[freenet-chat] Freenet 0,5 or 0,7

[NextGen$]

* - <van2 at vipmail.hu> [2006-08-27 19:45:27]:

> I'd like to add to the 0.5 vs 0.7 discussion in the support list, which we
> were
> asked to move here, so I hope the people from support are reading this!

Trolls don't need to be on @support, that's for sure :)
  
> Regarding the social networks, the models that exist probably apply to
> national
> systems only, and probably to a certain social class within that, so I'm not
> convinced that they would have any meaning for an underground internet
> network.
> I.E. how would a darknet of chinese dissidents link up with freedom fighters
> in an oppressive latin american regime? And how would any of these link
> up with a darknet of german kids wishing to download warez or whatever?
>  
> But here's the big question: what mechanism can freenet have, for protecting
> members of a darknet, when a darknet is infiltrated by a hostile node?
> When I talked about infiltrating the darknet, I did not mean breaking it
> from the 
> outside with some super computers, (which I'm sure is harder to do with 0,7
> than
> with 0,5), I simply meant posing as an "inside person" and joining it, or
> simply
> busting one member and capturing his computer. 

see below :)

> Toad (I believe) replied to this saying that I might as well hang myself if
> I think
> that there's noone I can trust in life. But come on, that's not the point,
> everyone knows
> that spies take on false identities and infiltrate every kind of illegal
> network.
> That's what they get paid for.

How do you explain that all terrorist cells haven't been busted so ? 

> Also, it just isn't realistic to think that people will know others in real
> life that they
> can trust with the kind of things they need anonymity for. A minority 
> of people will have such connections, but the majority will not! This will
> mean that
> for freenet to be viable it will always need to have a public mechanism for
> joining.

That's debatable... Gmail hadn't and has been successfull.

> So, again the question is:
> What mechanism will 0,7 have for protecting members of the darknet if
> one of the nodes is spy? I think this issue seriously needs to be solved!
>  

It's the purpose of "premix-routing" : protecting the "first few hops". Might
be implemented in freenet 0.8.

Keep in mind that the "known attacks" agaisnt freenet are only
probablilistic ones ... "It's likely that your have inserted/downloaded that
key" : it's always a matter of plausible deniability.

> Are "the bad guys" really going to spend millions on high tech
> computers to break a network, when all they have to do is join it? Thinking
> we can keep them out is absurd! Any current member of 0,7 could just as well
> be or become a spy or a narc or whatever.
>  

You seems to missunderstand the point : you should wonder why would opennet be
more secure... and will see that it's not.

On opennet a governement is likely to be able to compromize the "seednode"
file and replace it with only governement powered nodes. On darknet it's not
doable. Social engeenering is always more costy than technical/automatable
processes. Moreover a government doesn't need to infiltrate such a network ;
shuting it down is often enough... And any opennet network is harvestable,
meaning that it can be trivially attacked blacklisting on country's firewall
the list of IP addresses known to be running freenet.

On darknet we ask people to choose who they trust, on opennet we choose for
them trying to optimize the network topology.

NextGen$