Anonymity easily thwarted by flooding network with relays?

[Theodore Bagwell]

On Fri, 19 Nov 2010 18:00 -0500, "grarpamp" <grarpamp at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'd also nominate the issue, and others, as further reason Tor should
> ship
> by default as a non-exit relay... and yes, with a nice info screen and a
> disable
> button. There is absolutely no reason not to think the opponent has not
> already clandestinely and sufficiently flooded the net with the
> current nodebase.

I agree with you here, but on different grounds:

Would this increase anonymity? As pointed out previously, not much.
Attacks against Tor anonymity usually relate to entry-point/exit-point
traffic correlation... Regardless of how many segments are in the
middle, if your adversary can "corner the market" on exit nodes, it
doesn't matter how many intermediate relay nodes you're using. (Correct
me where I'm wrong, experts)

Would this increase the health of the overall network? Yes*! And for
that reason, I'm all for it. Let's make Tor clients treat the "run as
relay" feature as an "opt-out" instead of an "opt-in" process. As you
pointed out, Bit Torrent showed that users are willing to pay to play.

- - -
* I believe I read that relays on Windows XP are particularly buggy...
Also, symmetry of up/down bandwidth can be an issue too... which is
unfortunate.


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