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authorRoger Dingledine <arma@torproject.org>2008-08-05 18:10:26 +0000
committerRoger Dingledine <arma@torproject.org>2008-08-05 18:10:26 +0000
commit42ca0d4270a11ccc62022e87e6ba2145b12200f8 (patch)
treef29821d9563f63ee807ac47bbea600a0189e567f /doc/TODO.future
parent59439c9d5b79113da66af21ae838de9bbc905242 (diff)
downloadtor-42ca0d4270a11ccc62022e87e6ba2145b12200f8.tar
tor-42ca0d4270a11ccc62022e87e6ba2145b12200f8.tar.gz
break the todo file into three todo files.
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+$Id: TODO 16258 2008-07-30 13:04:38Z nickm $
+Legend:
+SPEC!! - Not specified
+SPEC - Spec not finalized
+N - nick claims
+R - arma claims
+P - phobos claims
+S - Steven claims
+E - Matt claims
+M - Mike claims
+J - Jeff claims
+I - ioerror claims
+W - weasel claims
+K - Karsten claims
+ - Not done
+ * Top priority
+ . Partially done
+ o Done
+ d Deferrable
+ D Deferred
+ X Abandoned
+
+=======================================================================
+
+Later, unless people want to implement them now:
+ - Actually use SSL_shutdown to close our TLS connections.
+ - Include "v" line in networkstatus getinfo values.
+ [Nick: bridge authorities output a networkstatus that is missing
+ version numbers. This is inconvenient if we want to make sure
+ bridgedb gives out bridges with certain characteristics. -RD]
+ [Okay. Is this a separate item, or is it the same issue as the lack of
+ a "v" line in response to the controller GETINFO command? -NM]
+ - Let tor dir mirrors proxy connections to the tor download site, so
+ if you know a bridge you can fetch the tor software.
+ - when somebody uses the controlport as an http proxy, give them
+ a "tor isn't an http proxy" error too like we do for the socks port.
+ - MAYBE kill stalled circuits rather than stalled connections. This is
+ possible thanks to cell queues, but we need to consider the anonymity
+ implications.
+ - Make resolves no longer use edge_connection_t unless they are actually
+ _on_ a socks connection: have edge_connection_t and (say)
+ dns_request_t both extend an edge_stream_t, and have p_streams and
+ n_streams both be linked lists of edge_stream_t.
+ - Generate torrc.{complete|sample}.in, tor.1.in, the HTML manual, and the
+ online config documentation from a single source.
+ - It would be potentially helpful to respond to https requests on
+ the OR port by acting like an HTTPS server.
+ - Make the timestamp granularity on logs configurable, with default
+ of "1 second". This might make some kinds of after-the-fact attack harder.
+
+Can anybody remember why we wanted to do this and/or what it means?
+ - config option __ControllerLimit that hangs up if there are a limit
+ of controller connections already.
+ [This was mwenge's idea. The idea is that a Tor controller can
+ "fill" Tor's controller slot quota, so jerks can't do cross-protocol
+ attacks like the http form attack. -RD]
+ - Bridge issues
+ . Ask all directory questions to bridge via BEGIN_DIR.
+ - use the bridges for dir fetches even when our dirport is open.
+ - drop 'authority' queries if they're to our own identity key; accept
+ them otherwise.
+ - give extend_info_t a router_purpose again
+
+
+
+If somebody wants to do this in some version, they should:
+ - Create packages for Nokia 800, requested by Chris Soghoian
+ - More work on AvoidDiskWrites
+ - Make DNSPort support TCP DNS.
+
+
+* * * * Roger, please sort these: * * * *
+
+ - bridge communities with local bridge authorities:
+ - clients who have a password configured decide to ask their bridge
+ authority for a networkstatus
+ - be able to have bridges that aren't in your torrc. save them in
+ state file, etc.
+ - Consider if we can solve: the Tor client doesn't know what flags
+ its bridge has (since it only gets the descriptor), so it can't
+ make decisions based on Fast or Stable.
+ - Some mechanism for specifying that we want to stop using a cached
+ bridge.
+
+=======================================================================
+
+Future versions:
+
+ - Protocol
+ - Our current approach to block attempts to use Tor as a single-hop proxy
+ is pretty lame; we should get a better one.
+ - Allow small cells and large cells on the same network?
+ - Cell buffering and resending. This will allow us to handle broken
+ circuits as long as the endpoints don't break, plus will allow
+ connection (tls session key) rotation.
+ - Implement Morphmix, so we can compare its behavior, complexity,
+ etc. But see paper breaking morphmix.
+ - Other transport. HTTP, udp, rdp, airhook, etc. May have to do our own
+ link crypto, unless we can bully DTLS into it.
+ - Need a relay teardown cell, separate from one-way ends.
+ (Pending a user who needs this)
+ - Handle half-open connections: right now we don't support all TCP
+ streams, at least according to the protocol. But we handle all that
+ we've seen in the wild.
+ (Pending a user who needs this)
+
+ - Directory system
+ - BEGIN_DIR items
+ - handle connect-dir streams that don't have a chosen_exit_name set.
+ - Have a "Faster" status flag that means it. Fast2, Fast4, Fast8?
+ - Add an option (related to AvoidDiskWrites) to disable directory
+ caching. (Is this actually a good idea??)
+ X Add d64 and fp64 along-side d and fp so people can paste status
+ entries into a url. since + is a valid base64 char, only allow one
+ at a time. Consider adding to controller as well.
+ [abandoned for lack of demand]
+ - Some back-out mechanism for auto-approval on authorities
+ - a way of rolling back approvals to before a timestamp
+ - Consider minion-like fingerprint file/log combination.
+ X Have new people be in limbo and need to demonstrate usefulness
+ before we approve them.
+
+ - Hidden services:
+ d Standby/hotswap/redundant hidden services: needs a proposal.
+ - you can insert a hidserv descriptor via the controller.
+ - auth mechanisms to let hidden service midpoint and responder filter
+ connection requests: proposal 121.
+ - Let each hidden service (or other thing) specify its own
+ OutboundBindAddress?
+
+ - Server operation
+ - If the server is spewing complaints about raising your ulimit -n,
+ we should add a note about this to the server descriptor so other
+ people can notice too.
+ - When we hit a funny error from a dir request (eg 403 forbidden),
+ but tor is working and happy otherwise, and we haven't seen many
+ such errors recently, then don't warn about it.
+
+ - Controller
+ - Implement missing status events and accompanying getinfos
+ - DIR_REACHABLE
+ - BAD_DIR_RESPONSE (Unexpected directory response; maybe we're behind
+ a firewall.)
+ - BAD_PROXY (Bad http or https proxy)
+ - UNRECOGNIZED_ROUTER (a nickname we asked for is unavailable)
+ - Status events related to hibernation
+ - something about failing to parse our address?
+ from resolve_my_address() in config.c
+ - sketchy OS, sketchy threading
+ - too many onions queued: threading problems or slow CPU?
+ - Implement missing status event fields:
+ - TIMEOUT on CHECKING_REACHABILITY
+ - GETINFO status/client, status/server, status/general: There should be
+ some way to learn which status events are currently "in effect."
+ We should specify which these are, what format they appear in, and so
+ on.
+ - More information in events:
+ - Include bandwidth breakdown by conn->type in BW events.
+ - Change circuit status events to give more details, like purpose,
+ whether they're internal, when they become dirty, when they become
+ too dirty for further circuits, etc.
+ - Change stream status events analogously.
+ - Expose more information via getinfo:
+ - import and export rendezvous descriptors
+ - Review all static fields for additional candidates
+ - Allow EXTENDCIRCUIT to unknown server.
+ - We need some way to adjust server status, and to tell tor not to
+ download directories/network-status, and a way to force a download.
+ - Make everything work with hidden services
+
+ - Performance/resources
+ - per-conn write buckets
+ - separate config options for read vs write limiting
+ (It's hard to support read > write, since we need better
+ congestion control to avoid overfull buffers there. So,
+ defer the whole thing.)
+ - Rate limit exit connections to a given destination -- this helps
+ us play nice with websites when Tor users want to crawl them; it
+ also introduces DoS opportunities.
+ - Consider truncating rather than destroying failed circuits,
+ in order to save the effort of restarting. There are security
+ issues here that need thinking, though.
+ - Handle full buffers without totally borking
+ - Rate-limit OR and directory connections overall and per-IP and
+ maybe per subnet.
+
+ - Misc
+ - Hold-open-until-flushed now works by accident; it should work by
+ design.
+ - Display the reasons in 'destroy' and 'truncated' cells under
+ some circumstances?
+ - Make router_is_general_exit() a bit smarter once we're sure what
+ it's for.
+ - Automatically determine what ports are reachable and start using
+ those, if circuits aren't working and it's a pattern we
+ recognize ("port 443 worked once and port 9001 keeps not
+ working").
+
+ - Security
+ - some better fix for bug #516?
+ - Directory guards
+ - Mini-SoaT:
+ - Servers might check certs for known-good ssl websites, and if
+ they come back self-signed, declare themselves to be
+ non-exits. Similar to how we test for broken/evil dns now.
+ - Authorities should try using exits for http to connect to some
+ URLS (specified in a configuration file, so as not to make the
+ List Of Things Not To Censor completely obvious) and ask them
+ for results. Exits that don't give good answers should have
+ the BadExit flag set.
+ - Alternatively, authorities should be able to import opinions
+ from Snakes on a Tor.
+ - Bind to random port when making outgoing connections to Tor servers,
+ to reduce remote sniping attacks.
+ - Audit everything to make sure rend and intro points are just as
+ likely to be us as not.
+ - Do something to prevent spurious EXTEND cells from making
+ middleman nodes connect all over. Rate-limit failed
+ connections, perhaps?
+ - DoS protection: TLS puzzles, public key ops, bandwidth exhaustion.
+
+ - Needs thinking
+ - Now that we're avoiding exits when picking non-exit positions,
+ we need to consider how to pick nodes for internal circuits. If
+ we avoid exits for all positions, we skew the load balancing. If
+ we accept exits for all positions, we leak whether it's an
+ internal circuit at every step. If we accept exits only at the
+ last hop, we reintroduce Lasse's attacks from the Oakland paper.
+
+ - Windows server usability
+ - Solve the ENOBUFS problem.
+ - make tor's use of openssl operate on buffers rather than sockets,
+ so we can make use of libevent's buffer paradigm once it has one.
+ - make tor's use of libevent tolerate either the socket or the
+ buffer paradigm; includes unifying the functions in connect.c.
+ - We need a getrlimit equivalent on Windows so we can reserve some
+ file descriptors for saving files, etc. Otherwise we'll trigger
+ asserts when we're out of file descriptors and crash.
+
+ - Documentation
+ - a way to generate the website diagrams from source, so we can
+ translate them as utf-8 text rather than with gimp. (svg? or
+ imagemagick?)
+ . Flesh out options_description array in src/or/config.c
+ . multiple sample torrc files
+ - Refactor tor man page to divide generally useful options from
+ less useful ones?
+ - Add a doxygen style checker to make check-spaces so nick doesn't drift
+ too far from arma's undocumented styleguide. Also, document that
+ styleguide in HACKING. (See r9634 for example.)
+ - exactly one space at beginning and at end of comments, except i
+ guess when there's line-length pressure.
+ - if we refer to a function name, put a () after it.
+ - only write <b>foo</b> when foo is an argument to this function.
+ - doxygen comments must always end in some form of punctuation.
+ - capitalize the first sentence in the doxygen comment, except
+ when you shouldn't.
+ - avoid spelling errors and incorrect comments. ;)
+
+ - Packaging
+ - The Debian package now uses --verify-config when (re)starting,
+ to distinguish configuration errors from other errors. Perhaps
+ the RPM and other startup scripts should too?
+ - add a "default.action" file to the tor/vidalia bundle so we can
+ fix the https thing in the default configuration:
+ http://wiki.noreply.org/noreply/TheOnionRouter/TorFAQ#PrivoxyWeirdSSLPort
+
+
+=======================================================================
+
+Documentation, non-version-specific.
+ - Specs
+ - Mark up spec; note unclear points about servers
+NR - write a spec appendix for 'being nice with tor'
+ - Specify the keys and key rotation schedules and stuff
+ . Finish path-spec.txt
+ - Mention controller libs someplace.
+ - Remove need for HACKING file.
+ - document http://wiki.noreply.org/noreply/TheOnionRouter/TransparentProxy on freebsd and osx
+P - figure out why x86_64 won't build rpms from tor.spec
+P - figure out rpm spec files for bundles of vidalia-tor-polipo
+P - figure out polipo install scripts for bundles of vidalia-tor-polipo on osx, win32
+ - figure out selinux policy for tor
+P - change packaging system to more automated and specific for each
+ platform, suggested by Paul Wouter
+P - Setup repos for redhat and suse rpms & start signing the rpms the
+ way package management apps prefer
+
+Website:
+J . tor-in-the-media page
+P - Figure out licenses for website material.
+ (Phobos reccomends the Open Publication License with Option A at
+ http://opencontent.org/openpub/)
+P - put the logo on the website, in source form, so people can put it on
+ stickers directly, etc.
+P - put the source image for the stickers on the website, so people can
+ print their own
+P - figure out a license for the logos and docs we publish (trademark
+figures into this)
+ (Phobos reccomends the Open Publication License with Option A at
+ http://opencontent.org/openpub/)
+P - ask Jan/Jens to be the translation coordinator? add to volunteer page.
+I - add a page for localizing all tor's components.
+ - It would be neat if we had a single place that described _all_ the
+ tor-related tools you can use, and what they give you, and how well they
+ work. Right now, we don't give a lot of guidance wrt
+ torbutton/foxproxy/privoxy/polipo in any consistent place.
+P - create a 'blog badge' for tor fans to link to and feature on their
+ blogs. A sample is at http://interloper.org/tmp/tor/tor-button.png
+ - More prominently, we should have a recommended apps list.
+ - recommend pidgin (gaim is renamed)
+ - unrecommend IE because of ftp:// bug.
+ - Addenda to tor-design
+ - we should add a preamble to tor-design saying it's out of date.
+ - we should add an appendix or errata on what's changed.
+
+ - Tor mirrors
+ - make a mailing list with the mirror operators
+ o make an automated tool to check /project/trace/ at mirrors to
+ learn which ones are lagging behind.
+ - auto (or manually) cull the mirrors that are broken; and
+ contact their operator?
+ - a set of instructions for mirror operators to make their apaches
+ serve our charsets correctly, and bonus points for language
+ negotiation.
+ - figure out how to load-balance the downloads across mirrors?
+ - ponder how to get users to learn that they should google for
+ "tor mirrors" if the main site is blocked.
+ - find a mirror volunteer to coordinate all of this
+