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VPN⁰: A Privacy-Preserving Distributed VPN

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Re: VPN⁰: A Privacy-Preserving Distributed VPN

#11

Post by sdan »

luckylion wrote: post #8
dimator wrote: post #7

The whitelist based approach seems pretty limiting, doesn't it? If every exit node is expected to enumerate the domains it will carry traffic to, what happens if a client needs to connect to a new site? Are exit nodes intended to keep massive, curated whitelists? Something isn't adding up, to me. If the assumption is that all "good" sites _can_ be enumerated, then wouldn't Tor (or other systems) exit nodes already be…

The CP, Drug markets etc on Tor is typically on hidden services, not on the clearweb. The whitelist approach may work similarly to adblocker lists, where you say "I trust Jim's List Of Friendly Websites". I don't know how good it is for performance though.

Obviously you can do a block for *.onion. But suppose someone searches up "how to make a [insert bad thing]" or something else inappropriate on something as simple as Google. It'd be somewhat hard to block all urls from Google or DDG that contain some text (not to mention that I've heard that people who are in this business use acronyms or other slang... which to the general user (like me) probably won't know.

Don't want to take that risk.

Re: VPN⁰: A Privacy-Preserving Distributed VPN

#12

Post by luckylion »

sdan wrote: post #11
luckylion wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The CP, Drug markets etc on Tor is typically on hidden services, not on the clearweb. The whitelist approach may work similarly to adblocker lists, where you say "I trust Jim's List Of Friendly Websites". I don't know how good it is for performance though.

Obviously you can do a block for *.onion. But suppose someone searches up "how to make a [insert bad thing]" or something else inappropriate on something as simple as Google. It'd be somewhat hard to block all urls from Google or DDG that contain some text (not to mention that I've heard that people who are in this business use acronyms or other slang... which to the general user (like me) probably won't know. Don't…

I believe the blocking is done on a domain/host level, so you'd block google.com in that case. That's likely not required, because google.com is generally thought to be okay, but you are correct that even that may be problematic. If your IP has searched for "$governmentBuilding blueprints" and there's a bomb planted at that building a week later, you could become a person of interest (provided that Google saves the ip for queries).

Blocking *.onion on the other hand wouldn't be necessary from a "legal protection" standpoint: hidden services don't see the original IP of the client.

Re: VPN⁰: A Privacy-Preserving Distributed VPN

#13

Post by [deleted] »

snagglegaggle wrote: post #9
ViViDboarder wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They explain that in the first paragraph or so. This allows edit nodes to decide what types of content will be routed to their node.

And opens the network to abuses Tor was meant to protect against. If proof-of-destination is built into the network then that is a huge step towards invalidating the main benefit of using a VPN -- you don't want someone (your local authority) knowing where you've been. Current VPNs sort-of work by not being in your local jurisdiction. Decentralizing it makes it easier to attack.

[deleted]

Re: VPN⁰: A Privacy-Preserving Distributed VPN

#15

Post by ddtaylor »

ViViDboarder wrote: post #4
snagglegaggle wrote: post #2

Why not Tor? Providing more bandwidth to that network seems the most advantageous option. You also get stronger privacy guarantees.

They explain that in the first paragraph or so. This allows edit nodes to decide what types of content will be routed to their node.

Tor can also have whitelist for clearnet domains.

Re: VPN⁰: A Privacy-Preserving Distributed VPN

#18

Post by earenndil »

noah-kun wrote: post #5
snagglegaggle wrote: post #2

Why not Tor? Providing more bandwidth to that network seems the most advantageous option. You also get stronger privacy guarantees.

Tor is funded by the US government, probably as a way of disseminating US propaganda during government overthrows. When conducting psyops, governments sometimes block the online channels the US uses. With them also controlling so many nodes, they can use Tor for surveillance.

Tor is funded by the us government. Why is very unclear. They may have backdoored it. They may be using it for surveillance. They are probably not using it to disseminate propaganda (they can do that over traditional channels). However, the likeliest reason (imo) for funding tor is simply that they need it themselves. There's a famous--and possibly apocryphal--anecdote from a security researcher who met an FBI agent at defcon. The security researcher brought up tor, and the FBI agent said 'oh, yeah, we have our own anonymity network like that--except it's just for the FBI'. The security researcher was unable to explain to the FBI agent why that made no sense.

Re: VPN⁰: A Privacy-Preserving Distributed VPN

#19

Post by randaouser »

One step further that Ive prototyped is Encrypted and Distributed Search. The VPN relays willing to take the traffic can also double as Web crawlers. The vpn clients encrypt their search terms and vpn relays encrypt their search indexes, and perform ElGamal Homomorphic private set intersection with MINHASH in Elliptic Curve Field. This leads to better then key word, worse then current age context search from google but with Strong Elliptic Curve privacy guarantees.
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