[tor-dev] Interested in GSoC - Hidden Service Naming or Hidden Service Searching

[George Kadianakis]

Jeremy Rand <biolizard89 at gmail.com> writes:

> Hi George, thanks for the reply.
>
> On 03/02/2014 06:27 AM, George Kadianakis wrote:
>> I'd like to see human-readable names in HSes, but I'm not very
>> familiar with Namecoin. I don't want to discourage you from working on
>> this, but I'm not sure if I would be a good mentor for this.
> Any idea who might be a good mentor for this idea?
>

No idea. I don't know of any people experienced with Namecoin in Tor.
Sorry.

>> BTW, I remember watching a presentation about namecoin, and it seemed
>> like there are still a few serious unresolved problems (domain
>> squatting is easy, no revocation, lightweight clients are
>> impossible).
> Domain squatting is known to be an issue, and there are proposals to
> adjust the name pricing structure of Namecoin to disincentivise
> squatting.  While these proposals are not implemented at the moment, I
> think it's likely that they will be implemented in the future.
>
> There is a workaround (recently implemented) for a specific use case
> of revocation: a Namecoin name can import data from a second Namecoin
> name, in such a way that one name can be held in a safe location while
> the other name would be easier to update (but overrideable by the
> first name).  So if the easy-to-update name has its keys compromised,
> the safely-stored name can recover the situation.  This doesn't solve
> the more generic revocation problem; I will inquire with the Namecoin
> developers about this.  (I think it's possible to add full revocation
> support to Namecoin in the future.)
>
> Lite clients do not exist right now, but are definitely possible to
> build.  The UTXO lite client being implemented for Bitcoin should be
> mergeable to Namecoin in the future.
>> Also, namecoin are not anonymous, but people who get HS
>> domain names care about anonymity.
> You are correct that Namecoin addresses are linkable.  I think it's
> likely that Zerocoin or CoinJoin will be implemented for Namecoin in
> the future, which would solve the issue.  In the meantime, I think the
> best way to get mostly-anonymous namecoins would be to obtain
> bitcoins, run them through a mixer, and use the resulting anonymized
> bitcoins to purchase namecoins on an exchange.  (Most exchanges don't
> ask for identification unless you're using government-issued
> currency.)  I think some exchanges block Tor, so it might be necessary
> to use a proxy or VPN between Tor and the exchange.

Zerocoin/etc. seems like a bigger project than Namecoin. I think
implementing Namecoin support now and then waiting for Zerocoin to be
established and used is not going to be very efficient.

>> Yes, you seem like a good match for this project.
>>
>> Familiriaty with YaCy will be very useful indeed.
>>
>> On the crawler side, may I suggest you to also look into archive.org's
>> Heritrix crawler?  Someone told me that it's what the cool kids use
>> these days for crawling the web but I haven't used it myself.
> Thanks for the tip, I will look into Heritrix.
>> I think you would be a good candidate for this project. However, be
>> warned that it's likely that more good candidates will apply for this
>> project so it might be a tough competition.
> Is there a way that I could submit two proposals (one for each of the
> projects I listed), so that if there's tough competition for one
> project I can still be considered for the other?  Or does GSoC only
> permit one proposal per student per organization?
>

AFAIK, you can submit multiple proposals. Even multiple proposals
through different FOSS projects. Like I suggested in my previous mail,
I would even encourage you to submit multiple proposals since the HS
search engine project has gotten plenty of student attention lately.

Cheers!