BitShares Forum

Other => Graveyard => KeyID => Topic started by: yellowecho on August 20, 2014, 10:31:01 pm

Title: Anonymity Network (Tor) DAC?
Post by: yellowecho on August 20, 2014, 10:31:01 pm
Between KeyID, TITAN, and .P2P there seems to be enough features to construct an anonymity network like Tor.  The DAC could be pay-to-play (hourly) or subscription based and payment could be done through new share issuance, bitUSD, BTSX, etc.  Are there any plans to create a DAC like this?  Or will .P2P already cover this with future extensions or browser?
Title: Re: Anonymity Network (Tor) DAC?
Post by: mdw on August 20, 2014, 10:44:25 pm
What incentive would a user have to pay for using this instead of Tor?
Title: Re: Anonymity Network (Tor) DAC?
Post by: yellowecho on August 20, 2014, 11:07:34 pm
What incentive would a user have to pay for using this instead of Tor?


Tor has vulverabilities like end-to-end confirmation, eavesdropping, exit node issues, malware attacks, etc.  Also, I believe Tor now has a history of being hacked:

http://www.ibtimes.com/tor-safe-anonymous-browser-hacked-suspects-keeping-quiet-privacy-advocates-shaken-1645210

http://gizmodo.com/the-fbi-just-admitted-to-hacking-into-the-tor-network-1310273550
Title: Re: Anonymity Network (Tor) DAC?
Post by: biophil on August 20, 2014, 11:19:12 pm
What incentive would a user have to pay for using this instead of Tor?


Tor has vulverabilities like end-to-end confirmation, eavesdropping, exit node issues, malware attacks, etc.  Also, I believe Tor now has a history of being hacked:

http://www.ibtimes.com/tor-safe-anonymous-browser-hacked-suspects-keeping-quiet-privacy-advocates-shaken-1645210

http://gizmodo.com/the-fbi-just-admitted-to-hacking-into-the-tor-network-1310273550

End-to-end would also be a problem for a for-profit Tor. Also, you'd have to consider the fact that you're now paying node operators. How would you structure the incentives so that node operators will be more honest than they are in vanilla Tor?

Sent from my SCH-S720C using Tapatalk 2

Title: Re: Anonymity Network (Tor) DAC?
Post by: mdw on August 20, 2014, 11:25:33 pm
Tor's certainly far from perfect, but it is good. People have had successes against Tor network. And the NSA has admitted having lots of difficulty with it too. How good is it? The answer is not so simple, it's rather nuanced.

To make it worthwhile to pay, you would need to demonstrate that this service is better, since Tor is free. Not saying it can't be done, but make no mistake it is not going to be easy. These kinds of networks get the biggest, baddest attackers out there. And you'll still need the equivalent of an exit node that sends the request to the destination over the clear Internet. That's a tough problem.

Also it's not clear how this is related to KeyID or .P2P? Surely this should be a separate Bitshares project.
Title: Re: Anonymity Network (Tor) DAC?
Post by: mdw on August 21, 2014, 03:00:51 am
End-to-end would also be a problem for a for-profit Tor. Also, you'd have to consider the fact that you're now paying node operators. How would you structure the incentives so that node operators will be more honest than they are in vanilla Tor?

Yeah, you can pay them but it won't make them behave better. If you could solve one of the main problems in Tor, you could have an advantage until they implemented the same in Tor. Then you're back to free versus paid.

There is one relationship between Tor and BitsharesDNS that @derrick outlined in the "alias" section of the specification.

If I understand correctly, I should be able to use a .P2P domain to give folks a more memorable name to use to get to a site that I run as a Tor hidden service. Let's say my blog is at mdwabc12345xyz.onion

I could specify something in the blockchain entry for mdwblog.p2p
Code: [Select]
{
  "alias": "mdwabc12345xyz.onion",
  . . . . .
}

and the people who can resolve .p2p domains have an easier way to reach my onion site via http://mdwblog.p2p.
Title: Re: Anonymity Network (Tor) DAC?
Post by: kokojie on August 21, 2014, 01:46:20 pm
What incentive would a user have to pay for using this instead of Tor?

SPEED! one of the biggest issue I have with TOR is that it's so damn slow. Now if nodes have an incentive to get paid, then they will provide good reliable speedy service to users. I think it would be best if we allow users to choose which nodes to use (and pay for), all anonymously of course, and also a reputation system for reliable/speedy nodes.

Also we should allow node operator to choose to service the users for free, so that those without money are not locked out of the ecosystem. These free nodes will probably be slower/less reliable nodes, since they are crowded.

In addition, there needs to be an incentive for "hosting nodes" (nodes that provide web hosting). Because centralized TOR hosting is often targeted, half of TOR sites are gone due to FBI crack down on Freedom hosting company.  It's kinda like the "storj" concept, where you get paid for your disk space, and you don't see what's on your disk, so you can deny knowledge if you come under scrutiny.
Title: Re: Anonymity Network (Tor) DAC?
Post by: Akado on August 21, 2014, 02:14:59 pm
What incentive would a user have to pay for using this instead of Tor?

SPEED! one of the biggest issue I have with TOR is that it's so damn slow. Now if nodes have an incentive to get paid, then they will provide good reliable speedy service to users. I think it would be best if we allow users to choose which nodes to use (and pay for), all anonymously of course, and also a reputation system for reliable/speedy nodes.

Also we should allow node operator to choose to service the users for free, so that those without money are not locked out of the ecosystem. These free nodes will probably be slower/less reliable nodes, since they are crowded.

In addition, there needs to be an incentive for "hosting nodes" (nodes that provide web hosting). Because centralized TOR hosting is often targeted, half of TOR sites are gone due to FBI crack down on Freedom hosting company.  It's kinda like the "storj" concept, where you get paid for your disk space, and you don't see what's on your disk, so you can deny knowledge if you come under scrutiny.

I think that was the objective of the original "TorCoin" (not the one on coinmarkepcap i guess). There is even a white paper for that

https://bitscan.com/articles/torcoin-funding-anonymity
http://cryptocrimson.com/2014/06/torcoin-incentivizing-anonymity/

white paper
http://dedis.cs.yale.edu/dissent/papers/hotpets14-torpath.pdf

Where the fees would be used to pay people who provide more bandwidth to the network as one of the main problems is definetely speed as mentioned above
Title: Re: Anonymity Network (Tor) DAC?
Post by: yellowecho on August 21, 2014, 04:00:35 pm
What incentive would a user have to pay for using this instead of Tor?

SPEED! one of the biggest issue I have with TOR is that it's so damn slow. Now if nodes have an incentive to get paid, then they will provide good reliable speedy service to users. I think it would be best if we allow users to choose which nodes to use (and pay for), all anonymously of course, and also a reputation system for reliable/speedy nodes.

Also we should allow node operator to choose to service the users for free, so that those without money are not locked out of the ecosystem. These free nodes will probably be slower/less reliable nodes, since they are crowded.

In addition, there needs to be an incentive for "hosting nodes" (nodes that provide web hosting). Because centralized TOR hosting is often targeted, half of TOR sites are gone due to FBI crack down on Freedom hosting company.  It's kinda like the "storj" concept, where you get paid for your disk space, and you don't see what's on your disk, so you can deny knowledge if you come under scrutiny.

 +5%
Title: Re: Anonymity Network (Tor) DAC?
Post by: mdw on August 22, 2014, 03:20:12 am
What incentive would a user have to pay for using this instead of Tor?

SPEED! one of the biggest issue I have with TOR is that it's so damn slow. Now if nodes have an incentive to get paid, then they will provide good reliable speedy service to users. I think it would be best if we allow users to choose which nodes to use (and pay for), all anonymously of course, and also a reputation system for reliable/speedy nodes.

Also we should allow node operator to choose to service the users for free, so that those without money are not locked out of the ecosystem. These free nodes will probably be slower/less reliable nodes, since they are crowded.

In addition, there needs to be an incentive for "hosting nodes" (nodes that provide web hosting). Because centralized TOR hosting is often targeted, half of TOR sites are gone due to FBI crack down on Freedom hosting company.  It's kinda like the "storj" concept, where you get paid for your disk space, and you don't see what's on your disk, so you can deny knowledge if you come under scrutiny.

I think that was the objective of the original "TorCoin" (not the one on coinmarkepcap i guess). There is even a white paper for that

https://bitscan.com/articles/torcoin-funding-anonymity
http://cryptocrimson.com/2014/06/torcoin-incentivizing-anonymity/

white paper
http://dedis.cs.yale.edu/dissent/papers/hotpets14-torpath.pdf

Where the fees would be used to pay people who provide more bandwidth to the network as one of the main problems is definetely speed as mentioned above

Thanks for linking to that bitscan article! But this one @ LTB is a little nicer to read I think: http://letstalkbitcoin.com/blog/post/funding-anonymity-with-crypto
and I am totally objective about those 2 articles :p

Yes the "other" Torcoin was just some anonymous guy who came out with a coin shortly after that whitepaper was published.

If you could make a faster version, it might become popular, and Bitshares chain is fast. But even if you can figure out how to do it, this should probably be on the alternative DACs board right?
Title: Re: Anonymity Network (Tor) DAC?
Post by: jckj on September 28, 2014, 03:40:13 pm
Those should be considrated and involed in dns.
Title: Re: Anonymity Network (Tor) DAC?
Post by: Akado on October 09, 2014, 04:26:59 pm
https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/earn-bitcoin-turning-android-device-tor-node/ this article made me remeber about this thread. Could something like this be achieved? Each person with shares on the DAC client, would act as a node and so, would receive dividends? That could be an incentive to act as a node. Thing is, is this something that could be made and work together with the DNS DAC?
Title: Re: Anonymity Network (Tor) DAC?
Post by: xeroc on October 09, 2014, 04:39:52 pm
https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/earn-bitcoin-turning-android-device-tor-node/ this article made me remeber about this thread. Could something like this be achieved? Each person with shares on the DAC client, would act as a node and so, would receive dividends? That could be an incentive to act as a node. Thing is, is this something that could be made and work together with the DNS DAC?
Not sure .. but as I read it we are talking about "donations" .. not that you had to pay for the service
Title: Re: Anonymity Network (Tor) DAC?
Post by: Akado on October 09, 2014, 07:33:45 pm
https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/earn-bitcoin-turning-android-device-tor-node/ this article made me remeber about this thread. Could something like this be achieved? Each person with shares on the DAC client, would act as a node and so, would receive dividends? That could be an incentive to act as a node. Thing is, is this something that could be made and work together with the DNS DAC?
Not sure .. but as I read it we are talking about "donations" .. not that you had to pay for the service

My bad if I havent explained it well. I meant that the same way people get tips to maintain a node, dividends on a DAC could have the same effect and we could have something similar to Tor