Parsing the Tor Consensus gives us the IP Addresses of active relays in the Tor network.
Is there a way of getting a relay's descriptors from that particular relay itself ?
Thanks :)
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Even if it was serving directory requests, it'd be serving the same as any other relay? What are you trying to achieve with this? – cacahuatl Sep 28 '17 at 2:06
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Just wanted to know if its possible because it sends descriptors to directory authorities. I wanted to know if we have an IP address of a relay , could we use the stem library to get descriptors to a tor client. Is there any functionality in stem for this? Thanks for the comment :) – Mithrandir Sep 28 '17 at 2:18
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Also , certain relays are safe to use for anonymity and querying the DA's produces latency for the network. Also , Tor gives us the flexibility of choosing the guard, middle amd exit, so.. – Mithrandir Sep 28 '17 at 2:25
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Are you aware of how Tor already fetches directory information? Stem just queries Tor's current cache, you might also be interested in the dir-spec. – cacahuatl Sep 28 '17 at 3:43
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Which Tor relay? Is it HSDir? – defalt Dec 28 '17 at 4:17
A Tor relay's descriptor is available at that relay as the resource '/tor/server/authority[.z]'. This is useful when you don't know the relay's fingerprint.
Using IPredator as an example:
http://197.231.221.211:9030/tor/server/authority
Or, using stem:
import stem.descriptor.remote
dir_port = ('197.231.221.211', 9030)
stem.descriptor.remote.Query(resource='/tor/server/authority.z', endpoints=[dir_port]).run()[0]
Or, if you prefer to use the high-level API, which gets the same relay descriptor, but using a slightly different resource internally ('/tor/server/fp/fingerprint.z'):
import stem.descriptor.remote
fingerprint = 'BC630CBBB518BE7E9F4E09712AB0269E9DC7D626'
dir_port = ('197.231.221.211', 9030)
desc = stem.descriptor.remote.get_server_descriptors(fingerprints=[fingerprint], endpoints=[dir_port]).run()[0]
stem can retrieve descriptors using either method, but only when the relay has a DirPort.
