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authorNick Mathewson <nickm@torproject.org>2008-02-26 19:29:40 +0000
committerNick Mathewson <nickm@torproject.org>2008-02-26 19:29:40 +0000
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Add the .txt ending to proposal 129. Mark proposal 123 finished.
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+Filename: 129-reject-plaintext-ports.txt
+Title: Block Insecure Protocols by Default
+Version: $Revision$
+Last-Modified: $Date$
+Author: Kevin Bauer & Damon McCoy
+Created: 2008-01-15
+Status: Finished
+
+Overview:
+
+ Below is a proposal to mitigate insecure protocol use over Tor.
+
+ This document 1) demonstrates the extent to which insecure protocols are
+ currently used within the Tor network, and 2) proposes a simple solution
+ to prevent users from unknowingly using these insecure protocols. By
+ insecure, we consider protocols that explicitly leak sensitive user names
+ and/or passwords, such as POP, IMAP, Telnet, and FTP.
+
+Motivation:
+
+ As part of a general study of Tor use in 2006/2007 [1], we attempted to
+ understand what types of protocols are used over Tor. While we observed a
+ enormous volume of Web and Peer-to-peer traffic, we were surprised by the
+ number of insecure protocols that were used over Tor. For example, over an
+ 8 day observation period, we observed the following number of connections
+ over insecure protocols:
+
+ POP and IMAP:10,326 connections
+ Telnet: 8,401 connections
+ FTP: 3,788 connections
+
+ Each of the above listed protocols exchange user name and password
+ information in plain-text. As an upper bound, we could have observed
+ 22,515 user names and passwords. This observation echos the reports of
+ a Tor router logging and posting e-mail passwords in August 2007 [2]. The
+ response from the Tor community has been to further educate users
+ about the dangers of using insecure protocols over Tor. However, we
+ recently repeated our Tor usage study from last year and noticed that the
+ trend in insecure protocol use has not declined. Therefore, we propose that
+ additional steps be taken to protect naive Tor users from inadvertently
+ exposing their identities (and even passwords) over Tor.
+
+Security Implications:
+
+ This proposal is intended to improve Tor's security by limiting the
+ use of insecure protocols.
+
+ Roger added: By adding these warnings for only some of the risky
+ behavior, users may do other risky behavior, not get a warning, and
+ believe that it is therefore safe. But overall, I think it's better
+ to warn for some of it than to warn for none of it.
+
+Specification:
+
+ As an initial step towards mitigating the use of the above-mentioned
+ insecure protocols, we propose that the default ports for each respective
+ insecure service be blocked at the Tor client's socks proxy. These default
+ ports include:
+
+ 23 - Telnet
+ 109 - POP2
+ 110 - POP3
+ 143 - IMAP
+
+ Notice that FTP is not included in the proposed list of ports to block. This
+ is because FTP is often used anonymously, i.e., without any identifying
+ user name or password.
+
+ This blocking scheme can be implemented as a set of flags in the client's
+ torrc configuration file:
+
+ BlockInsecureProtocols 0|1
+ WarnInsecureProtocols 0|1
+
+ When the warning flag is activated, a message should be displayed to
+ the user similar to the message given when Tor's socks proxy is given an IP
+ address rather than resolving a host name.
+
+ We recommend that the default torrc configuration file block insecure
+ protocols and provide a warning to the user to explain the behavior.
+
+ Finally, there are many popular web pages that do not offer secure
+ login features, such as MySpace, and it would be prudent to provide
+ additional rules to Privoxy to attempt to protect users from unknowingly
+ submitting their login credentials in plain-text.
+
+Compatibility:
+
+ None, as the proposed changes are to be implemented in the client.
+
+References:
+
+ [1] Shining Light in Dark Places: A Study of Anonymous Network Usage.
+ University of Colorado Technical Report CU-CS-1032-07. August 2007.
+
+ [2] Rogue Nodes Turn Tor Anonymizer Into Eavesdropper's Paradise.
+ http://www.wired.com/politics/security/news/2007/09/embassy_hacks.
+ Wired. September 10, 2007.
+
+Implementation:
+
+ Roger added this feature in
+ http://archives.seul.org/or/cvs/Jan-2008/msg00182.html
+ He also added a status event for Vidalia to recognize attempts to use
+ vulnerable-plaintext ports, so it can help the user understand what's
+ going on and how to fix it.
+
+Next steps:
+
+ a) Vidalia should learn to recognize this controller status event,
+ so we don't leave users out in the cold when we enable this feature.
+
+ b) We should decide which ports to reject by default. The current
+ consensus is 23,109,110,143 -- the same set that we warn for now.
+