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ZeroNet – Uncensorable websites using Bitcoin crypto and BitTorrent network

zeronet.io

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131–140 of 171 posts

Re: ZeroNet – Uncensorable websites using Bitcoin crypto and BitTorrent network

#131

Post by thriftwy »

dane-pgp wrote: post #129
thriftwy wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...And that's exactly the first thing they should put in ZeroNet.

Yup, torrent search engines are the weak link when it comes to protecting the public's access to arbitrary large files, and also the front lines in the battle between the media industries and an uncensored internet. ZeroNet is perhaps not enough on its own to solve this problem, though, since a good torrent search engine suffers from the same limitation as a good forum, which is the need to have some form of communit…

Just sort search results by torrent popularity. People aren't going to seed bad content.

Re: ZeroNet – Uncensorable websites using Bitcoin crypto and BitTorrent network

#132

Post by marssaxman »

tokenizerrr wrote: post #109
freedaemon wrote: post #89

Love the ZeroNet project! Been following them for a year and they've made great progress. One thing that's concerning is the use of Namecoin for registering domains. Little known fact: A single miner has close to 65% or more mining power on Namecoin. Reported in this USENIX ATC'16 paper: https://www.usenix.org/node/196209 . Due to this reason some other projects have stopped using Namecoin. I'm curious what the ZeroN…

Also, if you ever lose control of a namecoin domain you can say goodbye to it forever. A squatter will take it instantly and hold on to it forever unless you buy it from them for actual money.

Isn't that true of normal domains, too?

Re: ZeroNet – Uncensorable websites using Bitcoin crypto and BitTorrent network

#133

Post by redahs »

freedaemon wrote: post #89

Love the ZeroNet project! Been following them for a year and they've made great progress. One thing that's concerning is the use of Namecoin for registering domains. Little known fact: A single miner has close to 65% or more mining power on Namecoin. Reported in this USENIX ATC'16 paper: https://www.usenix.org/node/196209 . Due to this reason some other projects have stopped using Namecoin. I'm curious what the ZeroN…

What is the point of namecoin and a having a central domain registrar at all?

It seems like a publisher-addressable network (where documents are identified using a publisher's public key) or a content-addressable network (where documents are identified using a file hash) would be good enough by itself, so long as the protocol had builtin support for distributed document searching and ranking.

Casual internet users on the regular internet do not seem to be using domain names to locate resources anymore. They are using Google to locate resources, and only looking at the domain name to verify identity. If the primary purpose of the domain name is not to locate a resource but to verify identity, then it seems like this could be accomplished with a web of trust without a central name registrar.

Re: ZeroNet – Uncensorable websites using Bitcoin crypto and BitTorrent network

#134

Post by loup-vaillant »

marssaxman wrote: post #132
tokenizerrr wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, if you ever lose control of a namecoin domain you can say goodbye to it forever. A squatter will take it instantly and hold on to it forever unless you buy it from them for actual money.

Isn't that true of normal domains, too?

Depends on the toplevel suffix. For instance, .fr (France) domains have a "no taking" period after the expiration date, where nobody can take it from their previous owners. The owner can then take it back, but it won't be re-activated for a couple of weeks, I believe. So the punishment for screwing up is a temporary blackout of your domain name.

.com, .net, .org domains are handled differently, and may be easier to lose permanently.

Re: ZeroNet – Uncensorable websites using Bitcoin crypto and BitTorrent network

#135

Post by loup-vaillant »

fiatjaf wrote: post #118
emucontusionswe wrote: post #34

I would recommend use of Freenet over ZeroNet. More or less the same concept/functionality however with 15 years more experience. Freenet: https://freenetproject.org/

Freenet is a great idea with 15 years of failure to get traction with sane (by which I mean non-paedophile) people. Also, it's written in Java.

> Also, it's written in Java.

(Not sure if that's a praise or a criticism.)

As much as I dislike Java (ML outclasses it as a language), that's probably much better than the obvious alternatives (C and C++): there aren't nearly as many undefined behaviours, and that eliminates a whole class of potential security vulnerabilities.

If it were written now, Rust could be a viable alternative: just as safe, potentially faster, with less dependencies (at least as far as the compiled binaries are concerned).

Re: ZeroNet – Uncensorable websites using Bitcoin crypto and BitTorrent network

#136

Post by mee_too »

fiatjaf wrote: post #118
emucontusionswe wrote: post #34

I would recommend use of Freenet over ZeroNet. More or less the same concept/functionality however with 15 years more experience. Freenet: https://freenetproject.org/

Freenet is a great idea with 15 years of failure to get traction with sane (by which I mean non-paedophile) people. Also, it's written in Java.

Just curious: are the gay people insane as well?

Re: ZeroNet – Uncensorable websites using Bitcoin crypto and BitTorrent network

#137

Post by shakna »

djsumdog wrote: post #93
shakna wrote: post #23

Has the code quality improved since I was told to screw off for bringing up security? * 2 years out of date gevent-websocket * Year old Python-RSA, which included some worrying security bugs in that time. [0](Vulnerable to side-channel attacks on decryption and signing.) * PyElliptic is both out of date, and actually an unmaintained library. But it's okay, it's just the OpenSSL library! * 2 years out of date Pybitcoi…

That's a pretty deep and well thought out security audit. Are they at least making progress? For a lot of open source projects that are labours of love, it's all about getting the time and funding to work on them.

openSSLVerify is up to date. That's one more dependency than was up to date a year ago.

My problem is conversations like this one: [0], where improvements are resisted against, for being too hard.

People have tried to help improve quality and testing rigour, but they get turned away.

[0] https://github.com/HelloZeroNet/ZeroNet/issues/830

Re: ZeroNet – Uncensorable websites using Bitcoin crypto and BitTorrent network

#138

Post by shakna »

fiatjaf wrote: post #117
shakna wrote: post #23

Has the code quality improved since I was told to screw off for bringing up security? * 2 years out of date gevent-websocket * Year old Python-RSA, which included some worrying security bugs in that time. [0](Vulnerable to side-channel attacks on decryption and signing.) * PyElliptic is both out of date, and actually an unmaintained library. But it's okay, it's just the OpenSSL library! * 2 years out of date Pybitcoi…

Well, it is better to concentrate on getting users in than to solve some small quirks. Nobody is going to attack ZeroNet if it doesn't have users anyway.

Let me quote one of the ZeroNet team members when questioned about potential hacking.

> I wasn't aware of any hackers. The only problem I have since I have been running ZeroNet for a year, is the minor problem of file size mismatch, simply because not all peers in the network have the latest version of a file.

At best, that's an unhelpful attitude. It leads to things like: [0]

[0] https://arstechnica.com/security/2017/03/firefox-gets-compla...

Re: ZeroNet – Uncensorable websites using Bitcoin crypto and BitTorrent network

#139

Post by trakout »

redahs wrote: post #133
freedaemon wrote: post #89

Love the ZeroNet project! Been following them for a year and they've made great progress. One thing that's concerning is the use of Namecoin for registering domains. Little known fact: A single miner has close to 65% or more mining power on Namecoin. Reported in this USENIX ATC'16 paper: https://www.usenix.org/node/196209 . Due to this reason some other projects have stopped using Namecoin. I'm curious what the ZeroN…

What is the point of namecoin and a having a central domain registrar at all? It seems like a publisher-addressable network (where documents are identified using a publisher's public key) or a content-addressable network (where documents are identified using a file hash) would be good enough by itself, so long as the protocol had builtin support for distributed document searching and ranking. Casual internet users on…

iirc you only need namecoin if you want to register a human friendly domain.

Re: ZeroNet – Uncensorable websites using Bitcoin crypto and BitTorrent network

#140

Post by fiatjaf »

mee_too wrote: post #136
fiatjaf wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Freenet is a great idea with 15 years of failure to get traction with sane (by which I mean non-paedophile) people. Also, it's written in Java.

Just curious: are the gay people insane as well?

That's an interesting question for which you'll get no answer for reasons of force majeure.
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