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authorMike Perry <mikeperry-git@torproject.org>2023-05-30 18:46:25 +0000
committerMike Perry <mikeperry-git@torproject.org>2023-05-30 18:46:25 +0000
commitded57d896a22e2a924cb93d65b14d04cf049a9a7 (patch)
treec2a9d7b5222dee0275063b33dc5a501012e3c455
parentcbf62c799f5bc36c45a1c53ce75f53032efe23d4 (diff)
downloadtorspec-ded57d896a22e2a924cb93d65b14d04cf049a9a7.tar.gz
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Prop 327: Clarify that the starting difficulty is on the client side.
Also clarify that the main reason we may need to tune it is because of on-and-off attack patterns of large size.
-rw-r--r--proposals/327-pow-over-intro.txt18
1 files changed, 12 insertions, 6 deletions
diff --git a/proposals/327-pow-over-intro.txt b/proposals/327-pow-over-intro.txt
index ce7f79e..6ce610e 100644
--- a/proposals/327-pow-over-intro.txt
+++ b/proposals/327-pow-over-intro.txt
@@ -712,14 +712,20 @@ Status: Draft
turn into a DoS vector of its own. We will do this tuning in a way that's
agnostic to the chosen PoW function.
- We will then move towards analyzing the starting difficulty setting for our
- PoW system. That defines the expected time for clients to succeed in our
- system, and the expected time for attackers to overwhelm our system. Same as
- above we will do this in a way that's agnostic to the chosen PoW function.
+ We will then move towards analyzing the client starting difficulty setting
+ for our PoW system. That defines the expected time for clients to succeed in
+ our system, and the expected time for attackers to overwhelm our system. Same
+ as above we will do this in a way that's agnostic to the chosen PoW function.
+
+ Currently, we have hardcoded the initial client starting difficulty at 8,
+ but this may be too low to ramp up quickly to various on and off attack
+ patterns. A higher initial difficulty may be needed for these, depending on
+ their severity. This section gives us an idea of how large such attacks can
+ be.
Finally, using those two pieces we will tune our PoW function and pick the
- right starting difficulty setting. At the end of this section we will know the
- resources that an attacker needs to overwhelm the onion service, the
+ right client starting difficulty setting. At the end of this section we will
+ know the resources that an attacker needs to overwhelm the onion service, the
resources that the service needs to verify introduction requests, and the
resources that legitimate clients need to get to the onion service.