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Hackers build a new Tor client designed to beat the NSA

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Re: Hackers build a new Tor client designed to beat the NSA

#21

Post by pakled_engineer »

Forbo wrote: post #4
otoburb wrote: post #2

>>Astoria [is] both most effective and most usable when at its highest security level, the researchers say, so "Astoria is a usable substitute for the vanilla Tor client only in scenarios where security is a high priority." I'm still working through the research paper[1] linked at the end of the article, but if Astoria is as good as described, wouldn't Tor either adopt the same node selection policies, or people shif…

It would be interesting to see if this gets adopted in something like Tails where security is the priority focus.

Tails apparently doesn't even have time to patch grsec/pax so unlikely. It took them almost a year to add macchanger on boot even, they spend all their available time patching the flood of bugs due to cramming their distro full of userland tools like video editing software.

Re: Hackers build a new Tor client designed to beat the NSA

#22

Post by dEnigma »

white-flame wrote: post #18

I really wish more people and companies would host things on Tor's hidden services, avoiding the entire notion of exit nodes and the cleartext network.

At least you can look at "Anonymous Cat Facts"[1]

[1]http://2v7ibl5u4pbemwiz.onion/

Re: Hackers build a new Tor client designed to beat the NSA

#24

Post by anonbanker »

late2part wrote: post #5

"designed to beat" means better, not perfect. Imperfect means eventually it gets beat. The NSA might say what the IRA told Margaret Thatcher, "Today we were unlucky, but remember we only have to be lucky once. You will have to be lucky always."

For a bit of historical perspective, Margaret Thatcher ended up being always lucky. the IRA weren't lucky enough, and were easily co-opted.

Re: Hackers build a new Tor client designed to beat the NSA

#25

Post by ape4 »

tacotime wrote: post #13
ape4 wrote: post #11

Maybe this isn't a new idea. But it seems that more Tor exit points would be a big help. Has anyone made a tool that's both and entry and exit point. You could control the amount of bandwidth exiting. This way the exit points would be more transient - like Bittorrent peers.

I think the lack of exit nodes has more to do with legal considerations than actual computational resources/willing volunteers. See the tor blog's Tips for Running an Exit Node with Minimal Harassment - https://blog.torproject.org/blog/tips-running-exit-node-mini... "Suggest creation of LLC for large exit nodes" I'm guessing that this might be a larger barrier to entry for most willing volunteers compared to hardware…

Wow, thats a lot of effort.

Re: Hackers build a new Tor client designed to beat the NSA

#26

Post by ZainRiz »

"Astoria reduces the number of vulnerable circuits from 58 percent to 5.8 percent, the researchers say"

Yes, their researched showed that exactly 5.8% circuits would be vulnerable with their change, and measured it accurately to 0.1%.

The research did not say that vulnerability would be around 10% of the original amount +/- 5%

Re: Hackers build a new Tor client designed to beat the NSA

#27

Post by chatmasta »

maljx wrote: post #14

Isn't the classical solution to this encryption problem to always send packages in the same size at regular intervals. If each host adds a layer of encryption you can't match the packages at the end points. Is this just too expensive? (I'm not an expert so genuine question from my naive POV.)

I don't know about "classical," but this is the approach Dissent [0] takes to thwarting traffic analysis. Communication is broken into "rounds" and intervals within those, so that every packet is indistinguishable from the outside based on size alone.

[0] http://dedis.cs.yale.edu/dissent/

Re: Hackers build a new Tor client designed to beat the NSA

#28

Post by nsshey »

aluhut wrote: post #17
jeremy85 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the summary is easier and faster to read by the general public, and the article puts the reference very clearly in the end, it's good in this case.

It is. And as a part of the general public I appreciate it. Thank you.

:-)

Re: Hackers build a new Tor client designed to beat the NSA

#29

Post by nsshey »

maljx wrote: post #14

Isn't the classical solution to this encryption problem to always send packages in the same size at regular intervals. If each host adds a layer of encryption you can't match the packages at the end points. Is this just too expensive? (I'm not an expert so genuine question from my naive POV.)

That seems like a sensible solution to beating part of the problem. I would agree - does anyone have any insights on this method in regards to TOR?

Re: Hackers build a new Tor client designed to beat the NSA

#30

Post by IneffablePigeon »

maljx wrote: post #14

Isn't the classical solution to this encryption problem to always send packages in the same size at regular intervals. If each host adds a layer of encryption you can't match the packages at the end points. Is this just too expensive? (I'm not an expert so genuine question from my naive POV.)

Certainly a possible strategy, but for web traffic it isn't ideal: web traffic is bursty and latency-sensitive. You can also probably still do a little bit of correlation for very large, long uploads to servers with not much other usage, but admittedly that's a much smaller target.
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