arti/crates/tor-cell
Nick Mathewson 926cc65a9e cell: make establish_intro accept impl<Into<HsMacKey>>
This allows us to allow passing in opaque HsMacKey objects,
rather than untyped byte slices.

Additionally, we now check both MAC and signature unconditionally,
to avoid the large timing side-channel.  The small timing
side-channel of combining booleans with `&` is considered safe.

Part of #993.
2023-08-14 13:15:00 -04:00
..
fuzz tor-cell: Fix compilation for fuzzers 2023-03-01 07:39:17 -05:00
src cell: make establish_intro accept impl<Into<HsMacKey>> 2023-08-14 13:15:00 -04:00
tests cell: Make EstablishRendezvous contain a RendCookie. 2023-05-23 13:33:07 -04:00
Cargo.toml Bump patchlevel versions of crates with trivial changes 2023-08-01 11:03:56 -04:00
README.md tor-cell: documentation cleanups related to restricted_msg 2023-02-07 16:03:14 -05:00
semver.md cell: make establish_intro accept impl<Into<HsMacKey>> 2023-08-14 13:15:00 -04:00

README.md

tor-cell

Coding and decoding for the cell types that make up Tor's protocol

Overview

Tor's primary network protocol is oriented around a set of messages called "Cells". They exist at two primary layers of the protocol: the channel-cell layer, and the relay-cell layer.

Channel cells are sent between relays, or between a client and a relay, over a TLS connection. Each of them encodes a single Channel Message. Channel messages can affect the channel itself (such as those used to negotiate and authenticate the channel), but more frequently are used with respect to a given multi-hop circuit.

Channel message that refer to a circuit do so with a channel-local identifier called a Circuit ID. These messages include CREATE2 (used to extend a circuit to a first hop) and DESTROY (used to tear down a circuit). But the most frequently used channel message is RELAY, which is used to send a message to a given hop along a circuit.

Each RELAY cell is encrypted and decrypted (according to protocols not implemented in this crate) until it reaches its target. When it does, it is decoded into a single Relay Message. Some of these relay messages are used to manipulate circuits (e.g., by extending the circuit to a new hop); others are used to manipulate anonymous data-streams (by creating them, ending them, or sending data); and still others are used for protocol-specific purposes (like negotiating with an onion service.)

For a list of most of the cell types used in Tor, see tor-spec.txt. Other cell types are defined in rend-spec-v3.txt (for onion services) and padding-spec.txt (for padding negotiation).

This crate is part of Arti, a project to implement Tor in Rust.

Futureproofing note

There are two pending proposals to remove the one-to-one correspondence between relay cells and relay messages.

Proposal 319 would add a "RELAY_FRAGMENT" command that would allow larger relay messages to span multiple RELAY cells.

Proposal 325, on the other hand, would allow multiple relay messages to be packed into a single RELAY cell.

The distinction between RelayCell and RelayMsg is meant in part to future-proof arti against these proposals if they are adopted.

License: MIT OR Apache-2.0