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[or-cvs] minor cleanups throughout
Update of /home2/or/cvsroot/tor/doc/design-paper
In directory moria.mit.edu:/home2/arma/work/onion/cvs/tor/doc/design-paper
Modified Files:
challenges.tex
Log Message:
minor cleanups throughout
Index: challenges.tex
===================================================================
RCS file: /home2/or/cvsroot/tor/doc/design-paper/challenges.tex,v
retrieving revision 1.29
retrieving revision 1.30
diff -u -d -r1.29 -r1.30
--- challenges.tex 1 Feb 2005 10:31:14 -0000 1.29
+++ challenges.tex 1 Feb 2005 11:39:54 -0000 1.30
@@ -154,8 +154,8 @@
application protocols that include personally identifying information need
additional application-level scrubbing proxies, such as
Privoxy~\cite{privoxy} for HTTP. Furthermore, Tor does not permit arbitrary
-IP packets; it only anonymizes TCP and DNS, and only supports cconnections
-SOCKS (see section \ref{subsec:tcp-vs-ip}).
+IP packets; it only anonymizes TCP and DNS, and only supports connections via
+SOCKS (see Section \ref{subsec:tcp-vs-ip}).
Tor differs from other deployed systems for traffic analysis resistance
in its security and flexibility. Mix networks such as
@@ -496,6 +496,7 @@
would-be IRC users, for instance, to register accounts if they wanted to
access the IRC network from Tor. But in practise, this would not
significantly impede abuse if creating new accounts were easily automatable;
+% XXX captcha
this is why services use IP blocking. In order to deter abuse, pseudonymous
identities need to impose a significant switching cost in resources or human
time.
@@ -556,7 +557,7 @@
\label{sec:crossroads-design}
\subsection{Transporting the stream vs transporting the packets}
-\ref{subsec:stream-vs-packet}
+\label{subsec:tcp-vs-ip}
We periodically run into ex ZKS employees who tell us that the process of
anonymizing IPs should ``obviously'' be done at the IP layer. Here are
@@ -568,8 +569,7 @@
\setlength{\parsep}{0mm}
\item \emph{IP packets reveal OS characteristics.} We still need to do
IP-level packet normalization, to stop things like IP fingerprinting
-\cite{ip-fingerprinting}. There exist libraries \cite{ip-normalizing}
-that can help with this.
+attacks. There likely exist libraries that can help with this.
\item \emph{Application-level streams still need scrubbing.} We still need
Tor to be easy to integrate with user-level application-specific proxies
such as Privoxy. So it's not just a matter of capturing packets and
@@ -581,17 +581,18 @@
\item \emph{The crypto is unspecified.} First we need a block-level encryption
approach that can provide security despite
packet loss and out-of-order delivery. Freedom allegedly had one, but it was
-never publicly specified, and we believe it's likely vulnerable to tagging
-attacks \cite{tor-design}. Also, TLS over UDP is not implemented or even
-specified, though some early work has begun on that \cite{dtls}.
+never publicly specified. %, and we believe it's likely vulnerable to tagging
+%attacks \cite{tor-design}.
+Also, TLS over UDP is not implemented or even
+specified, though some early work has begun on that~\cite{dtls}.
\item \emph{We'll still need to tune network parameters}. Since the above
-encryption system will likely need sequence numbers and maybe more to do
+encryption system will likely need sequence numbers (and maybe more) to do
replay detection, handle duplicate frames, etc, we will be reimplementing
-some subset of TCP anyway to manage throughput, congestion control, etc.
+some subset of TCP anyway.
\item \emph{Exit policies for arbitrary IP packets mean building a secure
IDS.} Our server operators tell us that exit policies are one of
-the main reasons they're willing to run Tor over previous attempts
-at anonymizing networks. Adding an IDS to handle exit policies would
+the main reasons they're willing to run Tor.
+Adding an Intrusion Detection System to handle exit policies would
increase the security complexity of Tor, and would likely not work anyway,
as evidenced by the entire field of IDS and counter-IDS papers. Many
potential abuse issues are resolved by the fact that Tor only transports
@@ -640,7 +641,7 @@
would be processed as now. Packets on circuits that are mid-latency
would be sent in uniform size chunks at synchronized intervals. To
some extent the chunking is already done because traffic moves through
-the network in uniform size cells, but this would occur at a courser
+the network in uniform size cells, but this would occur at a coarser
granularity. If servers forward these chunks in roughly synchronous
fashion, it will increase the similarity of data stream timing
signatures. By experimenting with the granularity of data chunks and
@@ -649,7 +650,7 @@
impractical to synchronize on network batches by dropping chunks from
a batch that arrive late at a given node---unless Tor moves away from
stream processing to a more loss-tolerant processing of traffic (cf.\
-Section~\ref{subsec:stream-vs-packet}). In other words, there would
+Section~\ref{subsec:tcp-vs-ip}). In other words, there would
probably be no direct attempt to synchronize on batches of data
entering the Tor network at the same time. Rather, it is the link
level batching that will add noise to the traffic patterns exiting the
@@ -661,15 +662,20 @@
would be fairly practical to set up a mid-latency option within the
existing Tor network. Other padding regimens might supplement the
mid-latency option; however, we should continue the caution with which
-we have always approached padding lest the overhead cost us either
-performance or volunteers.
+we have always approached padding lest the overhead cost us too much
+performance or too many volunteers.
The distinction between traffic confirmation and traffic analysis is
-not as practically cut and dried as we might wish. In \cite{} it was
+not as practically cut and dried as we might wish. In \cite{hintz-pet02} it was
shown that if latencies to and/or data volumes of various popular
responder destinations are catalogued, it may not be necessary to
observe both ends of a stream to confirm a source-destination link.
These are likely to entail high variability and massive storage since
+% XXX hintz-pet02 just looked at data volumes of the sites. this
+% doesn't require much variability or storage. I think it works
+% quite well actually. Also, \cite{kesdogan:pet2002} takes the
+% attack another level further, to narrow down where you could be
+% based on an intersection attack on subpages in a website. -RD
routes through the network to each site will be random even if they
have relatively unique latency or volume characteristics. So these do
not seem an immediate practical threat. Further along similar lines, in
@@ -986,7 +992,7 @@
in \cite{feamster:wpes2004}, and began investigating a variant of location
diversity based on the fact that the Internet is divided into thousands of
independently operated networks called {\em autonomous systems} (ASes).
-The key insight from this paper is that while we typically think of a
+The key insight from their paper is that while we typically think of a
connection as going directly from the Tor client to her first Tor node,
actually it traverses many different ASes on each hop. An adversary at
any of these ASes can monitor or influence traffic. Specifically, given
@@ -1187,6 +1193,7 @@
\bibliographystyle{plain} \bibliography{tor-design}
+\clearpage
\appendix
\begin{figure}[t]