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Freenet: A Distributed Anonymous Information Storage and Retrieval System (2000) [pdf]

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Re: Freenet: A Distributed Anonymous Information Storage and Retrieval System (2000) [pdf]

#21

Post by mirimir »

shittyadmin wrote: post #13
brian_herman__ wrote: post #2

My brother worked on freenet it was cool until tor came up and supplanted it

Freenet still does a lot of things better than Tor. For example, no server is involved so there's nothing to attack or track down, making anonymity guarantees seem to be much better. Yet they've still managed to pull off some forms of interactive communications. IPFS is closer really, but doesn't move in an anonymity friendly direction at all.

> For example, no server is involved so there's nothing to attack or track down, making anonymity guarantees seem to be much better.

Not really "no server". I mean, Freenet users collectively are the servers. As in BitTorrent, I2P and IPFS.

What Freenet does better than Tor is keep content available, even if the provider goes away. As long as it's popular content, that is. Although Tor .onion services are perhaps harder to find, once they're gone, they're usually just gone. There are exceptions, of course, such as the The Hidden Wiki. But any mirroring that happens is entirely ad hoc. In Freenet, it's automatic.

Re: Freenet: A Distributed Anonymous Information Storage and Retrieval System (2000) [pdf]

#22

Post by rayvy »

mirimir wrote: post #18
Nerada wrote: post #15

>A recent court case in the Peel Region of Ontario, Canada R. v. Owen, 2017 ONCJ 729 (CanLII), illustrated that Law Enforcement do in fact have a presence, after Peel Regional Police, located who had been downloading illegal material on the Freenet network. I haven't looked into the architecture of Freenet, but would someone be able to give a quick rundown of how this is possible? I was always surprised there weren't…

Investigators run modified Freenet nodes that serve illegal content. They log connections with peers, and track chunks of illegal files, based on hashes. So if your node peers with one or more of their nodes, they can see if it requests any of those illegal chunks. If it does, you are "downloading illegal material". Freenet is a pure P2P system. Your peers know your IP address, and vice versa. So your only defense is…

I enjoyed this nugget of info. But a few questions (if you can answer them)

> They log connections with peers Of course (I'm assuming via just IPs)

> and track chunks of illegal files meaning what exactly? How could they track a 5KB chunk being sharded across say 10 different nodes? (further, flexible nets like freenet adjust the location of data over time based on the use of said data)

> they can see if it requests any of those illegal chunks My understanding is that yea you can see who's talking to who (via IPs), but I guess traffic analysis is the way to see the chunks (i.e., Peer A sent Peer B 100 bytes at 5:65 PM PST)? Even then, the payloads are encrypted, so I'm not seeing how you could infer that the content is "illegal"

Again. I enjoyed that little nugget of insight you shared. Hoping you can share more :)

Re: Freenet: A Distributed Anonymous Information Storage and Retrieval System (2000) [pdf]

#23

Post by pnathan »

simcop2387 wrote: post #4

I've always loved the ideals and design of Freenet for what it does, but the main issues I always ran into when I'd check it out were that discoverability was horrible and then once you did manage to dig into things and find content it was usually stuff I wouldn't want to find to begin with. That's left a lot of bad impressions on people I think, and caused it to have a reputation for only illegal things on it.

That was my impression when I ran Freenet years ago. A few cool materials, a horrifying amount of pedophilia and other really skeezy stuff.

Re: Freenet: A Distributed Anonymous Information Storage and Retrieval System (2000) [pdf]

#24

Post by rayvy »

shittyadmin wrote: post #13
brian_herman__ wrote: post #2

My brother worked on freenet it was cool until tor came up and supplanted it

Freenet still does a lot of things better than Tor. For example, no server is involved so there's nothing to attack or track down, making anonymity guarantees seem to be much better. Yet they've still managed to pull off some forms of interactive communications. IPFS is closer really, but doesn't move in an anonymity friendly direction at all.

IPFS is indeed more similar. Tor is more of a compliment to a DFS such as Freenet (though Tor can very much works as a DFS itself)

Re: Freenet: A Distributed Anonymous Information Storage and Retrieval System (2000) [pdf]

#25

Post by mirimir »

rayvy wrote: post #22
mirimir wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Investigators run modified Freenet nodes that serve illegal content. They log connections with peers, and track chunks of illegal files, based on hashes. So if your node peers with one or more of their nodes, they can see if it requests any of those illegal chunks. If it does, you are "downloading illegal material". Freenet is a pure P2P system. Your peers know your IP address, and vice versa. So your only defense is…

I enjoyed this nugget of info. But a few questions (if you can answer them) > They log connections with peers Of course (I'm assuming via just IPs) > and track chunks of illegal files meaning what exactly? How could they track a 5KB chunk being sharded across say 10 different nodes? (further, flexible nets like freenet adjust the location of data over time based on the use of said data) > they can see if it requests…

Missouri Law Enforcement's Freenet Attack Now Public Record[0]

Levine et al. (2017) Statistical Detection of Downloaders in Freenet.[1]

0) https://www.reddit.com/r/Freenet/comments/66f0n3/missouri_la...

1) http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1873/IWPE17_paper_12.pdf

Re: Freenet: A Distributed Anonymous Information Storage and Retrieval System (2000) [pdf]

#26

Post by athrun »

mirimir wrote: post #16
simcop2387 wrote: post #4

I've always loved the ideals and design of Freenet for what it does, but the main issues I always ran into when I'd check it out were that discoverability was horrible and then once you did manage to dig into things and find content it was usually stuff I wouldn't want to find to begin with. That's left a lot of bad impressions on people I think, and caused it to have a reputation for only illegal things on it.

Yes, the public Freenet opennet contains lots of horrible content. But then, Freenet's focus has always been censorship resistance. Content gets distributed and replicated according to its popularity. It's a lot like BitTorrent, but with serious transport encryption and randomized routing. And arguably it's worked pretty well for that, given that there's been consistently lots of horrible content for 18 years. Conten…

Is it even possible to anonymously lease a VPS?

I guess you would need to use cash, at a minimum.

Re: Freenet: A Distributed Anonymous Information Storage and Retrieval System (2000) [pdf]

#27

Post by rayvy »

mirimir wrote: post #25
rayvy wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I enjoyed this nugget of info. But a few questions (if you can answer them) > They log connections with peers Of course (I'm assuming via just IPs) > and track chunks of illegal files meaning what exactly? How could they track a 5KB chunk being sharded across say 10 different nodes? (further, flexible nets like freenet adjust the location of data over time based on the use of said data) > they can see if it requests…

Missouri Law Enforcement's Freenet Attack Now Public Record[0] Levine et al. (2017) Statistical Detection of Downloaders in Freenet.[1] 0) https://www.reddit.com/r/Freenet/comments/66f0n3/missouri_la... 1) http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1873/IWPE17_paper_12.pdf

Awesome, thanks so much

Re: Freenet: A Distributed Anonymous Information Storage and Retrieval System (2000) [pdf]

#28

Post by mirimir »

athrun wrote: post #26
mirimir wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, the public Freenet opennet contains lots of horrible content. But then, Freenet's focus has always been censorship resistance. Content gets distributed and replicated according to its popularity. It's a lot like BitTorrent, but with serious transport encryption and randomized routing. And arguably it's worked pretty well for that, given that there's been consistently lots of horrible content for 18 years. Conten…

Is it even possible to anonymously lease a VPS? I guess you would need to use cash, at a minimum.

Sure. Do everything via Tor, using Whonix to avoid leaks. Hit Tor through nested VPN chains. Buy some Bitcoin, and then mix two or three times. Use a different Whonix instance for each mixing step, and a different mixing service.

Then lease your VPS. And if it really matters, you can daisy chain VPS via Tor .onion SSH.[0]

0) https://www.ivpn.net/privacy-guides/onion-ssh-hosts-for-logi...

Re: Freenet: A Distributed Anonymous Information Storage and Retrieval System (2000) [pdf]

#29

Post by chocolatebunny »

mirimir wrote: post #16
simcop2387 wrote: post #4

I've always loved the ideals and design of Freenet for what it does, but the main issues I always ran into when I'd check it out were that discoverability was horrible and then once you did manage to dig into things and find content it was usually stuff I wouldn't want to find to begin with. That's left a lot of bad impressions on people I think, and caused it to have a reputation for only illegal things on it.

Yes, the public Freenet opennet contains lots of horrible content. But then, Freenet's focus has always been censorship resistance. Content gets distributed and replicated according to its popularity. It's a lot like BitTorrent, but with serious transport encryption and randomized routing. And arguably it's worked pretty well for that, given that there's been consistently lots of horrible content for 18 years. Conten…

I think there needs to be a way to have personal filters on P2P systems. I don't want censorship but I don't want to support the distribution of child pornography, not because it's illegal but because it doesn't align to my personal moral compass.

Re: Freenet: A Distributed Anonymous Information Storage and Retrieval System (2000) [pdf]

#30

Post by pdimitar »

renegadus wrote: post #10
notacoward wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similar impressions here. Freenet was an impressive vehicle for exploring some very important topics and ideas. Unfortunately, besides the problems you mention, the community around it was ... unpleasant. On a good day they could seem a bit overzealous. On a bad day they were downright crazy, and they were always hostile to any advice or criticism from others even in their own field. For example, Freenet isn't a perm…

> That's actually fine considering the goals of the system, but any time anyone mentioned it Ian and others would go a bit ballistic. The system did not and could not store information permanently, if it did it would fill up, which is a non-starter when it depends on people volunteering their hard disk space. I don't know about going ballistic, but since this issue is addressed directly in their papers (section 3.4 o…

I would think you should have long ago learned the lesson that if you don't have a FAQ page somewhere with huge titles and colorful answers, people will never read a paper.

Hell, most people don't read FAQs either.

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