[tor-talk] New paper : Users Get Routed: Traffic Correlation on Tor by Realistic Adversaries

[Nils Kunze]

2013/10/17 mick <mbm at rlogin.net>

> On Wed, 16 Oct 2013 19:42:41 -0500
> Joe Btfsplk <joebtfsplk at gmx.com> allegedly wrote:
>
> > On 10/16/2013 4:50 PM, Roger Dingledine wrote:
> > > On Sun, Sep 01, 2013 at 10:10:56PM -0400, Roger Dingledine wrote:
> > >>
> > >> Yep. They're part of the Tor research community. I have plans for
> > >> writing a blog post about the paper, to explain what it means,
> > >> what it doesn't mean, what we should do about it, and what
> > >> research questions remain open.
> > > Here it is:
> > >
> > >
> https://blog.torproject.org/blog/improving-tors-anonymity-changing-guard-parameters
> > >
> > > --Roger
> > I read the paper - good job. Some of it will be over the heads of
> > some, but that's unavoidable unless make it 10+ pages, in newbie
> > language, then few would read it all, so...
> > I'm not bashing Tor here, so leave your pitchforks in the barn. Just
> > asking questions, making observations that may / may not have an
> > answer or even be useful.
> >
> > One thing jumps out, Tor doesn't know for sure who's running Guard or
> > exit nodes - & can't unless they start doing (regular, repeated)
> > extensive personal interviews, background checks, giving polygraph
> > tests, injecting sodium pentathol  to those wanting to run nodes.  I
> > guess more so for Guards.
>
> [...]
>
> To suggest that some (who?) set of the Tor community should subject
> some other part of the community to some form of vetting which
> includes (your words) "(regular, repeated) extensive personal
> interviews, background checks, giving polygraph tests, injecting sodium
> pentathol" is offensive in the extreme.
>
>
While tone of voice is always hard to get across in a written medium, it
seems quite obvious to me that Joe is not suggesting what you are
paraphrasing, but in fact just bringing a point across: It is not going to
be possible to know the identity and intentions of all relay operators and
hence it is necessary that tor can provide anonymity even in face of the
possibility that some relays are run by adversaries.

Nils