Internet DRAFT - draft-cfm-circumvention-cap-theorem
draft-cfm-circumvention-cap-theorem
Network Working Group C. Myers
Internet-Draft ARTICLE 19
Intended status: Informational 26 November 2023
Expires: 29 May 2024
Towards a CAP Theorem for Censorship Circumvention
draft-cfm-circumvention-cap-theorem-01
Abstract
This Internet-Draft is a submission to the IAB Workshop on Barriers
to Internet Access of Services [biasws].
About This Document
This note is to be removed before publishing as an RFC.
Status information for this document may be found at
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-cfm-circumvention-cap-
theorem/.
Source for this draft and an issue tracker can be found at
https://github.com/cfm/draft-cfm-circumvention-cap-theorem.
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Internet-Draft Towards a CAP Theorem for Censorship Cir November 2023
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Table of Contents
1. Research proposal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1. Research proposal
Between June 2022 and April 2023 [tor-status], the Tor network was
the target of a sustained distributed denial-of-service (DDoS)
attack, apparently targeting the relays and directory servers that
coordinate introductions to Tor hidden services [tor-relays-2022-07]
[tor-relays-2022-10]. This attack impeded the performance and
threatened the security of the Tor network for all users. It
especially obstructed Web sites and services that had gone out of
their way to be accessible to Tor users via Tor hidden services,
which usually improve the performance of the Tor network by bypassing
the "exit nodes" that interface with the clearnet Internet.
Although the origins and motivations of this attack remain unknown,
it is a useful case study in the D/DoS vulnerability of overlay
networks such as Tor, which users may seek out to protect their
anonymity, circumvent censorship, or both. The CAP theorem
[cap-theorem] is instructive: like a database, a censorship-
circumvention system is useful to the extent that it is:
1. *consistent:* returns accurate and current data;
2. *available:* returns data at all; and
3. *partition-tolerant*: routes around failures, which by definition
include active censorship. In this case, they also include
active _attacks_ on circumvention infrastructure that lessen its
overall availability, whether or not intended as an act of
censorship.
For the workshop, I propose to explore further whether formalisms
such as the CAP theorem are useful models and/or measures for the
utility and resilience of a censorship-circumvention system such as
Tor.
2. Informative References
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Internet-Draft Towards a CAP Theorem for Censorship Cir November 2023
[biasws] Internet Architecture Board, "Workshop on Barriers to
Internet Access of Services", 20 September 2023,
<https://datatracker.ietf.org/group/biasws/about/>.
[cap-theorem]
"CAP theorem", n.d.,
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAP_theorem>.
[tor-relays-2022-07]
Dingledine, R., "We're trying out guard-n-primary-guards-
to-use=2", 6 July 2022,
<https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-
relays/2022-July/020686.html>.
[tor-relays-2022-10]
Koppen, G., "DoS attacks -- status update", 28 October
2022, <https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-
relays/2022-October/020858.html>.
[tor-status]
Tor Project, "Network DDoS", 9 June 2022,
<https://status.torproject.org/issues/2022-06-09-network-
ddos/>.
Author's Address
Cory Myers
ARTICLE 19
Email: cfm@acm.org
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