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Re: [tor-dev] Building better pluggable transports (Google Summer of Code)



On 2013-05-29 5:48 AM, Philipp Winter wrote:
On Tue, May 28, 2013 at 07:55:45PM -0400, Tariq Elahi wrote:
2. Can manipulate (add, delete, change) said traffic in time and data
dimensions.
The challenge is to predict what can actually be done with these three simple
atoms.  Be it terminating non-whitelisted TCP connections after 60 seconds,
hijacking TCP connections after authentication or actively probing suspicious
traffic.
It is challenging to predict, but since the censor is a black box we can only make assumptions and hope that they are over estimations of the censor's capabilities, that is if the capabilities can be ordered (partially or totally).

Also, Tor tries to satisfy a range of users behind a range of censorship regimes. Circumvention solutions that work with Tor inherit this diverse user base. Balancing diversity of user base (with censorship regime) with efficacy of circumvention is something that needs further looking in to.


Motivations:
3. Block *all* information leakage events. This means if even one ILE occurs
the circumventor wins.
I suppose, in practice it's absolutely sufficient to block most of it.  Plenty
of deployed censorship systems are trivial to circumvent by exploiting specific
DPI shortcomings (should we call it "spear circumvention"?).
I like that. Like a spear it attacks one weak link, but like a spear it doesn't catch (feed) much.
But only if you
have the knowledge to do that.  If only the very small technical elite is able
to bypass the filters, you effectively win.
Going back to the point above, the tech elite are just some of the Tor user base. If this is who the circumvention system should serve then awesome. If not then we have more thinking to do.


There's also a social component.  If you, as a censor, can spread enough FUD
about the national filter, people might not even try to circumvent it.
This is true. FUD works. But I don't think that is something we can address through technological means, unless we're talking about keeping ppl anonymous so that they may test the FUD without repercussions.



mtee
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