Status of Tor proposals and proposal process (March 2008)

[Paul Syverson]

On Sun, Apr 13, 2008 at 04:08:40PM -0700, Mike Perry wrote:
> Thus spake Nick Mathewson (nickm at freehaven.net):
> 
> >    115  Two Hop Paths
> >    116  Two hop paths from entry guards
> > 
> >         These both are probably dead at this point: there's been no
> >         activity for some while.  Both have uncertain anonymity
> >         implications, especially in light of new path features (like
> >         bridges) and possible scalability features arma has in mind.
> >         If anybody wants to resurrect them, a first step will be a
> >         really thorough analysis of what different attackers can do
> >         against them.  Marking as DEAD.
> 
> Please do not delete these (go ahead and put them in a DEAD directory
> if you would like, though). I intend on revisiting them as soon as I
> finish up with more immediate Tor tasks and lower hanging fruit. I
> still believe the barriers are fundamentally engineering problems
> rather than theoretical problems, but I do agree the proposals need a
> rewrite to do a more clear job of enumerating and organizing the
> anonymity considerations so that they are easier to grok. The prose in
> 115 can get a bit thick..
> 
> (And to put into perspective any fears that the anonymity issues of
> two hop paths are too hairy to ever try to solve, I contend that
> anonymity under Firefox is a far more fearsome beast ;)
>  

FWIW (probably not much yet), this is one of the things on which I am
hoping to get some research done at some point this summer.

aloha,
Paul