[tor-talk] Design of next-generation Tor systems

[carlo von lynX]

Just thought.. strange.. Aymeric never bails out of a discussion,
and guess what, I overlooked his reply! Here we go.

On Mon, Jun 27, 2016 at 01:00:14PM +0200, Aymeric Vitte wrote:
> > Do you know of any other technology that does so with comparable dedication?
> > Is the spy detection for bittorrent that you implemented (and mention
> > further below) similar to this?
> 
> Probably it is, but as stated I did not understand very well the
> presentation, is there some paper or more detailed document about it?

https://gnunet.org/cadet

> > Hm, I have a feeling you are describing how gnunet works. Nodes that see
> > each other keep on communicating to each other also after a restart, but
> > whenever a new route needs to be discovered, it's time to use the DHT
> > with the hardened CADET technique. This way it can cross network boundaries,
> > reach into censorship-friendly countries, operate over mesh networks. That
> > extra post-broken-Internet capability does not make gnunet less efficient
> > over the broken Internet.
> 
> It's similar indeed, I believe each system designed for
> privacy/anonymity have similarities, maybe something different with
> Convergence/Peersm is that no direct routes are established toward the
> peers and data are relayed by rdv points to which the peers are
> connected via two Tor hops, but one might finally consider that the
> routes through the rdv points are direct ones, another difference is
> that peers do not advertise themselves in the DHT, others are doing it
> for them, one idea behind this (other than countering sybil attacks) is
> to make sure that the peers cannot freeride

Interesting, I think gnunet does it differently.. there's some game
theory in there. But that's outside my competence scope.

> >>>  Also why do people even
> >>> think of using an insecure file sharing tool (Bittorrent) over an
> >>> anonymizing network that isn't designed for it if they can use a
> >>> file sharing system that is designed to be anonymous? gnunet-fs works
> >>> great from what I've seen...
> >> gnunet-fs has probably not 200 M peers and associated content, probably
> > Tor also doesn't have 200 M bittorrent peers. If those peers are all
> > outside of Tor, then what's the point? Is anonymity only for a few?
> 
> I did not get this, what do you mean? What peers outside of what Tor?

You are alluding to bittorrent's 200 M peers, right? Well, those are
on clearnet, correct? We can expect that Tor would not be able to
scale to handle them all, it can only help some freeloaders cover
their identity. gnunet-fs has not seen much popularity but it has
been tested in simulations on university supercomputers with some
million virtual users.

> > Yes. At first it may make sense to play lego and put two things
> > together, one for the file sharing and the other for anonymity.
> > But it doesn't scale up.
> 
> Neither works and/or achieves its goal, perfect example is
> https://github.com/Ayms/torrent-live#deanonymizing-the-vpn-peers

You are announcing a bigger scandal than the unwillingness of WebRTC
developers to close their deanonymization loophole? Well, let me
know when "More to come" is replaced.

> >  Or maybe it is just a question of patience
> > at the expenses of Tor's relay donors.
> 
> Maybe if one day we can add Tor nodes apart from the centralization
> system (like inside browsers as Convergence is proposing), if not it has
> to be separated

But then you are not using potential synergy of multicast and onion
routing. If thousands of people are participating in a distribution
tree, is it really necessary to have full-fledged OR between each 
distribution point? I think the anonymous multicast papers have
figured out more efficient ways.


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