Re: suspicions Chinese node name piracy

[Scott Bennett <bennett@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Olaf,
     Florian omitted your email address below, and I didn't save your original
message, so I couldn't copy you in on this.  I trust you will see it via the
list.
     On Sat, 19 Jan 2008 15:03:51 +0100 Florian Reitmeir <florian@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
>On Sat, 19 Jan 2008, Olaf Selke wrote:
>
>> today I found the tor network status update script for my TNS site 
>> http://torstatus.blutmagie.de broken. The Perl code feeding the underlying 
>> MySQL db relies on a unique router name for the tor server being queried. 
>> Since some hours besides my own tor node there's listed a second tor node 
>> in China named "blutmagie" in the descriptor table. It appears to be using 
>> a Chinese dialup address. Oops!
>> 
>> Fixing the TNS Perl code was not very hard, but what may be the reason some 
>> idiot in China choses the same router name like me?
>
>because there is no trademark on router names?
>
     I would have assumed that an extraordinarily high-capacity server like
your blutmagie would have been flagged "Named" in the status documents and
consensus document.  Did you never send in the information about it to get
the name reserved for your server?
     More peculiar is the fact that both your blutmagie and the Chinese one
are flagged "Unnamed", even though they clearly also have names in the same
status/consensus entries.  It seems to me, though, that this might be a case
where the directory authorities should remove the "Valid" flag from the entry
for the Chinese one and mark yours as "Named".
     What say ye, Geoff, Peter, Mike, Karsten?


                                  Scott Bennett, Comm. ASMELG, CFIAG
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