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IPFS and Their Gateways

daniel.haxx.se

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Re: IPFS and Their Gateways

#51

Post by georgyo »

sneak wrote: post #15
dark-star wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what he said: you can veify the file's hash after you downloaded it, to make sure it wasn't tampered with...

The merkle root of the DAG over the chunks is not related to the file's hash. Imagine if I gave you a file out of a git repo, and the long commit hash. It's insufficient on its own to verify integrity, you need the intermediate nodes. With ipfs you can infer that it used the reference chunker and try to reproduce the DAG but there is no guarantee it will work. Better to just speak ipfs to the p2p net and get the DAG.

Exactly, and it is even worse than git.

Git the Merkel root is a list of directories and hashs of whole files.

Ipfs, an individual file can be made up of many trees and those trees can have trees.

Example: https://explore.ipld.io/#/explore/QmbGtJg23skhvFmu9mJiePVByh...

That is a single file, but good luck verify that file without actually downloading the entire dag tree which includes the file.

Worse, that same file can be chucked and bucketed infinitely number of ways. So if I download that file and the re-add it to IPFS, I will very likely get a _different_ address. And that address will likely share _none_ of the of the nodes from the previous address. Meaning even though the same file is in IPFS, they are completely distinct and don't actually help seed each other.

Re: IPFS and Their Gateways

#52

Post by snvzz »

teddyh wrote: post #7
georgyo wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument is that the user must choose their gateway, not that https gateways are bad in general. With DoH generally must both opt in and must choose your provider.

I’ve seen a lot of defaults to use Google or Cloudflare as resolvers.

I do unbound -> tor -> cloudflare.

Re: IPFS and Their Gateways

#53

Post by chriswarbo »

londons_explore wrote: post #16

IPFS isn't fit for purpose. It needs censorship-resistance added. It needs user privacy added. Both of those could be enabled by combining data blocks semi-randomly. Ie. rather than downloading the data you're looking for, you download a block of data containing what you're looking for and some other data. Then nobody knows what it was you were looking at. Some combined blocks might contain a few bytes of data from t…

> that's fine, it means IPFS isn't for them.

This sentiment also applies to your argument, i.e. IPFS isn't fit for your purpose; and that's fine, it means IPFS isn't for you.

There are a whole bunch of censorship-resistant, plausibly-deniable systems out there (e.g. I run FreeNet from time to time)

Re: IPFS and Their Gateways

#54

Post by vorpalhex »

londons_explore wrote: post #22
sneak wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ipfs is a transport, not a storage system. you don't store things "on ipfs" any more than you store things "on http". http and tcp, other transport systems, also do not have censorship resistance. it's the wrong place for it. you can use ipfs to build a censorship resistant system, just like you can with tcp, but that is the purview of a higher layer.

A new version of IPFS would be both transport system and storage. I don't think it's possible to reasonably to maintain layering while adding privacy and censorship resistance.

This is sort of being upset at your mop because it makes a bad vacuum. These goals are not directly part of ipfs.

Re: IPFS and Their Gateways

#55

Post by risyachka »

trumpablehump wrote: post #42
londons_explore wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except you'd only have the keys for your data... And encrypted data you don't have the key for is indistinguishable from random noise. 'Combined' blocks that you don't know which partner blocks are necessary for decoding are likewise useless. You're being like a mailman handling mail - you can't look into the mail, so you can't know if you're delivering love letters, junkmail, or terrorist propaganda.

I am not a mailman though, who surely have special protection. If you want an analogy, I would rather go the "carry a closed package for an anonymous stranger through airport security" danger way. The danger is just too big, as my sibling commenter says.

Not sure this is like it.

If Uber Package driver delivers a package of drugs - pretty sure he won't get to jail as it will be trivial to prove he didn't put is there and had no idea.

Re: IPFS and Their Gateways

#56

Post by risyachka »

acdha wrote: post #43
sliken wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While true, if the government downloads objectionable/illegal data and they detect that 10% of that data is coming from your IP address you'll likely have a very bad day. Sure weeks or months later you might convince a judge and/or jury that you had no access or control to that data, and you might even get your laptops, desktops, and external storage back. ISPs and USPS have common carrier protection, by default a ho…

This is such a key point that people forget: this isn’t some academic game theoretical debate but rather a question of how your actions will be perceived by society. If your IP is used to serve illegal content, saying “well actually, …” isn’t a defense and it most likely means you’re getting charged as an accessory to whatever that stranger did. Even if you can avoid legal penalties after years and significant expens…

I am not a legal expert but shouldn't the prosecutor prove that you knew about the content? Because if yes, this is basically impossible.

Re: IPFS and Their Gateways

#57

Post by yaddaor »

risyachka wrote: post #56
acdha wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is such a key point that people forget: this isn’t some academic game theoretical debate but rather a question of how your actions will be perceived by society. If your IP is used to serve illegal content, saying “well actually, …” isn’t a defense and it most likely means you’re getting charged as an accessory to whatever that stranger did. Even if you can avoid legal penalties after years and significant expens…

I am not a legal expert but shouldn't the prosecutor prove that you knew about the content? Because if yes, this is basically impossible.

You are already deep in a legal process at that point and your life might be ruined.

Re: IPFS and Their Gateways

#58

Post by acdha »

risyachka wrote: post #56
acdha wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is such a key point that people forget: this isn’t some academic game theoretical debate but rather a question of how your actions will be perceived by society. If your IP is used to serve illegal content, saying “well actually, …” isn’t a defense and it most likely means you’re getting charged as an accessory to whatever that stranger did. Even if you can avoid legal penalties after years and significant expens…

I am not a legal expert but shouldn't the prosecutor prove that you knew about the content? Because if yes, this is basically impossible.

It depends on exactly what you’re talking about and which laws apply, but in general the problem for things like this, running a Tor exit node, etc. is that the content is something which people keep secret and the scenarios you need to worry about are related to serious crimes. If it’s, say, a small amount of copyrighted material your ISP will get an automated cease and desist letter but if your IP serves part of the requests for CSAM or non-consensual pornography, classified material, terrorism-related stuff, etc. that’s a very different situation. You might eventually be able to get off in court but that’s years after you’ve been in the news and quite likely had all of your devices confiscated in an unannounced raid (criminals have set up systems to destroy evidence so this isn’t without some justification), and you’d have incurred significant legal costs even if this didn’t cause you to become unemployed.

The underlying problem here is that it’s basically impossible to distinguish between someone naively allowing strangers to use their property and someone who is trying to cover their tracks by pretending to be unaware, and the internet is full of people who will abuse any free service. If it happens once, maybe you can plead ignorance but that’s not a foundation for a robust file sharing network.

Re: IPFS and Their Gateways

#59

Post by LinuxBender »

snvzz wrote: post #52
teddyh wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve seen a lot of defaults to use Google or Cloudflare as resolvers.

I do unbound -> tor -> cloudflare.

I've never tried that. Would you be willing to post the extended unbound stats, just the median group of latency timing? Here is one of my unbound nodes that does DoT to other DoT nodes I control that then do more DoT to other resolvers. I use a cron job to pre-cache most things I use so the latency isn't a big deal. I'm just curious what yours looks like. If you don't have it set to go to logs then it can be pulled with "unbound-control stats_noreset|grep histo"

    0.004096 0.008192 1
    0.008192 0.016384 3
    0.016384 0.032768 2
    0.032768 0.065536 121
    0.065536 0.131072 156
    0.131072 0.262144 205
    0.262144 0.524288 304
    0.524288 1.000000 98
    1.000000 2.000000 141
    2.000000 4.000000 24

Re: IPFS and Their Gateways

#60

Post by nerpderp82 »

andrius4669 wrote: post #39
waynenilsen wrote: post #24

This article made a false statement > the gateway is in full control and can inspect and tamper with the data as much as it likes. And there is no way for the client to know or detect if it is happening. Regarding data tampering; IPFS uses content based addressing, the point is that the client _can_ know by computing a message digest of the incoming data. The verification is fast and cheap.

Verification would require more data than CID itself provides (ipld document layout, chunking algorithm, max chunk sizes...). See https://github.com/multiformats/cid/issues/22

Not providing verification would seem like a nearly fatal flaw would it not? If one cannot pass around IPFS urls and ensure that the content returned is the same for all users, it would make a great way to MiTM a target.
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