Re: Vidalia exit-country

[Camilo Viecco <cviecco@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello M

Thanks for giving it a try. I have comments inline

M wrote:
> Hello friends I'm new on the list. I hope you bear with my questions 
> and problems.
>
> I just installed Camilo's version of Vidalia, and it seems i have a 
> couple of problems:
>
> 1) You can only exclude one country from the "invalidnodes" settings.
You can do multiple selections by pressing the 'Control (ctrl)' button 
when selecting
the second (or next) country.
> 2) You have to exclude it every time you start vidalia (it does not 
> save the settings)
>
> Are these bugs in my installation, or is the program like this?
It is a bug in the program. Exit countries should be saved. Thanks for 
finding it. I will fix it in a few days.
> 3) Also, how much does this reduce anonymity?

Placing any restrictions on the nodes most likely will reduce your 
anonymity. In particular limiting
the exit country significanly reduces your anonymity as it is much 
cheaper for an attacker to place
nodes in that country and thus your probability of selecting a 'bad' 
exit is higher.
Reducining the number of other nodes could 'possibly' be bad for your 
anonymity. Part
of Tor's attacker model assumes that there are many attackers that will 
not cooperate with each other.
There might be more academic studies about these effects, but none come 
to my mind at the moment.
Will let the list give you the pointers.
(I think 2007 PETS IX attack on Tor would be a place to start
(http://www.freehaven.net/anonbib/cache/murdoch-pet2007.pdf))

Thank you for noticing AND submitting about the bug

Camilo