[HN Gopher] Attacks on Anonymity Systems: The Theory (2003)
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Attacks on Anonymity Systems: The Theory (2003)
Author : eigenvalue
Score : 29 points
Date : 2024-02-28 17:29 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| eigenvalue wrote:
| I was recently reading up on Len Sassaman and his fascinating
| work on anonymous remailers. This used to be a very active area
| of research for cypherpunks, but it seems like people don't talk
| as much about these ideas anymore. I suppose TOR is the successor
| to these efforts (despite the fact that it seems controlled by
| the NSA).
|
| In any case, while reading about Len, I came across this
| spectacularly good talk on YouTube. I learned so many cool things
| from the talk about how to design secure decentralized systems
| and how to evaluate threat models and think of creative attacks
| (as well as how to defend against them) that I wanted to share it
| with more people, thus the transcript linked here.
|
| Even though the talk is "old" (from 2003), it still seems
| incredibly relevant and interesting to me, and I think you will
| enjoy it, too.
| llmblockchain wrote:
| You may enjoy this breakdown of type I-II-III remailers:
| https://elly.town/d/blog/2022-02-09-mixminion.txt
|
| I have considered porting mixminion to Go and implementing it
| as designed.. it's pretty interesting. I think it would be neat
| if you added "bridges" like an SMTP -> Mixminion and Mixminion
| -> IRC/Matrix/etc.
|
| Of course, you could chain something like Mixmaster -> SMTP
| bridge -> Mixminion or Mixminion -> Tor -> IRC/Matrix/etc.
|
| edit:
|
| I submitted the URL to HN as well.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39551061
| eigenvalue wrote:
| Cool, looks like a good summary. What I like about the talk I
| linked to is that it walks you through the process of
| designing it yourself, starting with the simplest version of
| the idea and then progressively pointing out its weaknesses
| and showing how you could counteract each weakness with a new
| idea. And then how there are new attacks against the "fixes,"
| and so on, until you have a fairly secure system. At the end,
| you understand it way more than if the entire system were
| laid out from the begnning in a fully formed way.
| meowface wrote:
| What do you think of all the people who believe he was Satoshi
| Nakamoto? I think he almost certainly wasn't, but it's hard to
| dissuade people once they have their own pet suspect.
| eigenvalue wrote:
| I think the theory has more going for it than many other
| candidates who are put forward, since he definitely was
| interested in that area and had the requisite technical
| skills. And the fact that he passed away at around the same
| time Satishi went dark. But who knows. If the theory gets
| more people interested in his published work, then I don't
| see the harm.
| pixl97 wrote:
| If people are going to be incorrect about something, it's
| likely better they are incorrect about it being the dead
| guy rather than harassing innocent people that are alive.
| eigenvalue wrote:
| Yes, that's certainly true, but unfortunately people can
| still annoy surviving family members of those people. And
| it can pose physical security risks to them.
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