Re: Freenet speed & local threats

On Sun, 11 Dec 2011 01:04:09 -0500, Chris wrote:
> [...]
> I would put money on them taking advantage of zero day exploits
> and/or the courts to force the Tor project, the Freenet project, the
> i2p project, or any other similar project to modify the code and
> insert a back door. Germany did this many years ago with one project
> and successfully identified a user. It was none of the above projects
> although the ability to force upon developers code changes that go
> out to all users has occurred. They were targeting one individual too
> that appeared to be a fairly low-value target. The only thing that
> might stop this from happening to other projects is where the
> developers are operating in one country and the government attempting
> to force the change is in another.

Another thing that might stop this from happening is open source
software, and at least a bunch of coders reviewing and signing any code
before it gets released. (I'm actually not sure how many coders have to
currently sign -- surely it's not just Toad?)

Do you have a link or more info on that German case? Was it open-source
software? Did the developer willingly co-operate, or did they use some
kind of backwards legal mechanism to force him? I wonder how much I can
buy Toad for..... Everyone has a price ;-).


> > The whole point of opennet is to be able to connect to anybody you
> > want :P. And if your ISP is compromised, this becomes even more
> > trivial -- they can block all but their own seednodes, so you're
> > forced to only connect to their bugged nodes as peers.
> 
> This should become apparent to the user

How would you propose to differentiate between a bugged node and a
normal node?

> and if is not made apparent that is a problem with freenet (or
> whichever project you would be suggesting).

Yes it is. And that's why it's in the FAQ :p. You should take a bit
more time, and read it more carefully:

"Combined with harvesting and adaptive search attacks, [the
bootstrapping attack] explains why opennet is regarded by many
core developers as hopelessly insecure. If you want good security you
need to connect only to friends."


> > [...]
> > In darknet, you *explicitly* specify who to connect to (hopefully a
> > trusted friend), and you don't connect to anybody else. So, to
> > infiltrate this setup, the bad guys would have to physically
> > compromise your friends' nodes, one by one. To infiltrate opennet,
> > they just have to type on a keyboard in the comfort of their homes.
> 
> If you could trust your friends there wouldn't be any need for
> freenet. The problem is you can't trust anybody.

If you can't trust anybody, then what do you hope to achieve? Who do
you hope to communicate with -- if everyone is your enemy?
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