[tor-relays] How can we trust the guards?

[Mirimir]

On 01/02/2017 06:08 PM, teor wrote:
> 
>> On 3 Jan 2017, at 11:46, Mirimir <mirimir at riseup.net> wrote:
>>
>>> I believe that what is needed is changing Tor to accommodate a
>>> lot of small relays running by a very large number of volunteers,
>>> and to push real traffic through them.
>>
>> Alternately, you need lots of small relays, running (with plausible
>> deniability) on IoT devices. Mirai-style. Using covert channels (packet
>> timing etc). Tor Project would never do that, I know. But eventually, it
>> might come down to that.
> 
> I think you are talking about a different network, which is not Tor as
> currently designed, implemented, and deployed.

Yes, very different. But perhaps using onion-routing. Or mixes. Or both.

> In particular, how do you get decent throughput, reliability, and low-
> latency out of tens of thousands of devices?

I imagine that it would be entirely peer-to-peer. And that it would use
something like multipath UDP. Using covert channels, bandwidth would at
best be ~1% of raw. But Internet bandwidth and latency are increasing,
and high-definition video is everywhere, so there's lots of traffic to
modulate. HD video devices would be good routers, I think.

> This is an open research problem, which the Tor design does not solve.
> 
> T

Indeed. A few designs have been published, but nothing better has been
implemented. As far as I know, anyway.









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> Tim Wilson-Brown (teor)
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