roadmap-future.tex 30 KB

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  12. \begin{document}
  13. \title{Tor Development Roadmap: Wishlist for 2008 and beyond}
  14. \author{Roger Dingledine \and Nick Mathewson}
  15. \maketitle
  16. \pagestyle{plain}
  17. % TO DO:
  18. % add cites
  19. % add time estimates
  20. \section{Introduction}
  21. Tor (the software) and Tor (the overall software/network/support/document
  22. suite) are now experiencing all the crises of success. Over the next
  23. years, we're probably going to grow more in terms of users, developers,
  24. and funding than before. This document attempts to lay out all the
  25. well-understood next steps that Tor needs to take. We should periodically
  26. reorganize it to reflect current and intended priorities.
  27. \section{Code and design infrastructure}
  28. \subsection{Protocol revision}
  29. To maintain backward compatibility, we've postponed major protocol
  30. changes and redesigns for a long time. Because of this, there are a number
  31. of sensible revisions we've been putting off until we could deploy several of
  32. them at once. To do each of these, we first need to discuss design
  33. alternatives with other cryptographers and outside collaborators to
  34. make sure that our choices are secure.
  35. First of all, our protocol needs better {\bf versioning support} so that we
  36. can make backward-incompatible changes to our core protocol. There are
  37. difficult anonymity issues here, since many naive designs would make it easy
  38. to tell clients apart (and then track them) based on their supported versions.
  39. With protocol versioning support would come the ability to {\bf future-proof
  40. our ciphersuites}. For example, not only our OR protocol, but also our
  41. directory protocol, is pretty firmly tied to the SHA-1 hash function, which
  42. though not yet known to be insecure for our purposes, has begun to show
  43. its age. We should
  44. remove assumptions throughout our design based on the assumption that public
  45. keys, secret keys, or digests will remain any particular size indefinitely.
  46. Our OR {\bf authentication protocol}, though provably
  47. secure\cite{tap:pet2006}, relies more on particular aspects of RSA and our
  48. implementation thereof than we had initially believed. To future-proof
  49. against changes, we should replace it with a less delicate approach.
  50. \plan{For all the above: 2 person-months to specify, spread over several
  51. months with time for interaction with external participants. One
  52. person-month to implement. Start specifying in early 2007.}
  53. We might design a {\bf stream migration} feature so that streams tunneled
  54. over Tor could be more resilient to dropped connections and changed IPs.
  55. \plan{Not in 2007.}
  56. A new protocol could support {\bf multiple cell sizes}. Right now, all data
  57. passes through the Tor network divided into 512-byte cells. This is
  58. efficient for high-bandwidth protocols, but inefficient for protocols
  59. like SSH or AIM that send information in small chunks. Of course, we need to
  60. investigate the extent to which multiple sizes could make it easier for an
  61. adversary to fingerprint a traffic pattern. \plan{Not in 2007.}
  62. As a part of our design, we should investigate possible {\bf cipher modes}
  63. other than counter mode. For example, a mode with built-in integrity
  64. checking, error propagation, and random access could simplify our protocol
  65. significantly. Sadly, many of these are patented and unavailable for us.
  66. \plan{Not in 2007.}
  67. \subsection{Scalability}
  68. \subsubsection{Improved directory efficiency}
  69. We should {\bf have routers upload their descriptors even less often}, so
  70. that clients do not need to download replacements every 18 hours whether any
  71. information has changed or not. (As of Tor 0.1.2.3-alpha, clients tolerate
  72. routers that don't upload often, but routers still upload at least every 18
  73. hours to support older clients.) \plan{Must do, but not until 0.1.1.x is
  74. deprecated in mid 2007. 1 week.}
  75. \subsubsection{Non-clique topology}
  76. Our current network design achieves a certain amount of its anonymity by
  77. making clients act like each other through the simple expedient of making
  78. sure that all clients know all servers, and that any server can talk to any
  79. other server. But as the number of servers increases to serve an
  80. ever-greater number of clients, these assumptions become impractical.
  81. At worst, if these scalability issues become troubling before a solution is
  82. found, we can design and build a solution to {\bf split the network into
  83. multiple slices} until a better solution comes along. This is not ideal,
  84. since rather than looking like all other users from a point of view of path
  85. selection, users would ``only'' look like 200,000--300,000 other
  86. users.\plan{Not unless needed.}
  87. We are in the process of designing {\bf improved schemes for network
  88. scalability}. Some approaches focus on limiting what an adversary can know
  89. about what a user knows; others focus on reducing the extent to which an
  90. adversary can exploit this knowledge. These are currently in their infancy,
  91. and will probably not be needed in 2007, but they must be designed in 2007 if
  92. they are to be deployed in 2008.\plan{Design in 2007; unknown difficulty.
  93. Write a paper.}
  94. \subsubsection{Relay incentives}
  95. To support more users on the network, we need to get more servers. So far,
  96. we've relied on volunteerism to attract server operators, and so far it's
  97. served us well. But in the long run, we need to {\bf design incentives for
  98. users to run servers} and relay traffic for others. Most obviously, we
  99. could try to build the network so that servers offered improved service for
  100. other servers, but we would need to do so without weakening anonymity and
  101. making it obvious which connections originate from users running servers. We
  102. have some preliminary designs~\cite{incentives-txt,tor-challenges},
  103. but need to perform
  104. some more research to make sure they would be safe and effective.\plan{Write
  105. a draft paper; 2 person-months.}
  106. (XXX we did that)
  107. \subsection{Portability}
  108. Our {\bf Windows implementation}, though much improved, continues to lag
  109. behind Unix and Mac OS X, especially when running as a server. We hope to
  110. merge promising patches from Christian King to address this point, and bring
  111. Windows performance on par with other platforms.\plan{Do in 2007; 1.5 months
  112. to integrate not counting Mike's work.}
  113. We should have {\bf better support for portable devices}, including modes of
  114. operation that require less RAM, and that write to disk less frequently (to
  115. avoid wearing out flash RAM).\plan{Optional; 2 weeks.}
  116. \subsection{Performance: resource usage}
  117. We've been working on {\bf using less RAM}, especially on servers. This has
  118. paid off a lot for directory caches in the 0.1.2, which in some cases are
  119. using 90\% less memory than they used to require. But we can do better,
  120. especially in the area around our buffer management algorithms, by using an
  121. approach more like the BSD and Linux kernels use instead of our current ring
  122. buffer approach. (For OR connections, we can just use queues of cell-sized
  123. chunks produced with a specialized allocator.) This could potentially save
  124. around 25 to 50\% of the memory currently allocated for network buffers, and
  125. make Tor a more attractive proposition for restricted-memory environments
  126. like old computers, mobile devices, and the like.\plan{Do in 2007; 2-3 weeks
  127. plus one week measurement.} (XXX We did this, but we need to do something
  128. more/else.)
  129. \subsection{Performance: network usage}
  130. We know too little about how well our current path
  131. selection algorithms actually spread traffic around the network in practice.
  132. We should {\bf research the efficacy of our traffic allocation} and either
  133. assure ourselves that it is close enough to optimal as to need no improvement
  134. (unlikely) or {\bf identify ways to improve network usage}, and get more
  135. users' traffic delivered faster. Performing this research will require
  136. careful thought about anonymity implications.
  137. We should also {\bf examine the efficacy of our congestion control
  138. algorithm}, and see whether we can improve client performance in the
  139. presence of a congested network through dynamic `sendme' window sizes or
  140. other means. This will have anonymity implications too if we aren't careful.
  141. \plan{For both of the above: research, design and write
  142. a measurement tool in 2007: 1 month. See if we can interest a graduate
  143. student.}
  144. We should work on making Tor's cell-based protocol perform better on
  145. networks with low bandwidth
  146. and high packet loss.\plan{Do in 2007 if we're funded to do it; 4-6 weeks.}
  147. \subsection{Performance scenario: one Tor client, many users}
  148. We should {\bf improve Tor's performance when a single Tor handles many
  149. clients}. Many organizations want to manage a single Tor client on their
  150. firewall for many users, rather than having each user install a separate
  151. Tor client. We haven't optimized for this scenario, and it is likely that
  152. there are some code paths in the current implementation that become
  153. inefficient when a single Tor is servicing hundreds or thousands of client
  154. connections. (Additionally, it is likely that such clients have interesting
  155. anonymity requirements the we should investigate.) We should profile Tor
  156. under appropriate loads, identify bottlenecks, and fix them.\plan{Do in 2007
  157. if we're funded to do it; 4-8 weeks.}
  158. \subsection{Tor servers on asymmetric bandwidth}
  159. Tor should work better on servers that have asymmetric connections like cable
  160. or DSL. Because Tor has separate TCP connections between each
  161. hop, if the incoming bytes are arriving just fine and the outgoing bytes are
  162. all getting dropped on the floor, the TCP push-back mechanisms don't really
  163. transmit this information back to the incoming streams.\plan{Do in 2007 since
  164. related to bandwidth limiting. 3-4 weeks.}
  165. \subsection{Running Tor as both client and server}
  166. Many performance tradeoffs and balances that might need more attention.
  167. We first need to track and fix whatever bottlenecks emerge; but we also
  168. need to invent good algorithms for prioritizing the client's traffic
  169. without starving the server's traffic too much.\plan{No idea; try
  170. profiling and improving things in 2007.}
  171. \subsection{Protocol redesign for UDP}
  172. Tor has relayed only TCP traffic since its first versions, and has used
  173. TLS-over-TCP to do so. This approach has proved reliable and flexible, but
  174. in the long term we will need to allow UDP traffic on the network, and switch
  175. some or all of the network to using a UDP transport. {\bf Supporting UDP
  176. traffic} will make Tor more suitable for protocols that require UDP, such
  177. as many VOIP protocols. {\bf Using a UDP transport} could greatly reduce
  178. resource limitations on servers, and make the network far less interruptible
  179. by lossy connections. Either of these protocol changes would require a great
  180. deal of design work, however. We hope to be able to enlist the aid of a few
  181. talented graduate students to assist with the initial design and
  182. specification, but the actual implementation will require significant testing
  183. of different reliable transport approaches.\plan{Maybe do a design in 2007 if
  184. we find an interested academic. Ian or Ben L might be good partners here.}
  185. \section{Blocking resistance}
  186. \subsection{Design for blocking resistance}
  187. We have written a design document explaining our general approach to blocking
  188. resistance. We should workshop it with other experts in the field to get
  189. their ideas about how we can improve Tor's efficacy as an anti-censorship
  190. tool.
  191. \subsection{Implementation: client-side and bridges-side}
  192. Bridges will want to be able to {\bf listen on multiple addresses and ports}
  193. if they can, to give the adversary more ports to block.
  194. \subsection{Research: anonymity implications from becoming a bridge}
  195. see arma's bridge proposal; e.g. should bridge users use a second layer of
  196. entry guards?
  197. \subsection{Implementation: bridge authority}
  198. we run some
  199. directory authorities with a slightly modified protocol that doesn't leak
  200. the entire list of bridges. Thus users can learn up-to-date information
  201. for bridges they already know about, but they can't learn about arbitrary
  202. new bridges.
  203. we need a design for distributing the bridge authority over more than one
  204. server
  205. \subsection{Normalizing the Tor protocol on the wire}
  206. Additionally, we should {\bf resist content-based filters}. Though an
  207. adversary can't see what users are saying, some aspects of our protocol are
  208. easy to fingerprint {\em as} Tor. We should correct this where possible.
  209. Look like Firefox; or look like nothing?
  210. Future research: investigate timing similarities with other protocols.
  211. \subsection{Research: scanning-resistance}
  212. \subsection{Research/Design/Impl: how users discover bridges}
  213. Our design anticipates an arms race between discovery methods and censors.
  214. We need to begin the infrastructure on our side quickly, preferably in a
  215. flexible language like Python, so we can adapt quickly to censorship.
  216. phase one: personal bridges
  217. phase two: families of personal bridges
  218. phase three: more structured social network
  219. phase four: bag of tricks
  220. Research: phase five...
  221. Integration with Psiphon, etc?
  222. \subsection{Document best practices for users}
  223. Document best practices for various activities common among
  224. blocked users (e.g. WordPress use).
  225. \subsection{Research: how to know if a bridge has been blocked?}
  226. \subsection{GeoIP maintenance, and "private" user statistics}
  227. How to know if the whole idea is working?
  228. \subsection{Research: hiding whether the user is reading or publishing?}
  229. \subsection{Research: how many bridges do you need to know to maintain
  230. reachability?}
  231. \subsection{Resisting censorship of the Tor website, docs, and mirrors}
  232. We should take some effort to consider {\bf initial distribution of Tor and
  233. related information} in countries where the Tor website and mirrors are
  234. censored. (Right now, most countries that block access to Tor block only the
  235. main website and leave mirrors and the network itself untouched.) Falling
  236. back on word-of-mouth is always a good last resort, but we should also take
  237. steps to make sure it's relatively easy for users to get ahold of a copy.
  238. \section{Security}
  239. \subsection{Security research projects}
  240. We should investigate approaches with some promise to help Tor resist
  241. end-to-end traffic correlation attacks. It's an open research question
  242. whether (and to what extent) {\bf mixed-latency} networks, {\bf low-volume
  243. long-distance padding}, or other approaches can resist these attacks, which
  244. are currently some of the most effective against careful Tor users. We
  245. should research these questions and perform simulations to identify
  246. opportunities for strengthening our design without dropping performance to
  247. unacceptable levels. %Cite something
  248. \plan{Start doing this in 2007; write a paper. 8-16 weeks.}
  249. We've got some preliminary results suggesting that {\bf a topology-aware
  250. routing algorithm}~\cite{feamster:wpes2004} could reduce Tor users'
  251. vulnerability against local or ISP-level adversaries, by ensuring that they
  252. are never in a position to watch both ends of a connection. We need to
  253. examine the effects of this approach in more detail and consider side-effects
  254. on anonymity against other kinds of adversaries. If the approach still looks
  255. promising, we should investigate ways for clients to implement it (or an
  256. approximation of it) without having to download routing tables for the whole
  257. Internet. \plan{Not in 2007 unless a graduate student wants to do it.}
  258. %\tmp{defenses against end-to-end correlation} We don't expect any to work
  259. %right now, but it would be useful to learn that one did. Alternatively,
  260. %proving that one didn't would free up researchers in the field to go work on
  261. %other things.
  262. %
  263. % See above; I think I got this.
  264. We should research the efficacy of {\bf website fingerprinting} attacks,
  265. wherein an adversary tries to match the distinctive traffic and timing
  266. pattern of the resources constituting a given website to the traffic pattern
  267. of a user's client. These attacks work great in simulations, but in
  268. practice we hear they don't work nearly as well. We should get some actual
  269. numbers to investigate the issue, and figure out what's going on. If we
  270. resist these attacks, or can improve our design to resist them, we should.
  271. % add cites
  272. \plan{Possibly part of end-to-end correlation paper. Otherwise, not in 2007
  273. unless a graduate student is interested.}
  274. \subsection{Implementation security}
  275. We should also {\bf mark RAM that holds key material as non-swappable} so
  276. that there is no risk of recovering key material from a hard disk
  277. compromise. This would require submitting patches upstream to OpenSSL, where
  278. support for marking memory as sensitive is currently in a very preliminary
  279. state.\plan{Nice to do, but not in immediate Tor scope.}
  280. There are numerous tools for identifying trouble spots in code (such as
  281. Coverity or even VS2005's code analysis tool) and we should convince somebody
  282. to run some of them against the Tor codebase. Ideally, we could figure out a
  283. way to get our code checked periodically rather than just once.\plan{Almost
  284. no time once we talk somebody into it.}
  285. We should try {\bf protocol fuzzing} to identify errors in our
  286. implementation.\plan{Not in 2007 unless we find a grad student or
  287. undergraduate who wants to try.}
  288. Our guard nodes help prevent an attacker from being able to become a chosen
  289. client's entry point by having each client choose a few favorite entry points
  290. as ``guards'' and stick to them. We should implement a {\bf directory
  291. guards} feature to keep adversaries from enumerating Tor users by acting as
  292. a directory cache.\plan{Do in 2007; 2 weeks.}
  293. \subsection{Detect corrupt exits and other servers}
  294. With the success of our network, we've attracted servers in many locations,
  295. operated by many kinds of people. Unfortunately, some of these locations
  296. have compromised or defective networks, and some of these people are
  297. untrustworthy or incompetent. Our current design relies on authority
  298. administrators to identify bad nodes and mark them as nonfunctioning. We
  299. should {\bf automate the process of identifying malfunctioning nodes} as
  300. follows:
  301. We should create a generic {\bf feedback mechanism for add-on tools} like
  302. Mike Perry's ``Snakes on a Tor'' to report failing nodes to authorities.
  303. \plan{Do in 2006; 1-2 weeks.}
  304. We should write tools to {\bf detect more kinds of innocent node failure},
  305. such as nodes whose network providers intercept SSL, nodes whose network
  306. providers censor popular websites, and so on. We should also try to detect
  307. {\bf routers that snoop traffic}; we could do this by launching connections
  308. to throwaway accounts, and seeing which accounts get used.\plan{Do in 2007;
  309. ask Mike Perry if he's interested. 4-6 weeks.}
  310. We should add {\bf an efficient way for authorities to mark a set of servers
  311. as probably collaborating} though not necessarily otherwise dishonest.
  312. This happens when an administrator starts multiple routers, but doesn't mark
  313. them as belonging to the same family.\plan{Do during v2.1 directory protocol
  314. redesign; 1-2 weeks to implement.}
  315. To avoid attacks where an adversary claims good performance in order to
  316. attract traffic, we should {\bf have authorities measure node performance}
  317. (including stability and bandwidth) themselves, and not simply believe what
  318. they're told. We also measure stability by tracking MTBF. Measuring
  319. bandwidth will be tricky, since it's hard to distinguish between a server with
  320. low capacity, and a high-capacity server with most of its capacity in
  321. use. See also Nikita's NDSS 2008 paper.\plan{Do it if we can interest
  322. a grad student.}
  323. {\bf Operating a directory authority should be easier.} We rely on authority
  324. operators to keep the network running well, but right now their job involves
  325. too much busywork and administrative overhead. A better interface for them
  326. to use could free their time to work on exception cases rather than on
  327. adding named nodes to the network.\plan{Do in 2007; 4-5 weeks.}
  328. \subsection{Protocol security}
  329. In addition to other protocol changes discussed above,
  330. % And should we move some of them down here? -NM
  331. we should add {\bf hooks for denial-of-service resistance}; we have some
  332. preliminary designs, but we shouldn't postpone them until we really need them.
  333. If somebody tries a DDoS attack against the Tor network, we won't want to
  334. wait for all the servers and clients to upgrade to a new
  335. version.\plan{Research project; do this in 2007 if funded.}
  336. \section{Development infrastructure}
  337. \subsection{Build farm}
  338. We've begun to deploy a cross-platform distributed build farm of hosts
  339. that build and test the Tor source every time it changes in our development
  340. repository.
  341. We need to {\bf get more participants}, so that we can test a larger variety
  342. of platforms. (Previously, we've only found out when our code had broken on
  343. obscure platforms when somebody got around to building it.)
  344. We need also to {\bf add our dependencies} to the build farm, so that we can
  345. ensure that libraries we need (especially libevent) do not stop working on
  346. any important platform between one release and the next.
  347. \plan{This is ongoing as more buildbots arrive.}
  348. \subsection{Improved testing harness}
  349. Currently, our {\bf unit tests} cover only about 20\% of the code base. This
  350. is uncomfortably low; we should write more and switch to a more flexible
  351. testing framework.\plan{Ongoing basis, time permitting.}
  352. We should also write flexible {\bf automated single-host deployment tests} so
  353. we can more easily verify that the current codebase works with the
  354. network.\plan{Worthwhile in 2007; would save lots of time. 2-4 weeks.}
  355. We should build automated {\bf stress testing} frameworks so we can see which
  356. realistic loads cause Tor to perform badly, and regularly profile Tor against
  357. these loads. This would give us {\it in vitro} performance values to
  358. supplement our deployment experience.\plan{Worthwhile in 2007; 2-6 weeks.}
  359. We should improve our memory profiling code.\plan{...}
  360. \subsection{Centralized build system}
  361. We currently rely on a separate packager to maintain the packaging system and
  362. to build Tor on each platform for which we distribute binaries. Separate
  363. package maintainers is sensible, but separate package builders has meant
  364. long turnaround times between source releases and package releases. We
  365. should create the necessary infrastructure for us to produce binaries for all
  366. major packages within an hour or so of source release.\plan{We should
  367. brainstorm this at least in 2007.}
  368. \subsection{Improved metrics}
  369. We need a way to {\bf measure the network's health, capacity, and degree of
  370. utilization}. Our current means for doing this are ad hoc and not
  371. completely accurate
  372. We need better ways to {\bf tell which countries are users are coming from,
  373. and how many there are}. A good perspective of the network helps us
  374. allocate resources and identify trouble spots, but our current approaches
  375. will work less and less well as we make it harder for adversaries to
  376. enumerate users. We'll probably want to shift to a smarter, statistical
  377. approach rather than our current ``count and extrapolate'' method.
  378. \plan{All of this in 2007 if funded; 4-8 weeks}
  379. % \tmp{We'd like to know how much of the network is getting used.}
  380. % I think this is covered above -NM
  381. \subsection{Controller library}
  382. We've done lots of design and development on our controller interface, which
  383. allows UI applications and other tools to interact with Tor. We could
  384. encourage the development of more such tools by releasing a {\bf
  385. general-purpose controller library}, ideally with API support for several
  386. popular programming languages.\plan{2006 or 2007; 1-2 weeks.}
  387. \section{User experience}
  388. \subsection{Get blocked less, get blocked less broadly}
  389. Right now, some services block connections from the Tor network because
  390. they don't have a better
  391. way to keep vandals from abusing them than blocking IP addresses associated
  392. with vandalism. Our approach so far has been to educate them about better
  393. solutions that currently exist, but we should also {\bf create better
  394. solutions for limiting vandalism by anonymous users} like credential and
  395. blind-signature based implementations, and encourage their use. Other
  396. promising starting points including writing a patch and explanation for
  397. Wikipedia, and helping Freenode to document, maintain, and expand its
  398. current Tor-friendly position.\plan{Do a writeup here in 2007; 1-2 weeks.}
  399. Those who do block Tor users also block overbroadly, sometimes blacklisting
  400. operators of Tor servers that do not permit exit to their services. We could
  401. obviate innocent reasons for doing so by designing a {\bf narrowly-targeted Tor
  402. RBL service} so that those who wanted to overblock Tor could no longer
  403. plead incompetence.\plan{Possibly in 2007 if we decide it's a good idea; 3
  404. weeks.}
  405. \subsection{All-in-one bundle}
  406. We need a well-tested, well-documented bundle of Tor and supporting
  407. applications configured to use it correctly. We have an initial
  408. implementation well under way, but it will need additional work in
  409. identifying requisite Firefox extensions, identifying security threats,
  410. improving user experience, and so on. This will need significantly more work
  411. before it's ready for a general public release.
  412. \subsection{LiveCD Tor}
  413. We need a nice bootable livecd containing a minimal OS and a few applications
  414. configured to use it correctly. The Anonym.OS project demonstrated that this
  415. is quite feasible, but their project is not currently maintained.
  416. \subsection{A Tor client in a VM}
  417. \tmp{a.k.a JanusVM} which is quite related to the firewall-level deployment
  418. section below. JanusVM is a Linux kernel running in VMWare. It gets an IP
  419. address from the network, and serves as a DHCP server for its host Windows
  420. machine. It intercepts all outgoing traffic and redirects it into Privoxy,
  421. Tor, etc. This Linux-in-Windows approach may help us with scalability in
  422. the short term, and it may also be a good long-term solution rather than
  423. accepting all security risks in Windows.
  424. %\subsection{Interface improvements}
  425. %\tmp{Allow controllers to manipulate server status.}
  426. % (Why is this in the User Experience section?) -RD
  427. % I think it's better left to a generic ``make controller iface better'' item.
  428. \subsection{Firewall-level deployment}
  429. Another useful deployment mode for some users is using {\bf Tor in a firewall
  430. configuration}, and directing all their traffic through Tor. This can be a
  431. little tricky to set up currently, but it's an effective way to make sure no
  432. traffic leaves the host un-anonymized. To achieve this, we need to {\bf
  433. improve and port our new TransPort} feature which allows Tor to be used
  434. without SOCKS support; to {\bf add an anonymizing DNS proxy} feature to Tor;
  435. and to {\bf construct a recommended set of firewall configurations} to redirect
  436. traffic to Tor.
  437. This is an area where {\bf deployment via a livecd}, or an installation
  438. targeted at specialized home routing hardware, could be useful.
  439. \subsection{Assess software and configurations for anonymity risks}
  440. Right now, users and packagers are more or less on their own when selecting
  441. Firefox extensions. We should {\bf assemble a recommended list of browser
  442. extensions} through experiment, and include this in the application bundles
  443. we distribute.
  444. We should also describe {\bf best practices for using Tor with each class of
  445. application}. For example, Ethan Zuckerman has written a detailed
  446. tutorial on how to use Tor, Firefox, GMail, and Wordpress to blog with
  447. improved safety. There are many other cases on the Internet where anonymity
  448. would be helpful, and there are a lot of ways to screw up using Tor.
  449. The Foxtor and Torbutton extensions serve similar purposes; we should pick a
  450. favorite, and merge in the useful features of the other.
  451. %\tmp{clean up our own bundled software:
  452. %E.g. Merge the good features of Foxtor into Torbutton}
  453. %
  454. % What else did you have in mind? -NM
  455. \subsection{Localization}
  456. Right now, most of our user-facing code is internationalized. We need to
  457. internationalize the last few hold-outs (like the Tor expert installer), and get
  458. more translations for the parts that are already internationalized.
  459. Also, we should look into a {\bf unified translator's solution}. Currently,
  460. since different tools have been internationalized using the
  461. framework-appropriate method, different tools require translators to localize
  462. them via different interfaces. Inasmuch as possible, we should make
  463. translators only need to use a single tool to translate the whole Tor suite.
  464. \section{Support}
  465. It would be nice to set up some {\bf user support infrastructure} and
  466. {\bf contributor support infrastructure}, especially focusing on server
  467. operators and on coordinating volunteers.
  468. This includes intuitive and easy ticket systems for bug reports and
  469. feature suggestions (not just mailing lists with a half dozen people
  470. and no clear roles for who answers what), but it also includes a more
  471. personalized and efficient framework for interaction so we keep the
  472. attention and interest of the contributors, and so we make them feel
  473. helpful and wanted.
  474. \section{Documentation}
  475. \subsection{Unified documentation scheme}
  476. We need to {\bf inventory our documentation.} Our documentation so far has
  477. been mostly produced on an {\it ad hoc} basis, in response to particular
  478. needs and requests. We should figure out what documentation we have, which of
  479. it (if any) should get priority, and whether we can't put it all into a
  480. single format.
  481. We could {\bf unify the docs} into a single book-like thing. This will also
  482. help us identify what sections of the ``book'' are missing.
  483. \subsection{Missing technical documentation}
  484. We should {\bf revise our design paper} to reflect the new decisions and
  485. research we've made since it was published in 2004. This will help other
  486. researchers evaluate and suggest improvements to Tor's current design.
  487. Other projects sometimes implement the client side of our protocol. We
  488. encourage this, but we should write {\bf a document about how to avoid
  489. excessive resource use}, so we don't need to worry that they will do so
  490. without regard to the effect of their choices on server resources.
  491. \subsection{Missing user documentation}
  492. Our documentation falls into two broad categories: some is `discoursive' and
  493. explains in detail why users should take certain actions, and other
  494. documentation is `comprehensive' and describes all of Tor's features. Right
  495. now, we have no document that is both deep, readable, and thorough. We
  496. should correct this by identifying missing spots in our design.
  497. \bibliographystyle{plain} \bibliography{tor-design}
  498. \end{document}