Tor 0.2.2.14-alpha greatly improves client-side handling of circuit build timeouts, which are used to estimate speed and improve performance. We also move to a much better GeoIP database, port Tor to Windows CE, introduce new compile flags that improve code security, add an eighth v3 directory authority, and address a lot of more minor issues. https://www.torproject.org/download.html.en Packages will be appearing over the next few days or weeks. (We've decided to start announcing alpha versions when they're released, rather than waiting for all the packages first.) Changes in version 0.2.2.14-alpha - 2010-07-12 o Major bugfixes: - Tor directory authorities no longer crash when started with a cached-microdesc-consensus file in their data directory. Bugfix on 0.2.2.6-alpha; fixes bug 1532. - Treat an unset $HOME like an empty $HOME rather than triggering an assert. Bugfix on 0.0.8pre1; fixes bug 1522. - Ignore negative and large circuit build timeout values that can happen during a suspend or hibernate. These values caused various asserts to fire. Bugfix on 0.2.2.2-alpha; fixes bug 1245. - Alter calculation of Pareto distribution parameter 'Xm' for Circuit Build Timeout learning to use the weighted average of the top N=3 modes (because we have three entry guards). Considering multiple modes should improve the timeout calculation in some cases, and prevent extremely high timeout values. Bugfix on 0.2.2.2-alpha; fixes bug 1335. - Alter calculation of Pareto distribution parameter 'Alpha' to use a right censored distribution model. This approach improves over the synthetic timeout generation approach that was producing insanely high timeout values. Now we calculate build timeouts using truncated times. Bugfix on 0.2.2.2-alpha; fixes bugs 1245 and 1335. - Do not close circuits that are under construction when they reach the circuit build timeout. Instead, leave them building (but do not use them) for up until the time corresponding to the 95th percentile on the Pareto CDF or 60 seconds, whichever is greater. This is done to provide better data for the new Pareto model. This percentile can be controlled by the consensus. o Major features: - Move to the June 2010 Maxmind GeoLite country db (rather than the June 2009 ip-to-country GeoIP db) for our statistics that count how many users relays are seeing from each country. Now we have more accurate data for many African countries. - Port Tor to build and run correctly on Windows CE systems, using the wcecompat library. Contributed by Valerio Lupi. - New "--enable-gcc-hardening" ./configure flag (off by default) to turn on gcc compile time hardening options. It ensures that signed ints have defined behavior (-fwrapv), enables -D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2 (requiring -O2), adds stack smashing protection with canaries (-fstack-protector-all), turns on ASLR protection if supported by the kernel (-fPIE, -pie), and adds additional security related warnings. Verified to work on Mac OS X and Debian Lenny. - New "--enable-linker-hardening" ./configure flag (off by default) to turn on ELF specific hardening features (relro, now). This does not work with Mac OS X or any other non-ELF binary format. o New directory authorities: - Set up maatuska (run by Linus Nordberg) as the eighth v3 directory authority. o Minor features: - New config option "WarnUnsafeSocks 0" disables the warning that occurs whenever Tor receives only an IP address instead of a hostname. Setups that do DNS locally over Tor are fine, and we shouldn't spam the logs in that case. - Convert the HACKING file to asciidoc, and add a few new sections to it, explaining how we use Git, how we make changelogs, and what should go in a patch. - Add a TIMEOUT_RATE keyword to the BUILDTIMEOUT_SET control port event, to give information on the current rate of circuit timeouts over our stored history. - Add ability to disable circuit build time learning via consensus parameter and via a LearnCircuitBuildTimeout config option. Also automatically disable circuit build time calculation if we are either a AuthoritativeDirectory, or if we fail to write our state file. Fixes bug 1296. - More gracefully handle corrupt state files, removing asserts in favor of saving a backup and resetting state. - Rename the "log.h" header to "torlog.h" so as to conflict with fewer system headers. o Minor bugfixes: - Build correctly on OSX with zlib 1.2.4 and higher with all warnings enabled. - When a2x fails, mention that the user could disable manpages instead of trying to fix their asciidoc installation. - Where available, use Libevent 2.0's periodic timers so that our once-per-second cleanup code gets called even more closely to once per second than it would otherwise. Fixes bug 943. - If you run a bridge that listens on multiple IP addresses, and some user configures a bridge address that uses a different IP address than your bridge writes in its router descriptor, and the user doesn't specify an identity key, their Tor would discard the descriptor because "it isn't one of our configured bridges", and fail to bootstrap. Now believe the descriptor and bootstrap anyway. Bugfix on 0.2.0.3-alpha. - If OpenSSL fails to make a duplicate of a private or public key, log an error message and try to exit cleanly. May help with debugging if bug 1209 ever remanifests. - Save a couple bytes in memory allocation every time we escape certain characters in a string. Patch from Florian Zumbiehl. - Make it explicit that we don't cannibalize one-hop circuits. This happens in the wild, but doesn't turn out to be a problem because we fortunately don't use those circuits. Many thanks to outofwords for the initial analysis and to swissknife who confirmed that two-hop circuits are actually created. - Make directory mirrors report non-zero dirreq-v[23]-shares again. Fixes bug 1564; bugfix on 0.2.2.9-alpha. - Eliminate a case where a circuit build time warning was displayed after network connectivity resumed. Bugfix on 0.2.2.2-alpha. ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE