I’ve checked this in debian-12-xfce based qube with firefox-esr and I don’t have this issue there:
ii tor 0.4.8.9-1~d12.bookworm+1 amd64 anonymizing overlay network for TCP
ii vanguards 0.3.1-2.3 all Additional protections for Tor Onion Services
After trying it one more time after rebooting the qube instead of restarting tor/vanguards services the issue occurred in this qube as well:
Nov 25 07:14:34 tstqube vanguards[578]: WARNING[Sat Nov 25 07:14:34 2023]: Possible Tor bug, or possible attack if very frequent: Got 1 dropped cell on circ 8 (in state CONFLUX_LINKED None; old state CONFLUX_UNLINKED None)
Nov 25 07:14:34 tstqube vanguards[578]: NOTICE[Sat Nov 25 07:14:34 2023]: We force-closed circuit 8
Nov 25 07:14:56 tstqube vanguards[578]: WARNING[Sat Nov 25 07:14:56 2023]: Possible Tor bug, or possible attack if very frequent: Got 1 dropped cell on circ 11 (in state CONFLUX_LINKED None; old state CONFLUX_UNLINKED None)
Nov 25 07:14:56 tstqube vanguards[578]: NOTICE[Sat Nov 25 07:14:56 2023]: We force-closed circuit 11
Nov 25 07:14:56 tstqube vanguards[578]: WARNING[Sat Nov 25 07:14:56 2023]: Possible Tor bug, or possible attack if very frequent: Got 2 dropped cell on circ 11 (in state CONFLUX_LINKED None; old state CONFLUX_UNLINKED None)
Nov 25 07:14:56 tstqube vanguards[578]: WARNING[Sat Nov 25 07:14:56 2023]: Possible Tor bug, or possible attack if very frequent: Got 3 dropped cell on circ 11 (in state CONFLUX_LINKED None; old state CONFLUX_UNLINKED None)
Nov 25 07:14:56 tstqube vanguards[578]: WARNING[Sat Nov 25 07:14:56 2023]: Possible Tor bug, or possible attack if very frequent: Got 4 dropped cell on circ 11 (in state CONFLUX_LINKED None; old state CONFLUX_UNLINKED None)
Nov 25 07:14:56 tstqube vanguards[578]: WARNING[Sat Nov 25 07:14:56 2023]: Possible Tor bug, or possible attack if very frequent: Got 5 dropped cell on circ 11 (in state CONFLUX_LINKED None; old state CONFLUX_UNLINKED None)
Nov 25 07:14:56 tstqube vanguards[578]: WARNING[Sat Nov 25 07:14:56 2023]: Possible Tor bug, or possible attack if very frequent: Got 6 dropped cell on circ 11 (in state CONFLUX_LINKED None; old state CONFLUX_UNLINKED None)
So it seems to be a generic tor/vanguards bug.
This needs to be reported to upstream, The Tor Project, the developers of Tor.
most likely here:
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/core/tor/-/issues/new
Also reproducible without vanguards installed?
I can’t reproduce it without vanguards, the clearnet sites are not breaking.
I guess it needs to be reported to vanguards then.
Yes.
Is this only reproducible in Qubes-Whonix or also in Non-Qubes-Whonix (such as Whonix for VirtualBox)?
Is this only reproducible in Qubes Debian templates or also reproducible on real (non-Qubes) Debian?
Reproducible in Whonix for VirtualBox too.
Weirdly, I couldn’t reproduce this issue on Debian (non-Qubes) yet.
In summary.
reproducible in:
not reproducible in:
Tor Project bug report:
vanguards bug report:
Qubes bug report:
I’ve tested this in debian-12 VM in KVM and I can reproduce the issue.
Check if vanguards is running, the service is not enabled by default when it’s installed.
Also the issue seems to be occurring after some time will pass when you visit a few sites or wait a few minutes.
Maybe only VMs are causing this but hardware doesn’t?
I can confirm that this is also an issue in KVM Whonix as well.
I’ve reproduced this issue on bare metal debian as well.
Any updates on the issue? I did not see progress on the bug reports since last month, however, the problem still persists and it makes Whonix completely unusable to be honest.
Then you’re suffering from this issue for no reason. Solution available for a long time already.
No, not really. From public sources only. Quote from that Bug report:
Mike Perry assigned to @mikeperry 2 weeks ago
Mike Perry added Next label 2 weeks ago
Newer Tor version and vanguards disabling is now in the testers repository.