[tor-dev] Relay diversity master thesis

[grarpamp]

On Sun, Jan 7, 2018 at 8:29 AM, teor <teor2345 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 22 Dec 2017, at 11:23, Robin Descamps <robin.descamps at outlook.com> wrote:
>> May I ask you advices/feedback about this master thesis plan?
>> The master thesis plan: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1XEOSS29owavKJ_cJJAVaPiJe34Ez6XXx
>> The poster: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1BlF2U-Kexyz6ihVSqvsVHv4PUsvXATc4

> In particular, operators that could perform end-to-end correlation?

> Have you considered the relay's Operating System?

If considering as yet non tor daemon, non measured, non consensus voted
things like operators and OS, then you should extend research into similar
meta parameters about the relays themselves such as datacenter hosted vs
cable/dsl/fiber "home" relays, country locations, opposing legal jurisdictions,
operation by "known" or "trusted" operators / entities or not, by
working / fake / no
contact info, by any PKI Web Of Trust asserted among operators, funding
sources, employer / corporate / political / other affiliations,
statistical analysis
of historical relay "presence" on the network (add/drop/uptime, nicknames,
movement, versions, bulk turnups, correlation groups, etc), and many more
possible metas that people should think up and add to this list.

That research then followed by development of third party subscription
lists of categorized / ranked relays the user or tor daemon may further
pluggably select from when choosing nodes to path through.

There have been posts on tor-relays@ and tor-talk@ that mention more
about these sorts of meta parameters. AFAIK, no one has done any
research into them or their potential impact / benefits, whether to particularly
affected, or for plain preferential choice users, or to the network as a whole.
So the chance of a first good paper in the area awaits whoever does that
meta analysis project.

[xpost for open project oppurtunity]