Evaluate non-C tor implementations for hackability

For testing, we should have badly-behaved clients and servers. But implementing that in C seems like horrible overkill. Let's look at the best-of-breed compatible implementations, and figure out which one would be the best basis for making a bunch of stub test client/servers.

(It's okay if the client answer and the server answer aren't the same)

changed milestone to %Tor: 0.2.8.x-final

added 028-triage 201511-deferred 201512-deferred TorCoreTeam201601 component::core tor/tor milestone::Tor: 0.2.8.x-final owner::nickm priority::medium resolution::implemented severity::normal sponsor::S status::closed type::task labels

Trac:
Keywords: N/A deleted, TorCoreTeam201511 added

Name: Gareth Owen's Tor Research Framework URL: https://github.com/owenson/tor-research-framework Role: Client Hackability: High (I contributed to it in 2014)

However, it has been used as part of his HS hashring research, not sure if we want that association. (But that functionality might help in testing banning for hashring crawling. Not sure if the hashring crawling part is publicly available or in this repository, though.)

Trac:
Severity: N/A to Normal

Name: haskell-tor URL: https://github.com/GaloisInc/haskell-tor Role: Client (no hidden service support) Hackability: unknown

Just mentioned on the tor-dev mailing list.

Go: https://github.com/tvdw/gotor

NodeJS: https://github.com/Ayms/node-Tor

Java: https://silvertunnel.org/doc/netlib.html https://subgraph.com/orchid/

From tor-dev@:

python + Scapy: https://github.com/cea-sec/TorPylle

...and, based on the above, this: https://github.com/pycepa/pycepa

"I haven't tried either of the above. I also recall a Python + Twisted one, too, but I can't find it now."

They're now on the wiki at:

https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/doc/ListOfTorImplementations

Bulk-move uncompleted items to december. :/

Trac:
Keywords: TorCoreTeam201511 deleted, TorCoreTeam201512, 201511-deferred added

Okay, I guess I'm reviewing the code on these...

Trac:
Owner: N/A to nickm
Status: new to accepted

Perhaps in January?

Trac:
Keywords: TorCoreTeam201512 deleted, TorCoreTeam201601, 201512-deferred added

Evaluating super quickly and unfairly. A unicode confused face () indicates that I don't actually know the language too well.

• haskell-tor looks solidly written and nicely terse. A little less documentation than I'd prefer. But if you don't know haskell it won't be a walk in the park.
• purpleonion : 7 years outdated.
• gotor: Clean but far less documented than I'd prefer. In a nice language at least, and easy to follow.
• node-tor: Far less documented than I'd prefer. No commits for a year?
• TorPylle: 2.5 years out of date. Far less documented than I'd prefer. No ntor support.
• pycepa: Documented! Pythonic, mostly! Appears not to be a complete client implementation though; there are hardwired node identities in Circuit.py. We'll have to see how much of this is actually implemented. Not sure it actually checks signatures. Looks pretty hackable. GPLv3.
• oppy: Documentd in some places; undocmented in others. Uses Twisted. Doesn't validate all signatures. Clean. Looks pretty hackable. 3BSD licensed.
• orchid: Far less documented than I'd like. Very nice code structure though. Very big complete implementation. Last commit around May 2015? 3BSD license.
• tor-research-framework: Far less documented than I'd like. Good documentation in some places though. Not in love with architecture/hackability; looks procedural at first glance. GPL3+ license.
• silvertunnel-ng: Documentation present but uneven. Pretty big implementation; pretty complete. GPL2+ license.

Every once in a while I feel tempted to dust off the gotor code and clean it up/update it....

Okay, I'm going to call this done. Please reopen if you want to do more evaluation.

Trac:
Resolution: N/A to implemented
Status: accepted to closed

Stem now has ORPort support for downloading descriptors: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2018-February/012905.html

This support is based on Endosome: https://github.com/teor2345/endosome

Both are eminently hackable. (I used endosome to review tor-spec against the actual C relay implementation.)

This list is kept up to date: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/doc/ListOfTorImplementations

Trac:
Reviewer: N/A to N/A

closed

moved to tpo/core/tor#17270 (closed)