On 5/28/07, Steven Murdoch <tortalk+Steven.Murdoch@cl.cam.ac.uk> wrote:

... an experiment to establish how diverse the topology of the Tor network is -- an important component of how secure it is against traffic analysis. ...

I've now finished the draft version of the resulting paper...

http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~sjm217/papers/pet07ixanalysis.pdf

hi Steven; an enjoyable read. thank you! i am curious about a few aspects. you state "an assumption that the global passive adversary is unrealistic". is this really true in anonymity research circles? it seems the evidence to the contrary is well supported. i do prefer the "those who are the target of such adversaries have larger problems than anonymous Internet access" statement instead. :) i am also curious if you had considered lower layer propinquity of physical paths. critical infrastructure research has shown how even seemingly disparate and redundant paths are often inhabiting common right of way and facilities. is the assumption that inspection at OC/WDM layers is too cumbersome/expensive for all but the previously mentioned TLA/$gov adversaries? given the surprises looking at network topology from an IX rather than AS level, i'd expect a similar revelation when viewing from an optical carrier vantage point. sadly, the information useful for such study has become a subject of heated and irrational censorship post 9/11. i'll stop this tangent early before i delve into a heated rant about critical infrastructure and terrorism madness... *g* best regards, ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE