16 - (number-of-clients mod 16)) * 20 octets]
  450. ### IV AES initialization vector [16 octets]
  451. ### IPOS Intro points, encrypted with session key [remaining octets]
  452. An authorized client needs to configure Tor to use the descriptor cookie
  453. when accessing the hidden service. Therefore, a user adds the contact
  454. information that she received from the service provider to her torrc
  455. file. Upon downloading a hidden service descriptor, Tor finds the
  456. encrypted introduction-point part and attempts to decrypt it using the
  457. configured descriptor cookie. (In the rare event of two or more client
  458. IDs being equal a client tries to decrypt all of them.)
  459. Upon sending the introduction, the client includes her descriptor cookie
  460. as auth type "1" in the INTRODUCE2 cell that she sends to the service.
  461. The hidden service checks whether the included descriptor cookie is
  462. authorized to access the service and either responds to the introduction
  463. request, or not.
  464. 2.2. Authorization for limited number of clients
  465. A second, more sophisticated client authorization protocol goes the extra
  466. mile of hiding service activity from unauthorized clients. With all else
  467. being equal to the preceding authorization protocol, the second protocol
  468. publishes hidden service descriptors for each user separately and gets
  469. along with encrypting the introduction-point part of descriptors to a
  470. single client. This allows the service to stop publishing descriptors for
  471. removed clients. As long as a removed client cannot link descriptors
  472. issued for other clients to the service, it cannot derive service
  473. activity any more. The downside of this approach is limited scalability.
  474. Even though the distributed storage of descriptors (cf. proposal 114)
  475. tackles the problem of limited scalability to a certain extent, this
  476. protocol should not be used for services with more than 16 clients. (In
  477. fact, Tor should refuse to advertise services for more than this number
  478. of clients.)
  479. A hidden service generates an asymmetric "client key" and a symmetric
  480. "descriptor cookie" for each client. The client key is used as
  481. replacement for the service's permanent key, so that the service uses a
  482. different identity for each of his clients. The descriptor cookie is used
  483. to store descriptors at changing directory nodes that are unpredictable
  484. for anyone but service and client, to encrypt the introduction-point
  485. part, and to be included in INTRODUCE2 cells. Once the service has
  486. created client key and descriptor cookie, he tells them to the client
  487. outside of Tor. The contact information string looks similar to the one
  488. used by the preceding authorization protocol (with the only difference
  489. that it has "2" encoded as auth-type in the remaining 4 of 132 bits
  490. instead of "1" as before).
  491. When creating a hidden service descriptor for an authorized client, the
  492. hidden service uses the client key and descriptor cookie to compute
  493. secret ID part and descriptor ID:
  494. secret-id-part = H(time-period | descriptor-cookie | replica)
  495. descriptor-id = H(client-key[:10] | secret-id-part)
  496. The hidden service also replaces permanent-key in the descriptor with
  497. client-key and encrypts introduction-points with the descriptor cookie.
  498. ATYPE Authorization type: set to 2. [1 octet]
  499. IV AES initialization vector [16 octets]
  500. IPOS Intro points, encr. with descriptor cookie [remaining octets]
  501. When uploading descriptors, the hidden service needs to make sure that
  502. descriptors for different clients are not uploaded at the same time (cf.
  503. Section 1.1) which is also a limiting factor for the number of clients.
  504. When a client is requested to establish a connection to a hidden service
  505. it looks up whether it has any authorization data configured for that
  506. service. If the user has configured authorization data for authorization
  507. protocol "2", the descriptor ID is determined as described in the last
  508. paragraph. Upon receiving a descriptor, the client decrypts the
  509. introduction-point part using its descriptor cookie. Further, the client
  510. includes its descriptor cookie as auth-type "2" in INTRODUCE2 cells that
  511. it sends to the service.
  512. 2.3. Hidden service configuration
  513. A hidden service that implements this proposal and that is meant to use
  514. the new protocols adds version 3 to the list of supported hidden service
  515. protocols:
  516. HiddenServiceVersion version,version,... (Default: 0, 2, 3)
  517. If the service shall perform client authorization, another config option
  518. is set to either "1" for the protocol described in 2.1 or "2" for the
  519. protocol in 2.2. This config option also includes a comma-separated list
  520. of human-readable client names, so that Tor can create authorization data
  521. for these clients:
  522. HiddenServiceAuthorizeClient auth-type client-name,client-name,...
  523. If this option is configured, HiddenServiceVersion is automatically
  524. reconfigured to contain only version numbers of 3 or higher.
  525. Tor stores all generated authorization data for the authorization
  526. protocols described in Sections 2.1 and 2.2 in a new file using the
  527. following file format:
  528. "client-name" human-readable client identifier NL
  529. "descriptor-cookie" 128-bit key ^= 22 base64 chars NL
  530. If the authorization protocol of Section 2.2 is used, Tor also generates
  531. and stores the following data:
  532. "service-address" client-specific-onion-address NL
  533. "client-key" NL a public key in PEM format
  534. 2.4. Client configuration
  535. Clients need to make their authorization data known to Tor using another
  536. configuration option that contains a service name (mainly for the sake of
  537. convenience), the service address, and the descriptor cookie that is
  538. required to access a hidden service (the authorization protocol number is
  539. encoded in the descriptor cookie):
  540. HidServAuth service-name service-address descriptor-cookie
  541. Security implications:
  542. In the following we want to discuss possible attacks by dishonest
  543. entities in the presented infrastructure and specific protocol. These
  544. security implications would have to be verified once more when adding
  545. another protocol. The dishonest entities (theoretically) include the
  546. hidden server itself, the authenticated clients, hidden service directory
  547. nodes, introduction points, and rendezvous points. The relays that are
  548. part of circuits used during protocol execution, but never learn about
  549. the exchanged descriptors or cells by design, are not considered.
  550. Obviously, this list makes no claim to be complete. The discussed attacks
  551. are sorted by the difficulty to perform them, in ascending order,
  552. starting with roles that everyone could attempt to take and ending with
  553. partially trusted entities abusing the trust put in them.
  554. (1) A hidden service directory could attempt to conclude presence of a
  555. server from the existence of a locally stored hidden service descriptor:
  556. This passive attack is possible only for a single client-service
  557. relation, because descriptors need to contain a
  558. publicly visible signature of the server using the client key
  559. A possible protection
  560. would be to increase the number of hidden service directories in the
  561. network.
  562. (2) A hidden service directory could try to break the descriptor cookies
  563. of locally stored descriptors: This attack can be performed offline. The
  564. only useful countermeasure against it might be using safe passwords that
  565. are generated by Tor.
  566. (3) An introduction point could try to identify the pseudonym of the
  567. hidden service on behalf of which it operates: This is impossible by
  568. design, because the service uses a fresh public key for every
  569. establishment of an introduction point (see proposal 114) and the
  570. introduction point receives a fresh introduction cookie, so that there is
  571. no identifiable information about the service that the introduction point
  572. could learn. The introduction point cannot even tell if client accesses
  573. belong to the same client or not, nor can it know the total number of
  574. authorized clients. The only information might be the pattern of
  575. anonymous client accesses, but that is hardly enough to reliably identify
  576. a specific service.
  577. (4) An introduction point could want to learn the identities of accessing
  578. clients: This is also impossible by design, because all clients use the
  579. same introduction cookie for authorization at the introduction point.
  580. (5) An introduction point could try to replay a correct INTRODUCE1 cell
  581. to other introduction points of the same service, e.g. in order to force
  582. the service to create a huge number of useless circuits: This attack is
  583. not possible by design, because INTRODUCE1 cells are encrypted using a
  584. freshly created introduction key that is only known to authorized
  585. clients.
  586. (6) An introduction point could attempt to replay a correct INTRODUCE2
  587. cell to the hidden service, e.g. for the same reason as in the last
  588. attack: This attack is very limited by the fact that a server will only
  589. accept 3 INTRODUCE2 cells containing the same rendezvous cookie and drop
  590. all further replayed cells.
  591. (7) An introduction point could block client requests by sending either
  592. positive or negative INTRODUCE_ACK cells back to the client, but without
  593. forwarding INTRODUCE2 cells to the server: This attack is an annoyance
  594. for clients, because they might wait for a timeout to elapse until trying
  595. another introduction point. However, this attack is not introduced by
  596. performing authorization and it cannot be targeted towards a specific
  597. client. A countermeasure might be for the server to periodically perform
  598. introduction requests to his own service to see if introduction points
  599. are working correctly.
  600. (8) The rendezvous point could attempt to identify either server or
  601. client: This remains impossible as it was before, because the
  602. rendezvous cookie does not contain any identifiable information.
  603. (9) An authenticated client could swamp the server with valid INTRODUCE1
  604. and INTRODUCE2 cells, e.g. in order to force the service to create
  605. useless circuits to rendezvous points; as opposed to an introduction
  606. point replaying the same INTRODUCE2 cell, a client could include a new
  607. rendezvous cookie for every request: The countermeasure for this attack
  608. is the restriction to 10 connection establishments per client and hour.
  609. Compatibility:
  610. An implementation of this proposal would require changes to hidden
  611. servers and clients to process authorization data and encode and
  612. understand the new formats. However, both servers and clients would
  613. remain compatible to regular hidden services without authorization.
  614. Implementation:
  615. The implementation of this proposal can be divided into a number of
  616. changes to hidden service and client side. There are no
  617. changes necessary on directory, introduction, or rendezvous nodes. All
  618. changes are marked with either [service] or [client] do denote on which
  619. side they need to be made.
  620. /1/ Configure client authorization [service]
  621. - Parse configuration option HiddenServiceAuthorizeClient containing
  622. authorized client names.
  623. - Load previously created client keys and descriptor cookies.
  624. - Generate missing client keys and descriptor cookies, add them to
  625. client_keys file.
  626. - Rewrite the hostname file.
  627. - Keep client keys and descriptor cookies of authorized clients in
  628. memory.
  629. [- In case of reconfiguration, mark which client authorizations were
  630. added and whether any were removed. This can be used later when
  631. deciding whether to rebuild introduction points and publish new
  632. hidden service descriptors. Not implemented yet.]
  633. /2/ Publish hidden service descriptors [service]
  634. - Create and upload hidden service descriptors for all authorized
  635. clients.
  636. [- See /1/ for the case of reconfiguration.]
  637. /3/ Configure permission for hidden services [client]
  638. - Parse configuration option HidServAuth containing service
  639. authorization, store authorization data in memory.
  640. /5/ Fetch hidden service descriptors [client]
  641. - Look up client authorization upon receiving a hidden service request.
  642. - Request hidden service descriptor ID including client key and
  643. descriptor cookie. Only request v2 descriptors, no v0.
  644. /6/ Process hidden service descriptor [client]
  645. - Decrypt introduction points with descriptor cookie.
  646. /7/ Create introduction request [client]
  647. - Include descriptor cookie in INTRODUCE2 cell to introduction point.
  648. - Pass descriptor cookie around between involved connections and
  649. circuits.
  650. /8/ Process introduction request [service]
  651. - Read descriptor cookie from INTRODUCE2 cell.
  652. - Check whether descriptor cookie is authorized for access, including
  653. checking access counters.
  654. - Log access for accountability.