Tails can't connect to obfs4 bridges with a hardware clock East from UTC
Upstream issue: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/obfs4/-/issues/32439
Originally created by @goupille on #15548 (Redmine)
Several users reported having issues with obfs4 since a few weeks. I tried with the following bridges
obfs4 76.74.178.195:9443 406A8B5869B72221036291407EC3688C69995F80 cert=FY2R16JOoE2VNCU2gVLWBj6Gg+YBP7mTLU5zl12Fz9iC5TQG6SqE71CFhD3zIuJcEFrcMQ iat-mode=0
obfs4 91.89.79.175:43099 681DD069768F8DF5C94284FFE8CEA600C6EAFB86 cert=Dux9bBro6xfxb7rUr8wdp0TephA7wMV0MjPMAcNqkU/r1Q+56EpHypOFZHRZFDukZNCHYg iat-mode=0
obfs4 34.203.58.40:9443 A3C8B95009DB61BE34B2628C9B9B4E66FCA32FA3 cert=etaJXxltJNQxJlKxVgGXWakop242cHNtzxG/GKroXYPTlzvmsYh818WrcIJ5cZ4DbZREJA iat-mode=0and ended up with Tor launcher stuck on “Loading Network Consensus” for at least 15 minutes. I saw this behaviour two times on three trials.
I attached a whisperback report and the content of /var/log/tor/log, they are showing a weird jump back in the time :
Apr 20 14:17:56.000 [info] connection_edge_process_inbuf(): data from edge while in 'waiting for connect response' state. Sending it anyway. package_partial=1, buflen=214
Apr 20 14:17:56.000 [info] handle_control_authenticate(): Authenticated control connection (23)
Apr 20 11:30:00.000 [notice] Interrupt: exiting cleanly.
Apr 20 11:30:00.000 [info] or_state_save(): Saved state to "/var/lib/tor/state"Design
We designed an UI for manual time sync when people choose to hide Tor:
If we can't determine whether we have IP connectivity to the bridge, we might have to add captive portal configuration to the dance and I should go back to the drawing board.
Follow-up tasks
- check if the MR closes #11589; if it does, remove the fragile tag in
tor_bridges.feature - check if the MR closes #5394 as well
Attachments
Related issues
- Related to #15743 (closed)
- Related to #16972 (closed)
- Related to #15599 (closed)
- Related to #17525 (closed)
- Has duplicate #9268 (closed)
- Blocked by #15168 (closed)
- Blocked by #5774