[Author Prev][Author Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Author Index][Thread Index]

Re: [tor-talk] Open source firewall.



On 1/20/14 3:47 AM, TheMindwareGroup wrote:
Windows firewall is useless.

Who is your attacker?

There are two kinds of anonymity in this world: anonymity that will stop your kid sister from reading your tweets, and anonymity that will stop major governments from finding your body. Microsoft is about the former.

More seriously: the (rule based or heuristic) firewalls you are describing are a last defense measure. Firewalls are born out of the assumption that running applications might be malicious or broken. You should Have A Little Faith, and trust Tails.

Realize that firewalls make sense under certain attacker models. The 'family' Windows PC has to endure some strain, and (ie. unknown application blocking) firewalls could add some safety.

You could argue that the iOS and the Android API permissions are the new 'firewall': the sandbox. It controls rough aspects of the application's behavior, and can present these aspects to the (casual) user in an understandable UI. The user unfortunately faces an 'all or nothing' dilemma (on grounds which are uncertain for the casual user).

PGP: 0xf4b6586f

What is the binary logarithm of sixteen to the power of eight?
How long does it take to generate a fresh RSA keypair?
Are the last eight bytes of keyids evenly distributed?

Thank you.
--
tor-talk mailing list - tor-talk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
To unsubscribe or change other settings go to
https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-talk