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en/volunteer.wml   4) #include "head.wmi" TITLE="Volunteer"

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en/volunteer.wml   9) <h2>Three things everyone can do now:</h2>

volunteer.html    10) <ol>

en/volunteer.wml  11) <li>Please consider <a href="<page docs/tor-doc-server>">running

volunteer.html    12) a server</a> to help the Tor network grow.</li>

en/volunteer.wml  13) <li>Tell your friends! Get them to run servers. Get them to run hidden

volunteer.html    14) services. Get them to tell their friends.</li>

en/volunteer.wml  15) <li>We are looking for funding and sponsors. If you like Tor's goals, please

en/volunteer.wml  16)   <a href="<page donate>">take a moment to donate to support further
en/volunteer.wml  17)   Tor development</a>. Also, if you know any

en/volunteer.wml  18)   companies, NGOs, agencies, or other organizations that want communications

en/volunteer.wml  19)   security, let them know about us.</li>

volunteer.html    20) </ol>
volunteer.html    21) 

en/volunteer.wml  22) <a id="Usability"></a>

en/volunteer.wml  23) <h2><a class="anchor" href="#Usability">Supporting Applications</a></h2>

volunteer.html    24) <ol>

en/volunteer.wml  25) <li>We need good ways to intercept DNS requests so they don't "leak" their
en/volunteer.wml  26) request to a local observer while we're trying to be anonymous. (This
en/volunteer.wml  27) happens because the application does the DNS resolve before going to
en/volunteer.wml  28) the SOCKS proxy.)</li>
en/volunteer.wml  29) <ul>
en/volunteer.wml  30) <li>We need to <a
en/volunteer.wml  31) href="http://wiki.noreply.org/noreply/TheOnionRouter/TSocksPatches">apply
en/volunteer.wml  32) all our tsocks patches</a> and maintain a new fork. We'll host it if
en/volunteer.wml  33) you want.</li>
en/volunteer.wml  34) <li>We should patch Dug Song's "dsocks" program to use Tor's
en/volunteer.wml  35) <i>mapaddress</i> commands from the controller interface, so we
en/volunteer.wml  36) don't waste a whole round-trip inside Tor doing the resolve before
en/volunteer.wml  37) connecting.</li>
en/volunteer.wml  38) <li>We need to make our <i>torify</i> script detect which of tsocks or
en/volunteer.wml  39) dsocks is installed, and call them appropriately. This probably means
en/volunteer.wml  40) unifying their interfaces, and might involve sharing code between them
en/volunteer.wml  41) or discarding one entirely.</li>
en/volunteer.wml  42) </ul>

volunteer.html    43) <li>People running servers tell us they want to have one BandwidthRate
volunteer.html    44) during some part of the day, and a different BandwidthRate at other parts
volunteer.html    45) of the day. Rather than coding this inside Tor, we should have a little

en/volunteer.wml  46) script that speaks via the <a href="<page gui/index>">Tor Controller Interface</a>,

volunteer.html    47) and does a setconf to change the bandwidth rate. Perhaps it would run out
volunteer.html    48) of cron, or perhaps it would sleep until appropriate times and then do
volunteer.html    49) its tweak (that's probably more portable). Can somebody write one for us

en/volunteer.wml  50) and we'll put it into <a href="<svnsandbox>contrib/">contrib/</a>?

en/volunteer.wml  51) This is a good entry for the <a href="<page gui/index>">Tor GUI

en/volunteer.wml  52) competition</a>.
en/volunteer.wml  53)   <!-- We have a good script to adjust stuff now, right? -NM -->
en/volunteer.wml  54) </li>

en/volunteer.wml  55) <li>Tor can <a

volunteer.html    56) href="http://wiki.noreply.org/noreply/TheOnionRouter/TorFAQ#ChooseEntryExit">exit

en/volunteer.wml  57) the Tor network from a particular exit node</a>, but we should be able
en/volunteer.wml  58) to specify just a country and have something automatically pick. The
en/volunteer.wml  59) best bet is to fetch Blossom's directory also, and run a local Blossom
en/volunteer.wml  60) client that fetches this directory securely (via Tor and checking its
en/volunteer.wml  61) signature), intercepts <tt>.country.blossom</tt> hostnames, and does
en/volunteer.wml  62) the right thing.</li>

volunteer.html    63) <li>Speaking of geolocation data, somebody should draw a map of the Earth
volunteer.html    64) with a pin-point for each Tor server. Bonus points if it updates as the

en/volunteer.wml  65) network grows and changes. Unfortunately, the easy ways to do this involve
en/volunteer.wml  66) sending all the data to Google and having them draw the map for you. How
en/volunteer.wml  67) much does this impact privacy, and do we have any other good options?</li>

volunteer.html    68) </ol>
volunteer.html    69) 

en/volunteer.wml  70) <a id="Documentation"></a>
en/volunteer.wml  71) <h2><a class="anchor" href="#Documentation">Documentation</a></h2>

volunteer.html    72) <ol>

en/volunteer.wml  73) <li>We hear that Tor users can fall victim to anonymity-breaking attacks
en/volunteer.wml  74) from javascript, java, activex, flash, etc, if they don't disable
en/volunteer.wml  75) them. Are there plugins out there (like NoScript for Firefox) that make
en/volunteer.wml  76) it easier for users to manage this risk? What is the risk exactly?</li>
en/volunteer.wml  77) <li>Is there a full suite of plugins that will replace all of Privoxy's
en/volunteer.wml  78) functionality for Firefox 1.5+? We hear Tor is much faster when you take
en/volunteer.wml  79) Privoxy out of the loop.</li>
en/volunteer.wml  80) <li>Please help Matt Edman with the documentation and how-tos for his

en/volunteer.wml  81) Tor controller,
en/volunteer.wml  82) <a href="http://vidalia-project.net/">Vidalia</a>.</li>

en/volunteer.wml  83) <li>Evaluate and document
en/volunteer.wml  84) <a href="http://wiki.noreply.org/wiki/TheOnionRouter/TorifyHOWTO">our
en/volunteer.wml  85) list of programs</a> that can be configured to use Tor.</li>

volunteer.html    86) <li>We need better documentation for dynamically intercepting

en/volunteer.wml  87) connections and sending them through Tor. tsocks (Linux), dsocks (BSD),

en/volunteer.wml  88) and freecap (Windows) seem to be good candidates, as would better
en/volunteer.wml  89) use of our new TransPort feature.</li>

en/volunteer.wml  90) <li>We have a huge list of <a href="http://wiki.noreply.org/noreply/TheOnionRouter/SupportPrograms">potentially useful

volunteer.html    91) programs that interface to Tor</a>. Which ones are useful in which
volunteer.html    92) situations? Please help us test them out and document your results.</li>

en/volunteer.wml  93) <li>Help translate the web page and documentation into other
en/volunteer.wml  94) languages. See the <a href="<page translation>">translation
en/volunteer.wml  95) guidelines</a> if you want to help out. We also need people to help
en/volunteer.wml  96) maintain the existing Italian, French, and Swedish translations -
en/volunteer.wml  97) see the <a href="<page translation-status>">translation status
en/volunteer.wml  98) overview</a>.</li>

en/volunteer.wml  99) <li>Can somebody walk us through whether we want to go the
en/volunteer.wml 100) <a href="http://www.cacert.org/">cacert</a> route for our
en/volunteer.wml 101) SSL <a href="<page documentation>#Developers">SVN repository?</a></li>

volunteer.html   102) </ol>
volunteer.html   103) 

en/volunteer.wml 104) <a id="Coding"></a>
en/volunteer.wml 105) <h2><a class="anchor" href="#Coding">Coding and Design</a></h2>

en/volunteer.wml 106) <p>Want to spend your <a href="http://code.google.com/soc/">Google Summer
en/volunteer.wml 107) of Code</a> working on Tor? Great.
en/volunteer.wml 108) <a href="http://wiki.noreply.org/noreply/TheOnionRouter/SummerOfCode">Read
en/volunteer.wml 109) more about Tor and GSoC</a>, and see if any of the below ideas catch

en/volunteer.wml 110) your eye.</p>

volunteer.html   111) <ol>

en/volunteer.wml 112) <li>Tor servers don't work well on Windows XP. On

en/volunteer.wml 113) Windows, Tor uses the standard <tt>select()</tt> system

en/volunteer.wml 114) call, which uses space in the non-page pool. This means
en/volunteer.wml 115) that a medium sized Tor server will empty the non-page pool, <a
en/volunteer.wml 116) href="http://wiki.noreply.org/noreply/TheOnionRouter/WindowsBufferProblems">causing

en/volunteer.wml 117) havoc and system crashes</a>. We should probably be using overlapped IO

en/volunteer.wml 118) instead. One solution would be to teach libevent how to use overlapped IO
en/volunteer.wml 119) rather than select() on Windows, and then adapt Tor to the new libevent
en/volunteer.wml 120) interface.</li>
en/volunteer.wml 121) <li>Because Tor servers need to store-and-forward each cell they handle,
en/volunteer.wml 122) high-bandwidth Tor servers end up using dozens of megabytes of memory
en/volunteer.wml 123) just for buffers. We need better heuristics for when to shrink/expand
en/volunteer.wml 124) buffers. Maybe this should be modelled after the Linux kernel buffer

en/volunteer.wml 125) design, where we have many smaller buffers that link to each other,

en/volunteer.wml 126) rather than monolithic buffers?</li>
en/volunteer.wml 127) <li>We need an official central site to answer "Is this IP address a Tor

en/volunteer.wml 128) exit server?" questions. This should provide several interfaces, including

en/volunteer.wml 129) a web interface and a DNSBL-style interface. It can provide the most
en/volunteer.wml 130) up-to-date answers by keeping a local mirror of the Tor directory

en/volunteer.wml 131) information. The tricky point is that being an exit server is not a
en/volunteer.wml 132) boolean: so the question is actually "Is this IP address a Tor exit
en/volunteer.wml 133) server that can exit to my IP address:port?" The DNSBL interface
en/volunteer.wml 134) will probably receive hundreds of queries a minute, so some smart
en/volunteer.wml 135) algorithms are in order. Bonus points if it does active testing through
en/volunteer.wml 136) each exit node to find out what IP address it's really exiting from.</li>

en/volunteer.wml 137) <li>It would be great to have a LiveCD that includes the latest
en/volunteer.wml 138) versions of Tor, Polipo or Privoxy, Firefox, Gaim+OTR, etc. There are
en/volunteer.wml 139) two challenges here: first is documenting the system and choices well
en/volunteer.wml 140) enough that security people can form an opinion on whether it should be
en/volunteer.wml 141) secure, and the second is figuring out how to make it easily maintainable,
en/volunteer.wml 142) so it doesn't become quickly obsolete like AnonymOS. Bonus points if
en/volunteer.wml 143) the CD image fits on one of those small-form-factor CDs.</li>

en/volunteer.wml 144) <li>Related to the LiveCD image, we should work on an intuitively secure
en/volunteer.wml 145) and well-documented USB image for Tor and supporting applications. A
en/volunteer.wml 146) lot of the hard part here is deciding what configurations are secure,
en/volunteer.wml 147) documentating these decisions, and making something that is easy to
en/volunteer.wml 148) maintain going forward.</li>

en/volunteer.wml 149) <li>Our preferred graphical front-end for Tor, named
en/volunteer.wml 150) <a href="http://vidalia-project.net/">Vidalia</a>, needs all sorts
en/volunteer.wml 151) of development work.</li>

en/volunteer.wml 152) <li>We need to actually start building our <a href="<page
en/volunteer.wml 153) documentation>#DesignDoc">blocking-resistance design</a>. This involves

en/volunteer.wml 154) fleshing out the design, modifying many different pieces of Tor, adapting
en/volunteer.wml 155) <a href="http://vidalia-project.net/">Vidalia</a> so it supports the
en/volunteer.wml 156) new features, and planning for deployment.</li>

en/volunteer.wml 157) <li>We need a flexible simulator framework for studying end-to-end
en/volunteer.wml 158) traffic confirmation attacks. Many researchers have whipped up ad hoc
en/volunteer.wml 159) simulators to support their intuition either that the attacks work
en/volunteer.wml 160) really well or that some defense works great. Can we build a simulator
en/volunteer.wml 161) that's clearly documented and open enough that everybody knows it's
en/volunteer.wml 162) giving a reasonable answer? This will spur a lot of new research.
en/volunteer.wml 163) See the entry <a href="#Research">below</a> on confirmation attacks for
en/volunteer.wml 164) details on the research side of this task &mdash; who knows, when it's
en/volunteer.wml 165) done maybe you can help write a paper or three also.</li>
en/volunteer.wml 166) <li>We need a measurement study of <a
en/volunteer.wml 167) href="http://www.pps.jussieu.fr/~jch/software/polipo/">Polipo</a>
en/volunteer.wml 168) vs <a href="http://www.privoxy.org/">Privoxy</a>. Is Polipo in fact
en/volunteer.wml 169) significantly faster, once you factor in the slow-down from Tor? Are the
en/volunteer.wml 170) results the same on both Linux and Windows? Related, does Polipo handle
en/volunteer.wml 171) more web sites correctly than Privoxy, or vice versa? Are there stability
en/volunteer.wml 172) issues on any common platforms, e.g. Windows?</li>
en/volunteer.wml 173) <li>Related on the above, would you like to help port <a
en/volunteer.wml 174) href="http://www.pps.jussieu.fr/~jch/software/polipo/">Polipo</a> so it
en/volunteer.wml 175) runs stably and efficiently on Windows?</li>

en/volunteer.wml 176) <li>We need a distributed testing framework. We have unit tests,

en/volunteer.wml 177) but it would be great to have a script that starts up a Tor network, uses
en/volunteer.wml 178) it for a while, and verifies that at least parts of it are working.</li>

en/volunteer.wml 179) <!--

en/volunteer.wml 180) <li>Right now the hidden service descriptors are being stored on just a
en/volunteer.wml 181) few directory servers. This is bad for privacy and bad for robustness. To
en/volunteer.wml 182) get more robustness, we're going to need to make hidden service
en/volunteer.wml 183) descriptors even less private because we're going to have to mirror them
en/volunteer.wml 184) onto many places. Ideally we'd like to separate the storage/lookup system
en/volunteer.wml 185) from the Tor directory servers entirely. The first problem is that we need
en/volunteer.wml 186) to design a new hidden service descriptor format to a) be ascii rather
en/volunteer.wml 187) than binary for convenience; b) keep the list of introduction points
en/volunteer.wml 188) encrypted unless you know the <tt>.onion</tt> address, so the directory
en/volunteer.wml 189) can't learn them; and c) allow the directories to verify the timestamp
en/volunteer.wml 190) and signature on a hidden service descriptor so they can't be tricked
en/volunteer.wml 191) into giving out fake ones. Second, any reliable distributed storage
en/volunteer.wml 192) system will do, as long as it allows authenticated updates, but as far
en/volunteer.wml 193) as we know no implemented DHT code supports authenticated updates.</li>

en/volunteer.wml 194) -->

en/volunteer.wml 195) <li>Tor 0.1.1.x and later include support for hardware crypto accelerators
en/volunteer.wml 196) via

volunteer.html   197) OpenSSL. Nobody has ever tested it, though. Does somebody want to get
volunteer.html   198) a card and let us know how it goes?</li>

volunteer.html   199) <li>Perform a security analysis of Tor with <a
volunteer.html   200) href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuzz_testing">"fuzz"</a>. Determine

en/volunteer.wml 201) if there are good fuzzing libraries out there for what we want. Win fame by

volunteer.html   202) getting credit when we put out a new release because of you!</li>

volunteer.html   203) <li>Tor uses TCP for transport and TLS for link
volunteer.html   204) encryption. This is nice and simple, but it means all cells
volunteer.html   205) on a link are delayed when a single packet gets dropped, and
volunteer.html   206) it means we can only reasonably support TCP streams. We have a <a
volunteer.html   207) href="http://wiki.noreply.org/noreply/TheOnionRouter/TorFAQ#TransportIPnotTCP">list

en/volunteer.wml 208) of reasons why we haven't shifted to UDP transport</a>, but it would
en/volunteer.wml 209) be great to see that list get shorter. We also have a proposed <a

en/volunteer.wml 210) href="<svnsandbox>doc/spec/proposals/100-tor-spec-udp.txt">specification
en/volunteer.wml 211) for Tor and

en/volunteer.wml 212) UDP</a> &mdash; please let us know what's wrong with it.</li>

volunteer.html   213) <li>We're not that far from having IPv6 support for destination addresses
volunteer.html   214) (at exit nodes). If you care strongly about IPv6, that's probably the
volunteer.html   215) first place to start.</li>

en/volunteer.wml 216) <li><i>Don't see your idea here? We probably need it anyway! Contact
en/volunteer.wml 217) us and find out.</i></li>

volunteer.html   218) </ol>
volunteer.html   219) 

en/volunteer.wml 220) <a id="Research"></a>
en/volunteer.wml 221) <h2><a class="anchor" href="#Research">Research</a></h2>

volunteer.html   222) <ol>

volunteer.html   223) <li>The "website fingerprinting attack": make a list of a few
volunteer.html   224) hundred popular websites, download their pages, and make a set of
volunteer.html   225) "signatures" for each site. Then observe a Tor client's traffic. As
volunteer.html   226) you watch him receive data, you quickly approach a guess about which
volunteer.html   227) (if any) of those sites he is visiting. First, how effective is
volunteer.html   228) this attack on the deployed Tor codebase? Then start exploring
volunteer.html   229) defenses: for example, we could change Tor's cell size from 512
volunteer.html   230) bytes to 1024 bytes, we could employ padding techniques like <a
volunteer.html   231) href="http://freehaven.net/anonbib/#timing-fc2004">defensive dropping</a>,
volunteer.html   232) or we could add traffic delays. How much of an impact do these have,
volunteer.html   233) and how much usability impact (using some suitable metric) is there from
volunteer.html   234) a successful defense in each case?</li>

volunteer.html   235) <li>The "end-to-end traffic confirmation attack":
volunteer.html   236) by watching traffic at Alice and at Bob, we can <a
volunteer.html   237) href="http://freehaven.net/anonbib/#danezis:pet2004">compare
volunteer.html   238) traffic signatures and become convinced that we're watching the same
volunteer.html   239) stream</a>. So far Tor accepts this as a fact of life and assumes this
volunteer.html   240) attack is trivial in all cases. First of all, is that actually true? How
volunteer.html   241) much traffic of what sort of distribution is needed before the adversary
volunteer.html   242) is confident he has won? Are there scenarios (e.g. not transmitting much)
volunteer.html   243) that slow down the attack? Do some traffic padding or traffic shaping
volunteer.html   244) schemes work better than others?</li>

volunteer.html   245) <li>The "routing zones attack": most of the literature thinks of
volunteer.html   246) the network path between Alice and her entry node (and between the
volunteer.html   247) exit node and Bob) as a single link on some graph. In practice,
volunteer.html   248) though, the path traverses many autonomous systems (ASes), and <a
volunteer.html   249) href="http://freehaven.net/anonbib/#feamster:wpes2004">it's not uncommon
volunteer.html   250) that the same AS appears on both the entry path and the exit path</a>.
volunteer.html   251) Unfortunately, to accurately predict whether a given Alice, entry,
volunteer.html   252) exit, Bob quad will be dangerous, we need to download an entire Internet
volunteer.html   253) routing zone and perform expensive operations on it. Are there practical
volunteer.html   254) approximations, such as avoiding IP addresses in the same /8 network?</li>

volunteer.html   255) <li>Tor doesn't work very well when servers have asymmetric bandwidth
volunteer.html   256) (e.g. cable or DSL). Because Tor has separate TCP connections between
volunteer.html   257) each hop, if the incoming bytes are arriving just fine and the outgoing
volunteer.html   258) bytes are all getting dropped on the floor, the TCP push-back mechanisms
volunteer.html   259) don't really transmit this information back to the incoming streams.
volunteer.html   260) Perhaps Tor should detect when it's dropping a lot of outgoing packets,
volunteer.html   261) and rate-limit incoming streams to regulate this itself? I can imagine
volunteer.html   262) a build-up and drop-off scheme where we pick a conservative rate-limit,
volunteer.html   263) slowly increase it until we get lost packets, back off, repeat. We
volunteer.html   264) need somebody who's good with networks to simulate this and help design
volunteer.html   265) solutions; and/or we need to understand the extent of the performance
volunteer.html   266) degradation, and use this as motivation to reconsider UDP transport.</li>
volunteer.html   267) <li>A related topic is congestion control. Is our
volunteer.html   268) current design sufficient once we have heavy use? Maybe
volunteer.html   269) we should experiment with variable-sized windows rather
volunteer.html   270) than fixed-size windows? That seemed to go well in an <a
volunteer.html   271) href="http://www.psc.edu/networking/projects/hpn-ssh/theory.php">ssh
volunteer.html   272) throughput experiment</a>. We'll need to measure and tweak, and maybe
volunteer.html   273) overhaul if the results are good.</li>

volunteer.html   274) <li>To let dissidents in remote countries use Tor without being blocked
volunteer.html   275) at their country's firewall, we need a way to get tens of thousands of
volunteer.html   276) relays, not just a few hundred. We can imagine a Tor client GUI that
volunteer.html   277) has a "help China" button at the top that opens a port and relays a
volunteer.html   278) few KB/s of traffic into the Tor network. (A few KB/s shouldn't be too
volunteer.html   279) much hassle, and there are few abuse issues since they're not being exit
volunteer.html   280) nodes.) But how do we distribute a list of these volunteer clients to the
volunteer.html   281) good dissidents in an automated way that doesn't let the country-level
volunteer.html   282) firewalls intercept and enumerate them? Probably needs to work on a

en/volunteer.wml 283) human-trust level. See our <a
en/volunteer.wml 284) href="http://wiki.noreply.org/noreply/TheOnionRouter/TorFAQ#China">FAQ
en/volunteer.wml 285) entry</a> on this, and then read the <a
en/volunteer.wml 286) href="http://freehaven.net/anonbib/topic.html#Communications_20Censorship">censorship
en/volunteer.wml 287) resistance section of anonbib</a>.</li>

volunteer.html   288) <li>Tor circuits are built one hop at a time, so in theory we have the
volunteer.html   289) ability to make some streams exit from the second hop, some from the
volunteer.html   290) third, and so on. This seems nice because it breaks up the set of exiting
volunteer.html   291) streams that a given server can see. But if we want each stream to be safe,
volunteer.html   292) the "shortest" path should be at least 3 hops long by our current logic, so
volunteer.html   293) the rest will be even longer. We need to examine this performance / security
volunteer.html   294) tradeoff.</li>
volunteer.html   295) <li>It's not that hard to DoS Tor servers or dirservers. Are client
volunteer.html   296) puzzles the right answer? What other practical approaches are there? Bonus
volunteer.html   297) if they're backward-compatible with the current Tor protocol.</li>

volunteer.html   298) </ol>
volunteer.html   299) 

en/volunteer.wml 300) <a href="<page contact>">Let us know</a> if you've made progress on any
en/volunteer.wml 301) of these!

volunteer.html   302) 

en/volunteer.wml 303)   </div><!-- #main -->

volunteer.html   304) 

en/volunteer.wml 305) #include <foot.wmi>