Yet another reason to call him #$%& Re: yet another reason...

[Steve Kinney]

On 10/21/18 6:46 PM, juan wrote:
> On Sat, 20 Oct 2018 15:12:22 -0400
> Steve Kinney <admin at pilobilus.net> wrote:
> 
> 
>> The high volume of torrent traffic over i2p, 
> 
> 
> 	I wasn't aware that i2p is mainly used for torrents? 

I don't recall the statistics but I would guess that torrents account
for at least 95% of the traffic on that network.  Maybe more like
99-point-something percent.

> 	Last time I checked their eepsites(or whatever they are called) I didn't find anythign interesting or 'criminal'. In other words, nobody seems to be using i2p to host anything of value. And I saw more than a few sites that looked that like russian honeypots. 

A website on the i2p network (eepsite) can host any files the user puts
in the site's /docroot directory.  That would include subdirectories
with their own index pages, not publicly advertised and available only
to "confidential" correspondents who know the names of the subdirectory
and index pages in question.  That's not quite a "digital dead drop" but
comes close.

I used to run a moderately popular eepsite and seeded lotsa torrents.
"Who" I was and what I may have distributed aside from publicly
advertised content is for me to know and others to guess.  Let's just
say I did it as an exercise and for amusement purposes only.  Last time
I checked, some of the stuff I seeded out was still bouncing around in
there years later.  :o)

>> and the loooong duration of
>> typical downloads (25kbps counts as 'decent speed' in there), greatly
>> complicate matters for anyone doing traffic analysis, compared to the
>> hit-and-run pattern of TOR usage that typically lights up an entry and
>> exit router for just a few minutes per user session, during which easily
>> fingerprinted clusters of packets, all of them "of interest" to
>> potential adversaries, flow thick and fast.
> 
> 
> 	Which is exactly the reason why  torscum should be promoting the use of their network for filesharing...if they were honestly interested in protecting users....which of course they are not. 

The Tor Project's position on torrent traffic never made sense to me.
More users and more traffic add up to more security.  If casual users
see a bit more lag, so what?  In every instance where security vs. end
user arises convenience arises, TOR chooses convenience.

I was also very disappointed when the TOR Browser distribution dropped
support for router configuration; now they have done away with the last
scrap of that. "The Tor circuit display has been relocated and improved!
Click the Site Identity button (located on the left side of the URL bar)
to see the new circuit display" is a lie; there's no such button in the
update I just installed (ver 8.03), which presents the quoted text on
its 'update completed' page, but nothing related in any menu accessible
to the user.

The browser's configuration menu does present "new identity" and "new
circuit for this site" buttons; that's all, folks!  The "Donate Now"
link on the TOR welcome page does work though.

>> than they would consider acceptable if they knew about
>> them.  The reluctance of intelligence services to reveal their
>> capabilities by acting on what they know too often provides the best
>> protection most users can get...
> 
> 
> 	...but that didn't work too well for ulbricht and a few others like him...

I would say it worked exactly as expected for Ulbricht and a few others
like him:  Always expect a faulty cost/benefit estimate produces net
loss results.

:o/



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