RE: Relakks

["Tony" <Tony@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I think you are mistaken. Going via an encrypted pipe to a foreign proxy
certainly does not make it easier. 

It is obviously much easier for the US government to observe an
unencrypted USA internet connection and all traffic to and from it than
to observe an encrypted connection that terminates in Sweden - together
with tens of thousands of other similar connections from the same
server.

Sure with analysis and a fair bit of processing power they could
eventually match your output from Relakks to your source IP by a timing
attack. Assuming they can monitor a Swedish ISP at source. However, I
doubt that they have that capability - certainly the Swedish government
is very unlikely to give it to them. Anyway, the next time that you
connect and get a new IP then they have to work from scratch again.

It certainly makes it more difficult and probably out of reach of for
instance the RIAA, MPAA and other such rights restriction organisations
to go after file sharers, DRM hackers and the like.

Possibly if you are a terrorist and the NSA is able to bring all its
resources to bear then it is not enough, but it is probably good enough
for the vast majority that want privacy.



-----Original Message-----
From: owner-or-talk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:owner-or-talk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of coderman
Sent: 30 November 2006 18:29
To: or-talk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: Relakks

On 11/30/06, Tony <Tony@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> If they use Relakks they they can make it much harder for the US
governement to watch them - and get decent speed too - unlike with TOR!

let me make this really clear:

Relakks and other single hop proxies are trivial to observe for an
adversary correlating traffic.  Such services make it MUCH EASIER, not
harder, for governments to watch.  they also introduce a single point
of failure and require full trust in this third party.

Tor is slower than Relakks because it provides stronger anonymity,
which is a feature, not a bug.

best regards,