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

volunteer.html     5) 
volunteer.html     6) <div class="main-column">
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volunteer.html     8) <!-- PUT CONTENT AFTER THIS TAG -->

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

volunteer.html    10) <ol>

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

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

en/volunteer.wml  13) <li> Take a look at the <a href="<page gui/index>">Tor GUI Competition</a>, and

en/volunteer.wml  14) contribute to making Tor's interface
en/volunteer.wml  15) and usability better. Free Tor T-shirt for each submission!</li>

volunteer.html    16) <li> Tell your friends! Get them to run servers. Get them to run hidden
volunteer.html    17) services. Get them to tell their friends.</li>

en/volunteer.wml  18) <li> We are looking for funding and sponsors. If you like Tor's goals, please

en/volunteer.wml  19)   <a href="<page donate>">take a moment to donate to support further
en/volunteer.wml  20)   Tor development</a>. Also, if you know any

en/volunteer.wml  21)   companies, NGOs, or other organizations that want communications
en/volunteer.wml  22)   security, let them know about us.</li>

volunteer.html    23) </ol>
volunteer.html    24) 

en/volunteer.wml  25) <a id="Bugs"></a>
en/volunteer.wml  26) <h2><a class="anchor" href="#Bugs">Critical bugs</a></h2>
en/volunteer.wml  27) <ol>
en/volunteer.wml  28) <li>Tor servers are not stable on Windows XP currently,
en/volunteer.wml  29) because we try to use hundreds of sockets, and the
en/volunteer.wml  30) Windows kernel doesn't seem capable of handling this. <a
en/volunteer.wml  31) href="http://wiki.noreply.org/noreply/TheOnionRouter/WindowsBufferProblems">Please
en/volunteer.wml  32) help us solve this!</a> It is the number one problem with growing
en/volunteer.wml  33) the Tor network currently.</li>
en/volunteer.wml  34) </ol>
en/volunteer.wml  35) 

en/volunteer.wml  36) <!--

en/volunteer.wml  37) <a id="Installers"></a>
en/volunteer.wml  38) <h2><a class="anchor" href="#Installers">Installers</a></h2>

volunteer.html    39) <ol>

en/volunteer.wml  40) <li>Matt Edman has written an <a

en/volunteer.wml  41) href="http://freehaven.net/~edmanm/torcp/download.html">NSIS-based
en/volunteer.wml  42) Windows installer bundle that
en/volunteer.wml  43) includes Privoxy and TorCP</a>. Can you help make it more stable and
en/volunteer.wml  44) featureful?
en/volunteer.wml  45) </li>

volunteer.html    46) <li>Develop a way to handle OS X uninstallation

en/volunteer.wml  47) that is more automated than telling people to
en/volunteer.wml  48) <a href="<cvssandbox>tor/doc/tor-doc-osx.html#uninstall">manually remove

en/volunteer.wml  49) each file</a>. It needs to have a way to click it into action.</li>

en/volunteer.wml  50) <li>Our <a href="<cvssandbox>tor/tor.spec.in">RPM spec file</a>

volunteer.html    51) needs a maintainer, so we can get back to the business of writing Tor. If
volunteer.html    52) you have RPM fu, please help out.</li>
volunteer.html    53) </ol>

en/volunteer.wml  54) -->

volunteer.html    55) 

en/volunteer.wml  56) <a id="Usability"></a>
en/volunteer.wml  57) <h2><a class="anchor" href="#Usability">Usability and Interface</a></h2>

volunteer.html    58) <ol>
volunteer.html    59) <li>We need a way to intercept DNS requests so they don't "leak" while
volunteer.html    60) we're trying to be anonymous. (This happens because the application does
volunteer.html    61) the DNS resolve before going to the SOCKS proxy.) One option is to use
volunteer.html    62) Tor's built-in support for doing DNS resolves; but you need to ask via
volunteer.html    63) our new socks extension for that, and no applications do this yet. A
volunteer.html    64) nicer option is to use Tor's controller interface: you intercept the
volunteer.html    65) DNS resolve, tell Tor about the resolve, and Tor replies with a dummy IP
volunteer.html    66) address. Then the application makes a connection through Tor to that dummy
volunteer.html    67) IP address, and Tor automatically maps it back to the original query.</li>
volunteer.html    68) <li>People running servers tell us they want to have one BandwidthRate
volunteer.html    69) during some part of the day, and a different BandwidthRate at other parts
volunteer.html    70) of the day. Rather than coding this inside Tor, we should have a little

en/volunteer.wml  71) script that speaks via the <a href="<page gui/index>">Tor Controller Interface</a>,

volunteer.html    72) and does a setconf to change the bandwidth rate. Perhaps it would run out
volunteer.html    73) of cron, or perhaps it would sleep until appropriate times and then do
volunteer.html    74) its tweak (that's probably more portable). Can somebody write one for us

en/volunteer.wml  75) and we'll put it into <a href="<cvssandbox>tor/contrib/">tor/contrib/</a>?</li>

volunteer.html    76) <li>We have a variety of ways to <a
volunteer.html    77) href="http://wiki.noreply.org/noreply/TheOnionRouter/TorFAQ#ChooseEntryExit">exit
volunteer.html    78) the Tor network from a particular country</a>, but they all
volunteer.html    79) require specifying the nickname of a particular Tor server. It
volunteer.html    80) would be nice to be able to specify just a country, and
volunteer.html    81) have something automatically pick. This requires having some
volunteer.html    82) component that knows what country each Tor node is in. The <a

en/volunteer.wml  83) href="http://serifos.eecs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/exit.pl">script on

volunteer.html    84) serifos</a> manually parses whois entries for this. Maybe geolocation
volunteer.html    85) data will also work?</li>
volunteer.html    86) <li>Speaking of geolocation data, somebody should draw a map of the Earth
volunteer.html    87) with a pin-point for each Tor server. Bonus points if it updates as the
volunteer.html    88) network grows and changes.</li>
volunteer.html    89) <li>Tor provides anonymous connections, but we don't support
volunteer.html    90) keeping multiple pseudonyms in practice (say, in case you
volunteer.html    91) frequently go to two websites and if anybody knew about both of
volunteer.html    92) them they would conclude it's you). We should find a good approach
volunteer.html    93) and interface for handling pseudonymous profiles in Tor. See <a

volunteer.html    94) href="http://archives.seul.org/or/talk/Dec-2004/msg00086.html">this

volunteer.html    95) post</a> and <a
volunteer.html    96) href="http://archives.seul.org/or/talk/Jan-2005/msg00007.html">followup</a>
volunteer.html    97) for details.</li>

volunteer.html    98) </ol>
volunteer.html    99) 

en/volunteer.wml 100) <a id="Documentation"></a>
en/volunteer.wml 101) <h2><a class="anchor" href="#Documentation">Documentation</a></h2>

volunteer.html   102) <ol>

volunteer.html   103) <li>Please volunteer to help maintain this website: code, content,

volunteer.html   104) css, layout. Step one is to hang out on the IRC channel until we
volunteer.html   105) get to know you.</li>

volunteer.html   106) <li>We have too much documentation --- it's spread out too much and
volunteer.html   107) duplicates itself in places. Please send us patches, pointers, and
volunteer.html   108) confusions about the documentation so we can clean it up.</li>
volunteer.html   109) <li>Help translate the web page and documentation into other

en/volunteer.wml 110) languages. See the <a href="<page translation>">translation

volunteer.html   111) guidelines</a> if you want to help out. We also need people to help

en/volunteer.wml 112) maintain the existing Italian, French, and Swedish translations -
en/volunteer.wml 113) see the <a href="<page translation-status>">translation status
en/volunteer.wml 114) overview</a>.</li>

volunteer.html   115) <li>Investigate privoxy vs. freecap vs. sockscap for win32 clients. Are
volunteer.html   116) there usability or stability issues that we can track down and
volunteer.html   117) resolve, or at least inform people about?</li>

volunteer.html   118) <li>Can somebody help Matt Edman with the documentation and how-tos
volunteer.html   119) for his <a href="http://freehaven.net/~edmanm/torcp/">Windows Tor

volunteer.html   120) Controller</a>?</li>

en/volunteer.wml 121) <li>Evaluate and document
en/volunteer.wml 122) <a href="http://wiki.noreply.org/wiki/TheOnionRouter/TorifyHOWTO">our
en/volunteer.wml 123) list of programs</a> that can be configured to use Tor.</li>

volunteer.html   124) <li>We need better documentation for dynamically intercepting

en/volunteer.wml 125) connections and sending them through Tor. tsocks (Linux), dsocks (BSD),
en/volunteer.wml 126) and freecap (Windows) seem to be good candidates.</li>

en/volunteer.wml 127) <li>We have a huge list of <a href="http://wiki.noreply.org/noreply/TheOnionRouter/SupportPrograms">potentially useful

volunteer.html   128) programs that interface to Tor</a>. Which ones are useful in which
volunteer.html   129) situations? Please help us test them out and document your results.</li>
volunteer.html   130) </ol>
volunteer.html   131) 

en/volunteer.wml 132) <a id="Coding"></a>
en/volunteer.wml 133) <h2><a class="anchor" href="#Coding">Coding and Design</a></h2>

volunteer.html   134) <ol>
volunteer.html   135) <li>We recommend Privoxy as a good scrubbing web proxy, but it's
volunteer.html   136) unmaintained and still has bugs, especially on Windows. While we're at
volunteer.html   137) it, what sensitive information is not kept safe by Privoxy? Are there
volunteer.html   138) other scrubbing web proxies that are more secure?</li>
volunteer.html   139) <li>tsocks appears to be unmaintained: we have submitted several patches
volunteer.html   140) with no response. Can somebody volunteer to start maintaining a new
volunteer.html   141) tsocks branch? We'll help.</li>

volunteer.html   142) <li>Right now the hidden service descriptors are being stored on just a few
volunteer.html   143) directory servers. This is bad for privacy and bad for robustness. To get
volunteer.html   144) more robustness, we're going to need to make hidden service descriptors
volunteer.html   145) even less private because we're going to have to mirror them onto many
volunteer.html   146) places. Ideally we'd like to separate the storage/lookup system from the
volunteer.html   147) Tor directory servers entirely. Any reliable distributed storage system
volunteer.html   148) will do, as long as it allows authenticated updates. As far as we know,
volunteer.html   149) no implemented DHT code supports authenticated updates. What's the right
volunteer.html   150) next step?</li>
volunteer.html   151) <li>Tor exit servers need to do many DNS resolves in parallel. But
volunteer.html   152) gethostbyname() is poorly designed --- it blocks until it has finished

volunteer.html   153) resolving a query --- so it requires its own thread or process. So Tor
volunteer.html   154) is forced to spawn many separate DNS "worker" threads. There are some
volunteer.html   155) asynchronous DNS libraries out there, but historically they are buggy and

volunteer.html   156) abandoned. Are any of them stable, fast, clean, and free software? (Remember,
volunteer.html   157) Tor uses OpenSSL, and OpenSSL is (probably) not compatible with the GPL, so
volunteer.html   158) any GPL libraries are out of the running.) If so

volunteer.html   159) (or if we can make that so), we should integrate them into Tor. See <a

volunteer.html   160) href="http://archives.seul.org/or/talk/Sep-2005/msg00001.html">Agl's

volunteer.html   161) post</a> for one potential approach. Also see
volunteer.html   162) <a href="http://daniel.haxx.se/projects/c-ares/">c-ares</a> and
volunteer.html   163) <a href="http://www.monkey.org/~provos/libdnsres/">libdnsres</a>.
volunteer.html   164) </li>

volunteer.html   165) <li>Tor 0.1.1.x includes support for hardware crypto accelerators via
volunteer.html   166) OpenSSL. Nobody has ever tested it, though. Does somebody want to get
volunteer.html   167) a card and let us know how it goes?</li>

volunteer.html   168) <li>Because Tor servers need to store-and-forward each cell they handle,
volunteer.html   169) high-bandwidth Tor servers end up using dozens of megabytes of memory
volunteer.html   170) just for buffers. We need better heuristics for when to shrink/expand
volunteer.html   171) buffers. Maybe this should be modelled after the Linux kernel buffer
volunteer.html   172) design, where you have many smaller buffers that link to each other,
volunteer.html   173) rather than monolithic buffers?</li>

volunteer.html   174) <li>How do ulimits work on Win32, anyway? We're having problems,

volunteer.html   175) especially on older Windowses with people running out of file
volunteer.html   176) descriptors, connection buffer space, etc. (We should handle
volunteer.html   177) WSAENOBUFS as needed, look at the MaxConnections registry entry,
volunteer.html   178) look at the MaxUserPort entry, and look at the TcpTimedWaitDelay
volunteer.html   179) entry. We may also want to provide a way to set them as needed. See <a

volunteer.html   180) href="http://bugs.noreply.org/flyspray/index.php?do=details&id=98">bug

volunteer.html   181) 98</a>.)</li>

volunteer.html   182) <li>Patches to Tor's autoconf scripts. First, we'd like our configure.in
volunteer.html   183) to handle cross-compilation, e.g. so we can build Tor for obscure

volunteer.html   184) platforms like the Linksys WRTG54. Second, we'd like the with-ssl-dir
volunteer.html   185) option to disable the search for ssl's libraries.</li>

volunteer.html   186) <li>Implement reverse DNS requests inside Tor (already specified in

en/volunteer.wml 187) Section 5.4 of <a href="<cvssandbox>tor/doc/tor-spec.txt">tor-spec.txt</a>).</li>

volunteer.html   188) <li>Perform a security analysis of Tor with <a
volunteer.html   189) href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuzz_testing">"fuzz"</a>. Determine

en/volunteer.wml 190) if there are good fuzzing libraries out there for what we want. Win fame by

volunteer.html   191) getting credit when we put out a new release because of you!</li>
volunteer.html   192) <li>How hard is it to patch bind or a DNS proxy to redirect requests to

volunteer.html   193) Tor via our <a href="http://wiki.noreply.org/noreply/TheOnionRouter/TorFAQ#CompatibleApplications">tor-resolve socks extension</a>? What about to convert UDP DNS

volunteer.html   194) requests to TCP requests and send them through Tor?</li>

volunteer.html   195) <li>Tor uses TCP for transport and TLS for link
volunteer.html   196) encryption. This is nice and simple, but it means all cells
volunteer.html   197) on a link are delayed when a single packet gets dropped, and
volunteer.html   198) it means we can only reasonably support TCP streams. We have a <a
volunteer.html   199) href="http://wiki.noreply.org/noreply/TheOnionRouter/TorFAQ#TransportIPnotTCP">list
volunteer.html   200) of reasons why we haven't shifted to UDP transport</a>, but it would be

volunteer.html   201) great to see that list get shorter.</li>

volunteer.html   202) <li>We're not that far from having IPv6 support for destination addresses
volunteer.html   203) (at exit nodes). If you care strongly about IPv6, that's probably the
volunteer.html   204) first place to start.</li>

volunteer.html   205) </ol>
volunteer.html   206) 

en/volunteer.wml 207) <a id="Research"></a>
en/volunteer.wml 208) <h2><a class="anchor" href="#Research">Research</a></h2>

volunteer.html   209) <ol>

volunteer.html   210) <li>The "website fingerprinting attack": make a list of a few
volunteer.html   211) hundred popular websites, download their pages, and make a set of
volunteer.html   212) "signatures" for each site. Then observe a Tor client's traffic. As
volunteer.html   213) you watch him receive data, you quickly approach a guess about which
volunteer.html   214) (if any) of those sites he is visiting. First, how effective is
volunteer.html   215) this attack on the deployed Tor codebase? Then start exploring
volunteer.html   216) defenses: for example, we could change Tor's cell size from 512
volunteer.html   217) bytes to 1024 bytes, we could employ padding techniques like <a
volunteer.html   218) href="http://freehaven.net/anonbib/#timing-fc2004">defensive dropping</a>,
volunteer.html   219) or we could add traffic delays. How much of an impact do these have,
volunteer.html   220) and how much usability impact (using some suitable metric) is there from
volunteer.html   221) a successful defense in each case?</li>

volunteer.html   222) <li>The "end-to-end traffic confirmation attack":
volunteer.html   223) by watching traffic at Alice and at Bob, we can <a
volunteer.html   224) href="http://freehaven.net/anonbib/#danezis:pet2004">compare
volunteer.html   225) traffic signatures and become convinced that we're watching the same
volunteer.html   226) stream</a>. So far Tor accepts this as a fact of life and assumes this
volunteer.html   227) attack is trivial in all cases. First of all, is that actually true? How
volunteer.html   228) much traffic of what sort of distribution is needed before the adversary
volunteer.html   229) is confident he has won? Are there scenarios (e.g. not transmitting much)
volunteer.html   230) that slow down the attack? Do some traffic padding or traffic shaping
volunteer.html   231) schemes work better than others?</li>

volunteer.html   232) <li>The "routing zones attack": most of the literature thinks of
volunteer.html   233) the network path between Alice and her entry node (and between the
volunteer.html   234) exit node and Bob) as a single link on some graph. In practice,
volunteer.html   235) though, the path traverses many autonomous systems (ASes), and <a
volunteer.html   236) href="http://freehaven.net/anonbib/#feamster:wpes2004">it's not uncommon
volunteer.html   237) that the same AS appears on both the entry path and the exit path</a>.
volunteer.html   238) Unfortunately, to accurately predict whether a given Alice, entry,
volunteer.html   239) exit, Bob quad will be dangerous, we need to download an entire Internet
volunteer.html   240) routing zone and perform expensive operations on it. Are there practical
volunteer.html   241) approximations, such as avoiding IP addresses in the same /8 network?</li>

volunteer.html   242) <li>Tor doesn't work very well when servers have asymmetric bandwidth
volunteer.html   243) (e.g. cable or DSL). Because Tor has separate TCP connections between
volunteer.html   244) each hop, if the incoming bytes are arriving just fine and the outgoing
volunteer.html   245) bytes are all getting dropped on the floor, the TCP push-back mechanisms
volunteer.html   246) don't really transmit this information back to the incoming streams.
volunteer.html   247) Perhaps Tor should detect when it's dropping a lot of outgoing packets,
volunteer.html   248) and rate-limit incoming streams to regulate this itself? I can imagine
volunteer.html   249) a build-up and drop-off scheme where we pick a conservative rate-limit,
volunteer.html   250) slowly increase it until we get lost packets, back off, repeat. We
volunteer.html   251) need somebody who's good with networks to simulate this and help design
volunteer.html   252) solutions; and/or we need to understand the extent of the performance
volunteer.html   253) degradation, and use this as motivation to reconsider UDP transport.</li>
volunteer.html   254) <li>A related topic is congestion control. Is our
volunteer.html   255) current design sufficient once we have heavy use? Maybe
volunteer.html   256) we should experiment with variable-sized windows rather
volunteer.html   257) than fixed-size windows? That seemed to go well in an <a
volunteer.html   258) href="http://www.psc.edu/networking/projects/hpn-ssh/theory.php">ssh
volunteer.html   259) throughput experiment</a>. We'll need to measure and tweak, and maybe
volunteer.html   260) overhaul if the results are good.</li>

volunteer.html   261) <li>To let dissidents in remote countries use Tor without being blocked
volunteer.html   262) at their country's firewall, we need a way to get tens of thousands of
volunteer.html   263) relays, not just a few hundred. We can imagine a Tor client GUI that
volunteer.html   264) has a "help China" button at the top that opens a port and relays a
volunteer.html   265) few KB/s of traffic into the Tor network. (A few KB/s shouldn't be too
volunteer.html   266) much hassle, and there are few abuse issues since they're not being exit
volunteer.html   267) nodes.) But how do we distribute a list of these volunteer clients to the
volunteer.html   268) good dissidents in an automated way that doesn't let the country-level
volunteer.html   269) firewalls intercept and enumerate them? Probably needs to work on a

en/volunteer.wml 270) human-trust level. See our <a
en/volunteer.wml 271) href="http://wiki.noreply.org/noreply/TheOnionRouter/TorFAQ#China">FAQ
en/volunteer.wml 272) entry</a> on this, and then read the <a
en/volunteer.wml 273) href="http://freehaven.net/anonbib/topic.html#Communications_20Censorship">censorship
en/volunteer.wml 274) resistance section of anonbib</a>.</li>

volunteer.html   275) <li>Tor circuits are built one hop at a time, so in theory we have the
volunteer.html   276) ability to make some streams exit from the second hop, some from the
volunteer.html   277) third, and so on. This seems nice because it breaks up the set of exiting
volunteer.html   278) streams that a given server can see. But if we want each stream to be safe,
volunteer.html   279) the "shortest" path should be at least 3 hops long by our current logic, so
volunteer.html   280) the rest will be even longer. We need to examine this performance / security
volunteer.html   281) tradeoff.</li>
volunteer.html   282) <li>It's not that hard to DoS Tor servers or dirservers. Are client
volunteer.html   283) puzzles the right answer? What other practical approaches are there? Bonus
volunteer.html   284) if they're backward-compatible with the current Tor protocol.</li>

volunteer.html   285) </ol>
volunteer.html   286) 

en/volunteer.wml 287) <a href="<page contact>">Let us know</a> if you've made progress on any
en/volunteer.wml 288) of these!

volunteer.html   289) 

en/volunteer.wml 290)   </div><!-- #main -->

volunteer.html   291)