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

[Matthew Toseland]

On Tue, Aug 29, 2006 at 06:43:07PM +0200, - wrote:
>  
> You stated that you believe computer based attacks on Freenet are much
> easier than social engineering, and therefore support the fact that freenet
> should be an invite only network.
>  
> But, I don't think this model's going to work, for several reasons:
>  
> First, the guiding principle behind freenet right now is anonymity in the
> numbers of a large number of users doing all sorts of different things. They
> may easily know you're using freenet, but it's extremely difficult to prove
> WHAT you downloaded. In other word it's very difficult to get specific
> evidence against a specific freenet user.

It's not *that* difficult. There are correlation attacks, and there is
the whole caching issue - either your peers can tell what you've
requested for sure (don't cache locally), or your peers *and* anyone who
seizes your store can tell (cache locally).
>  
> True, if freenet becomes illegal, the opennet may not work, but what's the
> worse that's going to happen? They put up a national firewall making freenet
> unusable, or freenet users will just get a message from their ISP saying
> they better stop or they'll be kicked off. This may not happen until 3-5
> years from now, even though it may be illegal on paper in France already. 

And if we aren't ready to switch to a pure darknet, what then?
>  
> The darknet concept does not provide this sort of anonymity, you are exposed
> to the people you "trust", 

Not significantly more than your exposure to people you _don't_ trust on
opennet. It's pretty much the same thing, except on darknet you choose
who to trust; on opennet you have no choice.

> I haven't heard a single response to the
> question: what happens if someone in your darknet gets busted or a spy
> manages to infiltrate by joining? They instantly have reasonable grounds to
> assume that you are engaged in the same activity, since you're part of the
> same ring. This should be enough to bust you as well.

Or they could just check who you've been emailing/SMSing/calling lately.
Which is why they have data retention, wiretapping etc powers.

> They also now have the ability to specifically monitor WHAT you downloaded.

How so?

> Plus your "trusted" friend could easily rat on you. And that's that.

Sure, treachery is a big problem. Opennet is a bigger problem; treachery
is more expensive than harvesting, it's more expensive even than
harvesting+ubernodes+sybil etc attacks on an opennet.
>  
> How can you underestimate the importance of this?
>  
> In contrast in opennet if a user gets busted, yes they may get a seedfile of
> hundreds of different users in many different countries all engaged in
> different activities. That's nice, they know all these people are using
> freenet, but it will not give them specific evidence against anyone, unless
> they do some extremely complex traffic analysis, spanning multiple countries
> and ISPs.

The authorities don't need to bust anybody. All they need to do is
download the node, harvest, and they can quickly get a picture of all
nodes worldwide - including those within their jurisdiction.
>  
> And your comment about social engineering being more difficult, that doesn't
> really apply to today's situation, since right now all it takes is going on
> IRC to join. When is freenet planning to go underground then? 

#freenet-refs is for bootstrapping and testing. It's a sort of
pseudo-opennet. True darknet underground connections happen through
other means.
>  
> I guess the entire 0,7 testing group will have to break into groups of
> darknets of 2-3-4 people that trust each other in real life. 

Why must darknets be so small? I see no reason at all to expect them to
be that small. I see every reason to expect true darknets to grow and
amalgamate.

> If it goes
> underground with a few hundred hard core enthusiasts, where's the fresh
> content going to come from?

Relies on the bogus assumption above.
>  
> And half will be left outside without a darknet. I personally will have to
> form a one person darknet then.
>  
> Van
-- 
Matthew J Toseland - toad at amphibian.dyndns.org
Freenet Project Official Codemonkey - http://freenetproject.org/
ICTHUS - Nothing is impossible. Our Boss says so.
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