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Because the clients need to get the list of nodes from somewhere. You can read more about how this works at this URL: https://gitweb.torproject.org/torspec.git
by boklm 12y ago
Because the clients need to get the list of nodes from somewhere.
You can read more about how this works at this URL:
https://gitweb.torproject.org/torspec.git/tree/dir-spec.txt https://gitweb.torproject.org/torspec.git/tree/dir-spec.txt
- catshirt 12y agojust because they need a list of nodes doesn't mean they need to be hardcoded into the client. the other option of course would be to fetch the list remotely.
- eli 12y agoFrom what? A directory directory server?
- MichaelGG 12y agoFrom any peer? If the list is signed by a majority set of keys then it doesn't matter how it gets distributed.
- eli 12y agoIsn't finding a peer the original problem?
- catshirt 12y agoah, point taken. i didn't think too hard about this apparently. if they had a host serving a list of trusted DAs, that host would be just as valuable a target.
- MichaelGG 12y agoAny Tor node could be a peer to distributed a signed piece of data.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- eli 12y agoYes, but how does one locate a tor node without a directory server?
- MichaelGG 12y agoMaybe like Bittorrent DHT? The client could keep a cache of other known nodes. You could share them on pastebin versus having them b only hard coded. You could preloaded a hundred peer nodes, instead of 9 master nodes. It doesn't strictly eliminate the problem, but it makes it less likely that one or two governments can just shut it all down.
- acebarry 12y agoThis is kind of how i2p does it. Currently i2p has like 6 "reseed servers" which bootstrap you into finding some other peers. Once you are connected to the network you then can contact "floodfill" servers, which are essentially a distributed form of the directory authorities. Floodfills are autonomously chosen routers on the network, and distribute other nodes to whoever asks.
- sneak 12y agoBitcoin does this by storing a list of DNS hostnames, run by a set of the maintainers, that return periodically-updated lists of peers. Previously, it also joined an IRC channel and got the list of hostnames from all of the other users in the channel.
- eli 12y agoIsn't that just replacing hardcoded IP addresses with hardcoded DNS hostnames? Not much of an improvement.