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Sunsetting Tor Messenger

blog.torproject.org

41–50 of 71 posts

Re: Sunsetting Tor Messenger

#41

I think about trying to hide the metadata of who is communicating... I wonder about a public stream of end-to-end encrypted messages. Anyone can add a message to the stream. Everyone reads all of the messages, and tries to decrypt all of them. There are lots of variants to this, lots of ways to optimize it, probably lots of ways to implement it. But that's the core idea. One variant is that what everyone downloads is…

use hash(best block + sender id + recipient id + sequence number) then only the senders and receivers would be able to get the metadata... though recipient would need to “check” their whole contact list to pull the data... maybe this is where the bloom filter is?

Re: Sunsetting Tor Messenger

#42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here are some links you may try, https://via.hypothes.is/https://blog.torproject.org/sunsetti... https://web.archive.org/web/https://blog.torproject.org/suns... https://archive.fo/U8jHR https://archive.is/U8jHR https://archive.today/U8jHR > Bonus points for installing and running Tor without elevated privileges. Try https://github.com/TheTorProject/GetTorBrowser then use meek-amazon as a pluggable transport to get it…

Reading the material on other pages is cheating. I'm trying to bypass the blockade altogether, disproving its utility. Similarly, the issue isn't slipping the tor traffic through the firewall but actually installing the software on a machine theoretically configured to prevent installation of software.

I'm pretty sure you can install the nix or guix package managers without elevated privileges, and thence any package that they've defined.

Re: Sunsetting Tor Messenger

#43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here are some links you may try, https://via.hypothes.is/https://blog.torproject.org/sunsetti... https://web.archive.org/web/https://blog.torproject.org/suns... https://archive.fo/U8jHR https://archive.is/U8jHR https://archive.today/U8jHR > Bonus points for installing and running Tor without elevated privileges. Try https://github.com/TheTorProject/GetTorBrowser then use meek-amazon as a pluggable transport to get it…

Reading the material on other pages is cheating. I'm trying to bypass the blockade altogether, disproving its utility. Similarly, the issue isn't slipping the tor traffic through the firewall but actually installing the software on a machine theoretically configured to prevent installation of software.

Send an email or XMPP message to gettor@torproject.org, or a Twitter DM to @get_tor, to receive links to download Tor via GitHub, Dropbox and Google Drive.

The download is a zip file that can be extracted and run anywhere without installation.

Include the word 'linux' or 'osx' in the body of the message to get a binary for those platforms.

Re: Sunsetting Tor Messenger

#44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading the material on other pages is cheating. I'm trying to bypass the blockade altogether, disproving its utility. Similarly, the issue isn't slipping the tor traffic through the firewall but actually installing the software on a machine theoretically configured to prevent installation of software.

Send an email or XMPP message to gettor@torproject.org, or a Twitter DM to @get_tor, to receive links to download Tor via GitHub, Dropbox and Google Drive. The download is a zip file that can be extracted and run anywhere without installation. Include the word 'linux' or 'osx' in the body of the message to get a binary for those platforms.

Github link is easy to remember without sending an email or twitter DM: https://github.com/TheTorProject/GetTorBrowser

Re: Sunsetting Tor Messenger

#45

I think about trying to hide the metadata of who is communicating... I wonder about a public stream of end-to-end encrypted messages. Anyone can add a message to the stream. Everyone reads all of the messages, and tries to decrypt all of them. There are lots of variants to this, lots of ways to optimize it, probably lots of ways to implement it. But that's the core idea. One variant is that what everyone downloads is…

> something about Bloom Filters or PGP Signatures or something, I dunno Would this not defeat the purpose? Once an individual was tied to a unique piece of data, they'd be tied to all data in the stream. I think such a system would definitely require guaranteed expiration (impossible?). Or some sort of rotating keys or the metadata piece would still be uniquely identifying. I like this idea, as a concept, but I have…

rickycook responded to this part with a proposal, but I have my own take on some of it:

For the "tied to a unique piece of data," that's why I want Bob to download lots of messages, hiding the fact that the person at 14.85.101.86 is the user with the recipient ID of ntULzh2AeEgPH9bKxrn3gUL. Bob should also be rotating his IDs all the time. Maybe they're single-use. And if Bob wants Alice to be able to send him messages, then he (out of band) has to give her a huge list of IDs he'll be watching for, in sequence. If they arrive out of sequence, he knows to be supremely suspicious. Also, yes, I recognize that key management is THE PROBLEM. And I'm essentially inventing dead drops. But in my defense, I'm trying to come up with a way to make it easy for a lot of people to use, thus making it easier for everyone to hide in plain sight.

For the "guaranteed expiration," I am actively assuming bad actors would download and archive all messages. I only propose a limited number of days to lessen the storage costs.

For the rotating keys, as I understand it, there's Perfect Forward Secrecy, but it's very chatty (think of it as "online"). There's also a weaker form of Perfect Forward Secrecy (think of it as "offline"), but the risk is that if the communication if broken at any moment, then you can't recover from within that channel - meaning you'd need to go back to the person out of band, and restore communication. I'm probably summarizing it very poorly, but my mental model for it is roughly, at the end of every message I send you, I tell you what new password I will use when I send you the next message. It's actually way smarter than that, as I understand it, but that gives me enough of a mental model to work with it as a lay person.

Re: Sunsetting Tor Messenger

#46

Would like to read, but it looks like my work is blocking access to torproject.org. I had not realized that this sort of blocking was in place. Gauntlet thrown. My project for today is now to gain access to Torproject on my work machine. Bonus points for installing and running Tor without elevated privileges.

Perhaps try running TAILS in a VM and connecting through bridges? Tor project's hidden service is at expyuzz4wqqyqhjn.onion

You certainly should not need elevated privileges for Tor Browser but I realize that accessing their download site in the first place is the issue. I'd post a magnet link but doubt that follows the rules here.

Re: Sunsetting Tor Messenger

#47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here are some links you may try, https://via.hypothes.is/https://blog.torproject.org/sunsetti... https://web.archive.org/web/https://blog.torproject.org/suns... https://archive.fo/U8jHR https://archive.is/U8jHR https://archive.today/U8jHR > Bonus points for installing and running Tor without elevated privileges. Try https://github.com/TheTorProject/GetTorBrowser then use meek-amazon as a pluggable transport to get it…

Reading the material on other pages is cheating. I'm trying to bypass the blockade altogether, disproving its utility. Similarly, the issue isn't slipping the tor traffic through the firewall but actually installing the software on a machine theoretically configured to prevent installation of software.

> I'm trying to bypass the blockade altogether, disproving its utility

Nothing good can come from this.

Your employer will not applaud you for this.

You could end up getting fired or worse.

Re: Sunsetting Tor Messenger

#48

I think about trying to hide the metadata of who is communicating... I wonder about a public stream of end-to-end encrypted messages. Anyone can add a message to the stream. Everyone reads all of the messages, and tries to decrypt all of them. There are lots of variants to this, lots of ways to optimize it, probably lots of ways to implement it. But that's the core idea. One variant is that what everyone downloads is…

> something about Bloom Filters or PGP Signatures or something, I dunno Would this not defeat the purpose? Once an individual was tied to a unique piece of data, they'd be tied to all data in the stream. I think such a system would definitely require guaranteed expiration (impossible?). Or some sort of rotating keys or the metadata piece would still be uniquely identifying. I like this idea, as a concept, but I have…

> "guaranteed expiration"

You could make the database so noisy that there's a proof-of-storage cost on anything over a day old.

No guarantee, but something.

Adversaries would want to store only those messages of interest, but that would require breaking the oblivious transfer system.

Re: Sunsetting Tor Messenger

#49

I think about trying to hide the metadata of who is communicating... I wonder about a public stream of end-to-end encrypted messages. Anyone can add a message to the stream. Everyone reads all of the messages, and tries to decrypt all of them. There are lots of variants to this, lots of ways to optimize it, probably lots of ways to implement it. But that's the core idea. One variant is that what everyone downloads is…

You basically create a hash table over public identities (bucket = pubkey % n) with an n chosen such that you get a bunch of unrelated people in each bucket but not so many that peers are overwhelmed by the message load on their bucket. Messages can be as simple as ES-SS-DH (basically Noise_X), same properties as e.g. PGP, i.e. no forward secrecy, no KCI resistance.

(This is patented, or at least pending)

Re: Sunsetting Tor Messenger

#50
post #5

Retroshare now provides a Tor version: https://retroshareteam.wordpress.com/2018/03/13/release-note... > Running Retroshare over Tor has a number of definite advantages: it does not require firewall management (Tor does it for you); you do not need a DHT to find your friends (Tor does it for you), and whatever code is tied to ensuring security of your IP information is not needed anymore.

Retroshare tries to do many things at the same time with few programmers, so I get a suspicion it is not doing any of them well
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