[TWN team] Recent changes to the wiki pages
Lunar
lunar at torproject.org
Mon Oct 13 19:00:05 UTC 2014
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=== https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/TorWeeklyNews/2014/41 ===
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version 17
Author: harmony
Date: 2014-10-13T18:28:30+00:00
remove unused sections/expand Tor.SE section a little
--- version 16
+++ version 17
@@ -101,26 +101,19 @@
[XXX]: https://citizenfourfilm.com/
[XXX]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiGwAvd5mvM
-Tor help desk roundup
----------------------
-
-Summary of some questions sent to the Tor help desk.
-
News from Tor StackExchange
---------------------------
"What happens when Tor always chooses the same path?" asks Mark [XXX]
-and wants to know which weaknesses this exposes. User194 answers that
-this would prevent a predecessor attack and makes the system stronger.
+and wants to know which weaknesses this exposes. User194 believes that
+this would prevent a “predecessor attack” and make the system stronger,
+while Lisbeth writes: “This makes your entire traffic highly
+fingerprintable as compared to a standard random path. If your
+connections always used A, B, and C nodes, it is statistically unlikely
+that many other people are consistently using that same path, therefore
+it’s very easy to correlate your traffic to your originating IP.”
[XXX]: https://tor.stackexchange.com/q/3689/88
-
-Easy development tasks to get involved with
--------------------------------------------
-
-Text with cited source [XXX].
-
- [XXX]:
Upcoming events
---------------
version 16
Author: harmony
Date: 2014-10-13T18:17:27+00:00
my head hurts
--- version 15
+++ version 16
@@ -10,26 +10,69 @@
========================================================================
Welcome to the forty-first issue in 2014 of Tor Weekly News, the weekly
-newsletter that covers what is happening in the XXX Tor community.
+newsletter that covers what’s happening in the Tor community.
-Feature XXX
------------
+Academic research into Tor: three recent studies
+------------------------------------------------
-Feature 1 with cited source [XXX]
+Major contributions to the development and security of Tor are often
+made by academic researchers, either in a laboratory setting using
+network simulators like Shadow [XXX], or through measurement and
+analysis of the live network itself (taking care not to harm the
+security or anonymity of clients and services). Different aspects of
+Tor’s networking and security, from path selection to theoretical
+attacks, have been analysed in three recently-published studies.
- [XXX]:
+Otto Huhta’s MSc thesis [XXX] investigates the possibility that an
+adversary in control of a non-exit relay could link two or more Tor
+circuits back to the same client based on nothing more than timing
+information. As Otto explained [XXX], “this is mainly the result of the
+fixed 10 minute circuit lifetime and the fact that the transition to
+using a new circuit is quite sharp.” With the help of a machine
+classifier, and the fact that any one client will build its circuits
+through a fixed set of entry guards, the study suggested that such an
+adversary “can focus only on circuits built through these specific nodes
+and quite efficiently determine if two circuits belong to the same
+user.” There is no suggestion that this knowledge alone poses a serious
+deanonymization risk to clients; however, wrote Otto, “our goal was not
+to ultimately break the anonymity of any real user but instead to expose
+a previously unknown threat so that it can be mitigated before anyone
+actually devises an attack around it.”
-Monthly status reports for XXX month 2014
------------------------------------------
+Steven Murdoch published a paper [XXX] on the optimization of Tor’s node
+selection probabilities showing, in Steven’s words [XXX], “that what
+Tor used to do (distributing traffic to nodes in proportion to their
+contribution to network capacity) is not the best approach.” Prior to
+publication of the study, “Tor moved to actively measuring the network
+performance and manipulating the consensus weights in response to
+changes. This seems to have ended up with roughly the same outcome. […]
+However, the disadvantage is that it can only react slowly to changes in
+network characteristics.”
-The wave of regular monthly reports from Tor project members for the
-month of XXX has begun. XXX released his report first [XXX], followed
-by reports from name 2 [XXX], name 3 [XXX], and name 4 [XXX].
+Sebastian Urbach shared [XXX] a link to “Defending Tor from Network
+Adversaries: A Case Study of Network Path Prediction” [XXX], in which
+the researchers analyze the effect of network features like autonomous
+systems [XXX] and Internet exchanges [XXX] on the security of Tor’s path
+selection, finding that “AS and IX path prediction significantly
+overestimates the threat of vulnerability to such adversaries”, and that
+“the use of active path measurement, rather than AS path models” would be
+preferable “in further study of Tor vulnerability to AS- and IX-level
+adversaries and development of practical defenses.”
- [XXX]:
- [XXX]:
- [XXX]:
- [XXX]:
+Each of these studies is up for discussion on the tor-dev mailing
+list [XXX], so feel free to join in there with questions and comments
+for the researchers!
+
+ [XXX]: https://shadow.github.io/
+ [XXX]: http://www0.cs.ucl.ac.uk/staff/G.Danezis/students/Huhta14-UCL-Msc.pdf
+ [XXX]: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2014-September/007517.html
+ [XXX]: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~sjm217/papers/#pub-el14optimising
+ [XXX]: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2014-October/007601.html
+ [XXX]: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-relays/2014-October/005434.html
+ [XXX]: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1410.1823v1.pdf
+ [XXX]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_System_%28Internet%29
+ [XXX]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_exchange_point
+ [XXX]: https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-dev
Miscellaneous news
------------------
@@ -105,8 +148,5 @@
}}}
Possible items:
- * Attack linking Tor circuits https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2014-September/thread.html#7489
* Patches to improve mobile hidden service performance https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2014-October/007590.html
- * Trying Trusted Tor Traceroutes results https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-relays/2014-October/005434.html
* A closer look at the Great Firewall of China https://blog.torproject.org/blog/closer-look-great-firewall-china
- * Optimising Tor node selection probabilities https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2014-October/007601.html
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