Silk Road forums

Damn scout. I was making fun of how specific the poll is.

Apologies for pulling this old thread out of the grave, but rather than start a new one, I figured I'd tack some news onto the best one related to Zerocoin.

I just checked their web site and it says that prototype software should be available in mid-to-late June: http://zerocoin.org/software

Pretty excited! I want to play with it.

Hopefully it will be in production use on the bitcoin network by the end of the year.

I had the impression from the various traffic analysis/traffic confirmation discussions (which I freely admit I only understand a portion of) that my ISP would have an easier time tracking my movements using TOR if I was simultaneously logged onto clearnet sites at the same time. On reflection, I don't know how this would work, and I'd be pleased to be corrected on this point.

Nah, the attacker would have to be watching the other end of your Tor circuit, either at the exit node, or at specific points between you and a hidden service, namely the hidden service directories, intro points, or the hidden service's entry guards. If an attacker is merely a local observer of all your home connections, that tells him nothing about what you are doing on the other end of a Tor circuit.

The Snowden affair has me wondering all the more about being flagged just for TOR use alone. We need to get on to a system whereby most people use onion routing and encryption making any individual user that much less worthy of further investigation.

Well, there are about 3 million people worldwide who use Tor every month for dozens of reasons, and about 250,000 in the United States, so flagging all of them would be pretty useless, which is why I don't think anyone is going on fishing expeditions against Tor users.

The crypto in Tor makes it CPU-bound. From the discussions I've seen, top of the line relays max out around 300-400 Mbit. That is why the Torservers are carrying around 30 MB (240 Mbit). 1. Because their theoretical maximum is so low. 2. Because few relays carry their theoretical maximum, even the exit nodes. I believe herngaard was pushing 50 MB at one time, which is 400 Mbit, and that's the most I've ever seen. So having a 1 gigabit port doesn't mean much. In order to push 1 GB, you will need 30+ servers.

So you want to run a client that speaks the Tor protocol and creates a hidden service, but the service is to be a relay? That is a very interesting idea, and something that, at least superficially (I'll have to give it more thought), I wouldn't be afraid to use.

If you build a separate network, then someone has to run the first node. That's a problem for us, since we have a preexisting need for anonymity, being associated with this community. But if the new network layers features onto the Tor network, it will be easier to get people to use it, and if it includes something like a messaging system, which a lot of people want right now given the Tormail problems, they will have an incentive to use it.

And it's interesting that hidden relays could provide plausible deniability to hidden services in the event of known attacks.

Just look at the recent HSDIR attack. An attacker is capable of being all HSDIR servers for a hidden service. That means they have the ability to constantly be positioned for 1/2 of a timing attack against any hidden service, and the clients accessing any hidden service. If they own 33.3333% of the bandwidth of the (I think?) 900 or so entry guards, they can deanonymize close to 100% of people who access the targeted hidden service within 60 days. That is the level of an attacker that can deanonymize almost all users of a targeted hidden service: if they can do the HSDIR attack and if they contribute 33.3333% of the entry guard bandwidth for 60 days. Even if they contribute less bandwidth and wait for 30 days, they are still going to be able to do some serious damage. Even if they own only a fraction of the entry guard bandwidth, they will be able to do serious damage over many months.

I think you overestimate how easy and effective that is. The total entry guard bandwidth in the network is 1200 + 800 = 2000 MB/s [1]. You  need to add 50% bandwidth to the existing network to become 33% of the final bandwidth, so that's 1 GB/s. Assuming the attacker adds very high bandwidth, 30 MB/s relays, he would have to add over 30 relays. If 30+ relays at 30 MB/s suddenly showed up on the network, people would notice.

Then the attacker would have run to these relays for at least month, and what would he get? A list of people accessing SR. A list of tens of thousands of people. What could he do with it? Accessing the market doesn't prove you did anything illegal. It doesn't tell you who the vendors are. It would still be incredibly costly to perform traditional police work to identify the high value targets.

Once again, the large crowd protects you.


1. https://metrics.torproject.org/bwhist-flags.png

On separate physical computers? It is basically zero risk.