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Re: [liberationtech] "Ibis: An Overlay Mix Network for Microblogging" by Ian Goldberg
by Eugen Leitl 19 Sep '13

19 Sep '13

----- Forwarded message from Steve Weis <steveweis(a)gmail.com> ----- Date: Wed, 18 Sep 2013 21:50:45 -0700 From: Steve Weis <steveweis(a)gmail.com> To: liberationtech <liberationtech(a)lists.stanford.edu> Subject: Re: [liberationtech] "Ibis: An Overlay Mix Network for Microblogging" by Ian Goldberg Reply-To: liberationtech <liberationtech(a)lists.stanford.edu> It was an interesting talk. The gist is that they've shrunk the overhead of the Sphinx mix net ( http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/gdane/papers/sphinx-eprint.pdf) to 47 bytes. They've done this by removing the requirement for message replies and using curve25519 for ECC. They've also encoded ciphertext with CJK characters to make up most of the 47-byte overhead and let you post close to 140 ASCII characters. That lets them use Twitter as a medium for mix net messages. Users will encrypt messages using a chosen path of Ibis mix net nodes, label them with a hash tag, and either tweet the encrypted message or send it directly through an Ibis node IP address. Ibis nodes will watch for messages with specific tags. When they detect them, they'll decrypt a mix net layer and pass them along to the next node. The final node will post the payload as a retweet. They are still trying to push through a security proof for the paper before posting it, along with a command-line client. I think Ian Goldberg said it would be up at http://ibis.uwaterloo.ca. On Wed, Sep 18, 2013 at 7:09 PM, Tom Ritter <tom(a)ritter.vg> wrote: > This looks interesting! Am I being dense, or is there a paper or > slides or anything somewhere non-Stanfordites can read? > > -tom > -- > Liberationtech is public & archives are searchable on Google. Violations > of list guidelines will get you moderated: > https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech. > Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password by emailing moderator at > companys(a)stanford.edu. > -- Liberationtech is public & archives are searchable on Google. Violations of list guidelines will get you moderated: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech. Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password by emailing moderator at companys(a)stanford.edu. ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://ativel.com http://postbiota.org AC894EC5: 38A5 5F46 A4FF 59B8 336B 47EE F46E 3489 AC89 4EC5

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Re: [tor-relays] Reimbursement of Exit Operators
by Eugen Leitl 19 Sep '13

19 Sep '13

----- Forwarded message from tor(a)t-3.net ----- Date: Wed, 18 Sep 2013 19:29:26 -0400 From: tor(a)t-3.net To: tor-relays(a)lists.torproject.org Subject: Re: [tor-relays] Reimbursement of Exit Operators X-Mailer: SurgeWeb - Ajax Webmail Client Reply-To: tor-relays(a)lists.torproject.org Think bigger, say what? Certain of the world's biggest and most well-funded intelligence agencies hate personal privacy on the internet so much that they've been going to extreme efforts to destroy it. They are packet sniffing the NAPs and fiber backbones to pull out everything they can, they hacked/broke HTTPS, they are backdoored into the big content providers, they hacked the banking system, they are apparently 'in' some hardware crypto chips - the list goes on - They infiltrated the tech groups which were designing software and hardware and sabotaged their work, making their crypto be weaker/breakable and their systems easier to hack into. They use the vulnerabilities they created to their own ends. As of today, Tor appears to provide privacy, at least as far as the .onion sites goes. Maybe it even works for it's entire function of providing anonymous internet browsing. 'They' would definitely want to be IN this thing, because they either want to compromise it, or if that doesn't work well enough, destroy it. 'They' are known to infiltrate and be influential in getting what they want. Literally, they are professionals at this. 'Getting to know' the exit relay operators and identifying their bank accounts would help facilitate things when it came time for them to make their move. In the context of September 2013, this whole thing is scary. It was perhaps not scary in September of 2012, when we didn't know anything. Also. It makes me wonder things when, for example, you say "Think bigger" while pointing to a couple of potential dollars in someone's pocket. Safeguarding the operators of the exit relays is a bigger deal than chump change. I'm not making an honest accusation but, to the people who are the most vocal in approving of this - you don't work for the NSA, right? :) On Wednesday 18/09/2013 at 6:08 pm, Roger Dingledine wrote: > On Wed, Sep 18, 2013 at 08:10:25AM -0400, tor(a)t-3.net wrote: >> >> The Wau Holland Foundation can currently only >> reimburse via wire transfer. >> >> This seems to be end-of-story in terms of who, in the end, is >> ultimately getting liability/risk, and points to practically no >> chance at anonymity > > Think bigger -- _______________________________________________ tor-relays mailing list tor-relays(a)lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-relays ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://ativel.com http://postbiota.org AC894EC5: 38A5 5F46 A4FF 59B8 336B 47EE F46E 3489 AC89 4EC5

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Re: [liberationtech] Why can’t email be secure? - Silent Circle Blog
by coderman 18 Sep '13

18 Sep '13

On Sun, Aug 25, 2013 at 11:59 AM, katana <katana(a)riseup.net> wrote: > ... as Ladar replied in > <http://www.democracynow.org/2013/8/13/exclusive_owner_of_snowdens_email_ser…> > to Amy's question 'Do you think people should use email?': 'Yeah, I > think it’s a great way to communicate ... And I think email still has a > very important role to play in communication between people.' ACK. it is a question of private vs. public communication. email is and will continue to be useful for public communication. this gmail account indexes 190+ lists, 10,000 news alerts from scores of filters (everything from "TS//SI//NF" to "Flame OR Gauss OR Duqu OR Stuxnet" to Goldreich–Goldwasser–Halevi), a total of 643,132 pieces of communication. i can search through all of it in seconds and apply new filters to existing content just as easily as new, and keep an offline backup just in case. but there is zero i would consider private; for that use a medium of communication that is not a usability failure, that is not a metadata leakage nightmare, that is not an operational security mine field. let email _for private communication_ die already, please!

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[Cryptography] Gilmore response to NSA mathematician's "make rules for NSA" appeal
by Eugen Leitl 18 Sep '13

18 Sep '13

----- Forwarded message from John Gilmore <gnu(a)toad.com> ----- Date: Tue, 17 Sep 2013 16:50:38 -0700 From: John Gilmore <gnu(a)toad.com> To: cryptography(a)metzdowd.com, gnu(a)toad.com Subject: [Cryptography] Gilmore response to NSA mathematician's "make rules for NSA" appeal Re: http://www.zdnet.com/nsa-cryptanalyst-we-too-are-americans-7000020689/ In his Big Data argument, NSA analyst Roger Barkan carefully skips over the question of what rules there should be for government *collecting* big data, claiming that "what matters" are the rules for how the data is used, *after* assuming that it will be collected. Governments seldom lose powers; they work to grow their powers, to loosen the rules that govern what they can do. NSA's metadata database has fewer restrictions today than it did when it was collected, all carefully "legal" and vetted by a unaccountable bureacracy that has its own best interests at heart. My own Senator Feinstein claims from her "oversight" post that whatever's good for NSA is good for America; my Congresswoman Pelosi worked hard to defeat the bill that would have stopped the NSA phone metadata program in its tracks; and both of them run political machines that have made them "lifetime" congresspeople, no matter how out-of-step they are with their constituents. NSA and these overseers conspired to keep the whole thing secret, not to avoid "tipping off the terrorists" who already knew NSA was lawless, but to avoid the public backlash that would reduce their powers and maybe even reverse a decade of hugely growing secret budgets. Having watched the Drug War over the last 50 years, NSA for 30 years, and TSA/DHS over the last decade, I have zero faith that NSA can collect intimite data about every person in America and on the planet, and then never use that data for any purpose that is counter to the interest of the people surveilled. There will always be "emergencies", always "crises", always "evildoers", always "opportunities", that would be relieved "if we could just do X that wasn't allowed until now". So what if general warrants are explicitly forbidden? And if searching people without cause is prohibited? We could catch two alleged terrorists -- or a few thousand people with sexual images -- or 750,000 pot smokers -- or 400,000 hard-working Mexican migrants -- every year, if we just use tricky legalisms to ignore those pesky rules. So the government does ignore them. Will you or your loved ones fall into the next witchhunt? Our largest city was just found guilty of forcibly stopping and physically searching hundreds of thousands of black and latino people without cause for a decade -- a racist program defended both before and after the verdict by the Mayor, the Police Commission, the City Council, and state legislators. NSA has secretly been doing warrantless, suspicionless, non-physical searches on every American with a phone for a decade, all using secret gerrymandered catch-22 loopholes in the published constitution and laws, defended before and after by the President, the Congress and all the courts. Make rules for NSA? We already have published rules for NSA and it doesn't follow them today! So Mr Barkan moves on to why NSA would never work against the citizens. The US imprisons more people than any country on earth, and murders far more than most, but it's all OK because those poor, overworked, rule-bound government employees who are doing it are "defending freedom". Bullshit they are! Somehow scores of countries have found freedom without descending to this level of lawlessness and repression. NSA cannot operate outside of this context; rules that might work in a hypothetical honest and free government, will not work in the corrupt and lawless government that we have in the United States. NSA employees are accountable for following the rules, Mr. Barkan? Don't make me laugh. There's a word for it: impunity. EFF has diligently pursued NSA in court for most of a decade, and has still gotten no court to even consider the question "is what NSA did legal?" Other agencies like DoJ and HHS regularly retain big powers and budgets by officially lying about whether marijuana has any medical uses, rather than following the statutes, despite millions of Americans who use it on the advice of their doctor. None of these officials lose their jobs. Find me a senior federal official anywhere who has ever lost their job over major malfeasance like wiretapping, torture, kidnapping, indefinite imprisonment, assassination, or malicious use of power -- let alone been prosecuted or imprisoned for it. Innocent citizens go to prison all the time, from neighborhood blacks to medical marijuana gardeners to Tommy Chong and Martha Stewart -- high officials never. Re Big Data: I have never seen data that could be abused by someone who didn't have a copy of it. My first line of defense of privacy is to deny copies of that data to those who would collect it and later use it against me. This is exactly the policy that NSA supposedly has to follow, according to the published laws and Executive Orders: to prevent abuses against Americans, don't collect against Americans. It's a good first step. NSA is not following that policy. Where Big Data collection is voluntary, I do not volunteer, thus I don't use Facebook, Google, etc. When collection is involuntary, like with NSA's Big Data, I work to limit their power, both to collect, and to use; and then I don't believe they will follow the rules anyway, because of all the historical evidence. So I arrange my life to not leave a big data trail: I don't use ATMs, I pay with cash, don't carry identification, don't use Apple or Google or Microsoft products, etc. Your government will not make a big announcement when it has become a police state. So if you're a patriot, you'd better practice now: how to avoid stupid mistakes that would let a police state catch you when telling the truth to your fellow citizens becomes a crime -- like it did for Mr. Snowden, Ms. Manning, Mr. Ellsberg, Mr. Nacchio, Mr. Assange, and Ms. Mayer (who claims she's been dragged silently kicking and screaming to spy on her customers rather than be prosecuted for telling them the truth). NSA and its Big Data will not be defending you when the secret police come to bust you for publishing secrets. NSA will be on the cops' and prosecutors' side. They have recently filed legal memos declaring that they don't have to help the defense side in any criminal trials, even when NSA has exculpatory data, and even when NSA provided wiretapped Big Data that led the prosecutors to you. Defending the citizens from the excesses of government isn't their job. Defending their turf, their budget, and their powers is their job. John Gilmore _______________________________________________ The cryptography mailing list cryptography(a)metzdowd.com http://www.metzdowd.com/mailman/listinfo/cryptography ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://ativel.com http://postbiota.org AC894EC5: 38A5 5F46 A4FF 59B8 336B 47EE F46E 3489 AC89 4EC5

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Zero Reserve - A distributed Bitcoin exchange
by Eugen Leitl 18 Sep '13

18 Sep '13

Zero Reserve - A distributed Bitcoin exchange tl;dr: Proposal and prototype for a distributed exchange not requiring a banking gateway. Implemented as a plugin for Retroshare. Licensed under the LGPL. The Achilles heel of Bitcoin is the exchanges. Centralized as they are, they can be shut down by a number of means, by a number of players. Should that happen, price discovery of Bitcoin will not work any more. To address that, we offer a distributed exchange without the need of the banking system. Some intro and marketing blurb is here: https://github.com/zeroreserve/ZeroReserve/wiki A tech paper is here: https://mega.co.nz/#!vZ80yQJS!ccrCBREYZrOPr8oK7C9StVGuDmYENNYwrFiPXZVQldM And the code is here: https://github.com/zeroreserve/ZeroReserve In short, ZR uses the Ripple idea of Ryan Fugger to get money in and out of the exchange. ZR has nothing to do whatsoever with ripple.com, however. As such, there is no need for XRP. There is no pre-mining, no company, just code. Now the caveat: This is prototype software. Anything may or may not work. Security is only what the underlying Retroshare provides. The distributed order book works, but is still insecure. Currencies are therefore only defunct or fantasy currencies such as German Papermark(1923). Nothing you do has any effect on the blockchain. The next steps are: - hook up to the blockchain (using Amir Taaki’s excellent libbitcoin) - providing basic wallet functionality - provide authentication for anything beyond F2F. I see no reason why it wouldn’t work on OSX, but ZR was never built on it. It does build and run on Linux and Windows, though. Once you are on Retroshare and have some friends, you should be able to use this link to get and subscribe to the Zero Reserve Forum: retroshare://forum?name=ZeroReserve&id=b87d0a5577ced312d88a0ee8176e24a1 One of my RS identities: -----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- Version: OpenPGP:SDK v0.9 xsBNBFIrLBYBCADVYF9kvYYv+IOwlgHFcsdTIMAd7gIEbSaSLRWwFXZwTlxK8CGD x3kxSmUQXUl1hfm091CGBh5Xe+0O6RUdXYE6NuBTGzvIH8OHBjhCOb4cswIUAPnK rdX0O0U/tR5Jx9pQjfY5hbC6tDt/l4AtKcfi/7xUzpRkNibuEieky4aN6L4rAijO EBrEllkVKTOeoF/OQhz+nlQdt557RSt/NAIYnfMM+qekBDL+2I3Gsr5xk/7Rf2fI dIw2sQHrvetHZawypNuvZ/J7+t05FmtKShS4XObR3qcqd1pviTKJrrVoJJgI5PnZ +nEnzbtBsOwX1Y+FXCm4D8QN5vUpZN2zlznfABEBAAHNN0V1Z2VuIExlaXRsIChH ZW5lcmF0ZWQgYnkgUmV0cm9TaGFyZSkgPGV1Z2VuQGxlaXRsLm9yZz7CwF8EEwEC ABMFAlIrLBYJEJ9ljeAE3+qzAhkBAAD1sggAtJRoahysNczoTBlxeckAgtzUJlkL tcD5N+38NN2U+ivfaK67kF8mMZFiVyjcOrYmvtWesC50n2lRT6Vo1nkm8blfHzun rZ8j64KxAdiuM9XCT7JK1OMdk9VuFYvvEoFGGHCoZ402w4Jav/KgNY3G8obslv/Y peHdsYBdP5+6fM0qEhVbzahWDO95fYmB83X+KGfnf1bPrLy7gXDDphxxziBnMk7G nVNgBwFR8ohmJFlLxJHh8g1XjRFYicoQmKAm7X8E1V6Mw61AQXGV7gWOsqLu075c tCkzuTj2hE1li92oqcuyVmQEf5Bf/bBX9IUvkuAKFDrr7XqUqkyXKwow+w== =wccP -----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----

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[tor-talk] NSA paid French hackers to develop software exploits, windows, chrome etc
by Eugen Leitl 18 Sep '13

18 Sep '13

----- Forwarded message from Andrew F <andrewfriedman101(a)gmail.com> ----- Date: Wed, 18 Sep 2013 09:38:27 -0700 From: Andrew F <andrewfriedman101(a)gmail.com> To: tor-talk(a)lists.torproject.org Subject: [tor-talk] NSA paid French hackers to develop software exploits, windows, chrome etc Reply-To: tor-talk(a)lists.torproject.org FYI http://www.thedailysheeple.com/contract-reveals-nsa-paid-french-hacking-com… Happy hump day. -- tor-talk mailing list - tor-talk(a)lists.torproject.org To unsusbscribe or change other settings go to https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-talk ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://ativel.com http://postbiota.org AC894EC5: 38A5 5F46 A4FF 59B8 336B 47EE F46E 3489 AC89 4EC5

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Re: [Cryptography] An NSA mathematician shares his from-the-trenches view of the agency's surveillance activities
by Eugen Leitl 18 Sep '13

18 Sep '13

----- Forwarded message from ianG <iang(a)iang.org> ----- Date: Wed, 18 Sep 2013 10:16:30 +0300 From: ianG <iang(a)iang.org> To: cryptography(a)metzdowd.com Subject: Re: [Cryptography] An NSA mathematician shares his from-the-trenches view of the agency's surveillance activities User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.8; rv:17.0) Gecko/20130801 Thunderbird/17.0.8 On 18/09/13 00:56 AM, John Gilmore wrote: > Forwarded-By: David Farber <dave(a)farber.net> > Forwarded-By: "Annie I. Anton Ph.D." <aianton(a)mindspring.com> > > http://www.zdnet.com/nsa-cryptanalyst-we-too-are-americans-7000020689/ > > NSA cryptanalyst: We, too, are Americans Speaking as a non-American, you guys have big problems concerning the nexus of cryptography and politics. ... > The rest of this article contains Roger's words only, edited simply for formatting. I really, really doubt that. I don't really wish to attack the author, but the style and phraseology is pure PR. Ordinary people do not write PR. Nor do they lay out political strategies and refer to their commander-in-chief as the supreme leader. Nor indeed are employees of military and intelligence *permitted to talk to the press* unless sanctioned at high level. > ... Do I, as an American, have any concerns about whether the NSA > is illegally or surreptitiously targeting or tracking the communications of other Americans? > > The answer is emphatically, "No." Of course, Americans talking to Americans might be one debate. But then there are Americans talking to the world, and people talking to people. It should be remembered that espionage is illegal, and the activities of the NSA are more or less illegal *outside their borders*. I give them no permission to monitor me or mine, and nor does any of the laws of my land(s). The fact that we cannot stop them doesn't make it any less legal. The fact that there is a gentleman's agreement between countries to look the other way doesn't make it any less palatable to us non-gentlepersons excluded from the corridors of powers. And all that doesn't make NSA mathematicians any less a partner to the activity. Any intelligence agent is typically controlled and often banned from overseas travel, because of the ramifications of this activity. ... > A myth that truly bewilders me is the notion that the NSA could or would spend time looking into the communications of ordinary Americans.... > > There's no doubt about it: We all live in a new world of Big Data. In two paras above, and the next two paras below, this 'mathematician' lays the political trap for Americans. The collection by the federal government of data is almost certainly unconstitutional. Yet, everyone acts as if that's ok because ... we live in the new world of Big Data? > Much of the focus of the public debate thus far has been on the amount of data that NSA has access to, which I feel misses the critical point. Unless one subscribes to the plain wording of your (American) constitution... > In today's digital society, the Big Data genie is out of the bottle. Every day, more personal data become available to individuals, corporations, and the government. What matters are the rules that govern how NSA uses this data, and the multiple oversight and compliance efforts that keep us consistent with those rules. I have not only seen but also experienced firsthand, on a daily basis, that these rules and the oversight and compliance practices are stringent. And they work to protect the privacy rights of all Americans. ditto, repeat. Although, to be honest, we-the-world don't care about it; the USG's temptation to rewrite the constitution in the minds of its subjects is strictly a domestic political affair. For most other countries, the Big Data genie is truly out of the bottle, and there's precious little we can do about it. ... > As this national dialogue continues, I look to the American people to reach a consensus on the desired scope of U.S. intelligence activities.... Good luck! > .... The views and opinions expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the National Security Agency/Central Security Service. I seriously doubt that. iang _______________________________________________ The cryptography mailing list cryptography(a)metzdowd.com http://www.metzdowd.com/mailman/listinfo/cryptography ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://ativel.com http://postbiota.org AC894EC5: 38A5 5F46 A4FF 59B8 336B 47EE F46E 3489 AC89 4EC5

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[liberationtech] "Ibis: An Overlay Mix Network for Microblogging" by Ian Goldberg
by Eugen Leitl 18 Sep '13

18 Sep '13

----- Forwarded message from Steve Weis <steveweis(a)gmail.com> ----- Date: Wed, 18 Sep 2013 08:50:09 -0700 From: Steve Weis <steveweis(a)gmail.com> To: "liberationtech(a)lists.stanford.edu" <liberationtech(a)lists.stanford.edu> Subject: [liberationtech] "Ibis: An Overlay Mix Network for Microblogging" by Ian Goldberg Reply-To: liberationtech <liberationtech(a)lists.stanford.edu> Ian Goldberg is speaking about "Ibis: An Overlay Mix Network for Microblogging" today at the Stanford security seminar. The talk is 4:30pm in the Gates building, room 463A. http://crypto.stanford.edu/seclab/sem-12-13/goldberg.html Abstract: Microblogging services such as Twitter are extremely popular. While they are commonly used by people who wish to reveal their names and friends to the world, some users, such as activists on the ground, may wish to be able to post without automatically revealing their identities or locations. An obvious approach is to use a low-latency anonymity system, such as Tor. However, low-latency systems fall prey to end-to-end timing attacks easily accomplished by an ISP or a government monitoring clients while also watching for posts to appear in real time on the microblogging site. We present Ibis, a high-latency mix network designed specifically for microblogging. Ibis is an overlay network: the mix nodes can be microblogging clients that come online only sporadicly, and the intermediate encrypted messages are themselves posted as microblogged entries. We accomplish this through a novel cryptographic mix message format that uses only 47 bytes of overhead, while maintaining three-hop, 128-bit security against offline attack. This is joint work with Paul Hendry. Bio: Ian Goldberg is an Associate Professor of Computer Science and a University Research Chair at the University of Waterloo, where he is a founding member of the Cryptography, Security, and Privacy (CrySP) research group. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, where he discovered serious weaknesses in a number of widely deployed security systems, including those used by cellular phones and wireless networks. He also studied systems for protecting the personal privacy of Internet users, which led to his role as Chief Scientist at Zero-Knowledge Systems (now Radialpoint). His research currently focuses on developing usable and useful technologies to help Internet users maintain their security and privacy. He is a Senior Member of the ACM and a winner of the Early Researcher Award, the Outstanding Young Computer Science Researcher Award, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Pioneer Award. -- Liberationtech is public & archives are searchable on Google. Violations of list guidelines will get you moderated: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech. Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password by emailing moderator at companys(a)stanford.edu. ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://ativel.com http://postbiota.org AC894EC5: 38A5 5F46 A4FF 59B8 336B 47EE F46E 3489 AC89 4EC5

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[tor-relays] Reimbursement of Exit Operators
by Eugen Leitl 18 Sep '13

18 Sep '13

----- Forwarded message from Moritz Bartl <moritz(a)torservers.net> ----- Date: Tue, 17 Sep 2013 20:27:57 +0200 From: Moritz Bartl <moritz(a)torservers.net> To: tor-relays(a)lists.torproject.org Subject: [tor-relays] Reimbursement of Exit Operators User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:17.0) Gecko/20130827 Icedove/17.0.8 Reply-To: tor-relays(a)lists.torproject.org Hi, tl;dr: We want to start reimbursing exit operators end of this month. Partner orgs, please sign the contract! Everyone else, consider becoming a partner. --- In July last year, Roger announced that BBG was interested in funding fast exits. [1] The initial discussion on the mailing list continued into August. If you're interested, you should consult the archive for the various points raised. Since then, we've been discussing that topic on and off. It matched with my plans to turn torservers.net into a platform for many organizations, instead of just one single entity that runs too many exit relays, so I agreed to take the lead. I posted a status report of some sort on this list in April this year. [2] The Wau Holland Foundation agreed to be one of the organizations willing to handle the money and pass it on to other entities, be it single operators or organizations. Both Torproject and Wau Holland Foundation checked with their lawyers to see if this turns into a problem about liability, and it looks like it does not. We're open for more organizations to join in to manage the reimbursement process, but this is what we've got for now. In parallel, we've seen a growing number of organizations that were created to turn donations into exit bandwidth. [3] Two issues with reimbursements, that were also mentioned in Roger's initial posting, are that (1) you don't want to drive away all the volunteers, and (2) you don't want to become dependent on (a single or a handful of) sponsors. These are difficult issues, and I want to strongly encourage everyone to keep contributing to the network. We really need you, and we need more of you! The second issue, dependence on funders, is on the one hand a harder one, but on the other hand (in my opinion) a less relevant one. If structures die and nodes have to be shut down because a funder backs off, so be it. We hopefully don't change the picture too much in comparison to the "unfunded times of today". The reimbursement process does not guarantee a money stream, and the amounts are set on a month-to-month basis, to encourage recipients to plan only short-term, and only make contracts based on the money they have, disregarding what they may or may not receive in the future. The current "bucket" is the one-time BBG money, and it currently does not look like they will restock it. It might sound scary, but to satisfy the tax authorities (and to show that it is a [hopefully] fair and transparent process), the Wau Holland Foundation needs to have partners sign a contract. The contract does not limit the partners abilities or restrict what they do, it only defines the reimbursement process. The way we want to start doing it now is not set in stone, and hopefully now that we finally start handing out money it will encourage further discussion around it. We want to refine the process over time, but it looks like we just have to try with what we have now and learn from our mistakes. Please don't be too hard with your criticism or you will emotionally hurt me. I'm all ears. :-) We want to reimburse based on the throughput per exit relay and organization. To strengthen network diversity, we came up with the plan to also factor in the location of the relays. There is a maximum amount any entity can receive so we hopefully don't grow big monsters. The contract [4] specifies that there is a monthly amount, currently set to $3500, split amongst all recipients (whom I started calling "torservers partners"). The recipient share is calculated from the throughput per relay * country factor, and the maximum amount per month per partner is 500 Euro. The Wau Holland Foundation can currently only reimburse via wire transfer. The country factors can change over time, and are currently derived from the total exit probability of that country. We can and should refine this. Changes of these factors do not require new contracts. Note that since the total amount of $3500 will be handed out every month, as long as we have less than 6 entities signing the contract, each entity will receive their maximum share of 500 Euro. I don't really like the idea of a fixed monthly total handed out like that, but that's what the lawyers and tax authorities signed off for Wau Holland Foundation. It seems to be costly to re-evaluate such contracts, so this is what we will stick to for now via WHF. Technically, the monthly shares and the country factors are calculated using a tool written by Lunar^^ (big thanks!). [5] You can find an example report at [6] (not the correct numbers, but you'll get the idea). This monthly report will be sent to all partners, and once they signed the contract they will simply get their monthly share. As stated at the top, we want to start reimbursing this month. Please let me know if you have any questions. We have a mailing list that is public and read-only where we send important announcements, and require every participant to be on and actually read. We have another mailing list that is also read-only for the public, but people of the participating organizations can post and discuss everything around Torservers.net and reimbursements. [7] The process to become a "partner" for now requires that I "know you". So, if you're interested in becoming a partner, start social interaction with me. I see that as a bad bottleneck, and I hope we can somehow get rid of it in the future. I generally prefer "organizations" over single persons, because (1) in most countries it seems to be really inexpensive and easy to set up organizations and (2) the process of setting up such entities includes that you gather enough people around you, so chances are you will continue even if one of you drops out. If you want to discuss, I prefer the tor-relays mailing list and our IRC channel, #torservers on irc.oftc.net. I also explicitly want to invite every partner to join that channel. --Moritz [1] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-relays/2012-July/001433.html [2] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-relays/2013-April/001996.html [3] http://www.torservers.net/partners.html [4] [fill out + send back via pgp-encrypted and signed mail to me] plain: https://www.torservers.net/misc/2013-07-19_TorExit_en.txt fancy: https://www.torservers.net/misc/2013-07-19_TorExit_en.ott german: https://www.torservers.net/misc/2013-07-19_TorExit_de.ott [5] git clone https://people.torproject.org/~lunar/exit-funding.git [6] https://www.torservers.net/misc/reimburse-output-2013-07.txt (set encoding to Unicode) [7] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-relays/2013-May/002138.html _______________________________________________ tor-relays mailing list tor-relays(a)lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-relays ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://ativel.com http://postbiota.org AC894EC5: 38A5 5F46 A4FF 59B8 336B 47EE F46E 3489 AC89 4EC5

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[tor-talk] Tor Weekly News — September 18th, 2013
by Eugen Leitl 18 Sep '13

18 Sep '13

----- Forwarded message from harmony <harmony01(a)riseup.net> ----- Date: Wed, 18 Sep 2013 12:00:19 +0000 From: harmony <harmony01(a)riseup.net> To: tor-news(a)lists.torproject.org, tor-talk(a)lists.torproject.org Subject: [tor-talk] Tor Weekly News — September 18th, 2013 Reply-To: tor-talk(a)lists.torproject.org ======================================================================== Tor Weekly News September 18th, 2013 ======================================================================== Welcome to the twelfth issue of Tor Weekly News, the weekly newsletter that covers what’s happening in the closely-observed Tor community. Official response to QUICK ANT disclosure ----------------------------------------- Another round of speculation regarding the attitude of state surveillance agencies towards the Tor network was provoked by a slide [1] featured in an edition of the Brazilian current-affairs show “Fantástico”, broadcast on September 8th [2]. The slide, leaked as part of the ongoing Snowden disclosures, appeared to show a tab in the alleged GCHQ [3] FLYING PIG surveillance interface labelled “Query QUICK ANT — Tor events QFD”. Users on Reddit [4] and Twitter [5] began to suggest possible attacks on Tor that might be managed through such an interface. Andrew Lewman posted an official response on the Tor blog [6] in which he reiterated that “it’s not clear what the NSA or GCHQ can or cannot do”, and that well-known theoretical attacks against the Tor network are clearly described on the project’s FAQ page [7]. He further added that the tool in question was more likely to involve “some ‘Tor flow detector’ scripts that let them pick Tor flows out of a set of flows they’re looking at” than “anything to do with deanonymizing Tor users, except insofar as they might have traffic flows from both sides of the circuit in their database.” Finally, he remarked that instead of engaging in speculation based on limited evidence, “we’d rather spend our time developing Tor and conducting research to make a better Tor.” [1] https://people.torproject.org/~andrew/2013-09-10-quick-ant-tor-events-qfd.p… [2] http://g1.globo.com/fantastico/noticia/2013/09/nsa-documents-show-united-st… [3] https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/378185448293552128 [4] http://www.reddit.com/r/TOR/comments/1m3jum/gchq_tor_events_capture/ [5] https://twitter.com/jonathanmayer/status/377292928718499841 [6] https://blog.torproject.org/blog/tor-nsa-gchq-and-quick-ant-speculation [7] https://www.torproject.org/docs/faq.html.en#AttacksOnOnionRouting Entry guards and linkability ---------------------------- Leif Ryge pointed out [8] an issue with Tor’s current “entry guards” system, whereby connections entering Tor from different points on the same network could potentially be linked to an individual user based on the three entry nodes selected by that user’s Tor client, which remain constant for a period of 4-8 weeks [9]. Leif suggested that “assuming this is an accurate assessment, wouldn’t it make sense to maintain separate sets of entry guards for each network that the user connects from?” Nick Mathewson replied [10] with an acknowledgement of the problem and a number of reasons why simply generating separate sets of guards might also harm a user’s anonymity: “You would *not*, for example, want to maintain a different set of entry guards for every IP that you receive, since if you did, a hostile DHCP server could feed you new IPs until you picked a hostile guard. Similarly, if you are a busy traveler who changes your view of what network you are on hundreds or thousands of times, your chance of picking a hostile guard would rise accordingly.” He also pointed out that “having a record in your state file of every network you have visited is not necessarily the best idea either.” Nick concluded by mentioning Roger Dingledine’s proposal to lower the number of entry guards selected by a client to one only, “to avoid the property of letting guard choices identify Tor clients”. [8] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2013-September/005423.html [9] https://blog.torproject.org/blog/lifecycle-of-a-new-relay [10] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2013-September/005424.html The lifecycle of a new relay: further research needed ----------------------------------------------------- In response to some confusion on the part of relay operators over the apparently slow growth in the use of newly-established nodes by clients, Roger Dingledine posted on the Tor blog [11] a detailed account of how new relays, and the bandwidth they supply, are gradually integrated into the Tor network by directory authorities, bandwidth authorities, and clients themselves. Roger stressed that “the descriptions here are in part anecdotal”. Roger outlined the four broad phases that define the development of a relay within the network, and finished by offering a number of questions for further research, under a general rubric: “what do these phases look like with real-world data?” If you would like to contribute to the Tor community’s understanding of the interaction between individual relays and the network as a whole, please take a look both at the list of sample questions and at Tor’s publicly-available archive of metrics data [12], and see what you can find! [11] https://blog.torproject.org/blog/lifecycle-of-a-new-relay [12] https://metrics.torproject.org/data.html Food for thought ---------------- “Back in the ancient pre-Tor days, at the height of the crypto wars, Ian Goldberg asked me at Financial Crypto in 1998 why we created onion routing. Not entirely facetiously I told him that the fascinating technological problems and the potential to better protect people and their activities was nice, but the real attraction was to create a context where people who were sure they should hate each other were forced to collaborate.” [13] — Paul Syverson [13] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-talk/2013-September/030097.html Tor help desk roundup --------------------- The Tor help desk received a request for assistance setting up Thunderbird to work with Tor. Thunderbird can be made to route connections through Tor using the TorBirdy add-on. Further information about using Tor with Thunderbird can be found on the wiki [14]. Another user wrote to comment on the lack of OpenSUSE support on Tor’s rpm package page [15]. There is an open ticket concerning this issue, but it hasn’t seen activity for some months [16]. A new ticket was opened that addresses this concern more specifically [17]. [14] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/torbirdy#BeforeusingTorBirdy [15] https://www.torproject.org/docs/rpms.html [16] https://bugs.torproject.org/4389 [17] https://bugs.torproject.org/9718 Miscellaneous news ------------------ The commitment level for the proposed Tor StackExchange page is hovering at 88%; it needs to reach 100% before it will be accepted into beta. If you think you will be able to contribute by answering questions from current or potential Tor users, please sign up! [18] [18] http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/56447/tor-online-anonymity-privac… Brian Callahan alerted relay operators running FreeBSD and OpenBSD to the release of ports updated to the new tor 0.2.4.17-rc [19]. Christian Sturm then promptly announced the release of updated packages for NetBSD, DragonFly BSD, illumos, Minix, and “other systems potentially using pkgsrc” [20]. [19] http://lists.nycbug.org/pipermail/tor-bsd/2013-September/000044.html [20] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-talk/2013-September/030036.html Karsten Loesing updated tor’s GeoIP database to the newest version [21]. Karsten also published the results of his memory usage test on a version of tor that reports additional statistics, which he conducted using the Shadow network simulator [22]. Finally, Karsten asked for comments on his proposal to retire the old method of estimating user numbers on the metrics page over the next few weeks in favor of a more reliable, more efficient system (which has been in beta for some time already), and with it to remove the accumulated data associated with the older method [23]. [21] https://bugs.torproject.org/9714 [22] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/7359#comment:18 [23] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2013-September/005443.html Fabio Pietrosanti announced that the available cipher suites for connections to tor2web.org have been updated to a much stronger set [24]. [24] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-talk/2013-September/030003.html Robert published the results of an investigation into different kinds of round-trip time (RTT) measurement, and their efficiency in building circuits through the Tor network [25]. [25] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2013-September/005440.html George Kadianakis asked for comments on his early draft of a proposal for different methods of migrating the Hidden Service protocol to a more secure version [26]. George also pushed new versions of obfsproxy (0.2.3) and pyptlib (0.0.4) [27]. [26] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2013-September/005438.html [27] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2013-September/005441.html In the course of a thread about the size of browser windows posing a fingerprinting threat [28], harmony discovered that users of Ubuntu’s Unity desktop should disable the “automaximize” behavior, as it can override one of Tor Browser’s anti-fingerprinting measures [29]. [28] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-talk/2013-September/030022.html [29] https://bugs.torproject.org/9738 Tom Lowenthal submitted his monthly status report for August [30]. [30] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-reports/2013-September/000339.ht… Upcoming events --------------- Sep 29 | Colin at the Winnipeg Cryptoparty | Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada | http://wiki.skullspace.ca/index.php/CryptoParty | Sep 29-01 | Tor at OpenITP Circumvention Tech Summit IV | Berlin, Germany | https://www.openitp.org/openitp/circumvention-tech-summit.html | Oct 09-10 | Andrew speaking at Secure Poland 2013 | Warszawa, Poland | http://www.secure.edu.pl/ This issue of Tor Weekly News has been assembled by harmony, Lunar, dope457, Matt Pagan, and Karsten Loesing. Want to continue reading TWN? Please help us create this newsletter. We still need more volunteers to watch the Tor community and report important news. Please see the project page [31], write down your name and subscribe to the team mailing list [32] if you want to get involved! [31] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/TorWeeklyNews [32] https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/news-team -- tor-talk mailing list - tor-talk(a)lists.torproject.org To unsusbscribe or change other settings go to https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-talk ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://ativel.com http://postbiota.org AC894EC5: 38A5 5F46 A4FF 59B8 336B 47EE F46E 3489 AC89 4EC5

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