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Re: [GNUnet-developers] Found a related project


From: Tom Barnes-Lawrence
Subject: Re: [GNUnet-developers] Found a related project
Date: Wed, 4 Jun 2003 03:21:49 +0100
User-agent: Mutt/1.3.28i

 I know that the rest of the dev team doesn't need to hear this,
but who knows how many people could be silently lurking on the lists
that might not realise the flaw(s) in JMA's argument. I want GNUnet
to *gain* users, not lose them...

On Tue, Jun 03, 2003 at 06:24:10AM -0700, Jan Marco Alkema wrote:
> Hi Tom,
> 
> > http://udpp2p.sourceforge.net/
> 
> "This project aims to build a working model of a UDP P2P network, which
> utilises spoofed source addresses and broadcast mechanisms to keep the
> sharers identity secret."
> Could be difficult for network tracing? You can't resolve where the network
> packet came from.

> >And btw, you again seem to miss the point of GNUnet's AFS: provide
> anonymity. (s)ftp won't give you that.

 (Strains to think)- Jan Marco, it looks like you were replying to
my initial posting, which implies I was saying that line there, and
I didn't, urgle... My brain hurts. Someone else privately discussing
this with you?


> I don't believe that AFS provides anonymity. Core switches, etc. can trace
> all packets on the Internet. I know that "gnunet-convert" comes from
> 62.131.97.197 to me (217.120.174.15).

  Why would you care about gnunet-convert or such tools? They are to
connect to your own gnunetd server, and unless you have N different
people on the same machine sharing that server, why should there be
anonymity there? AFAIK only gnunetd talks to other nodes, and everything
else goes through that...

> Gnunetd on 62.131.97.197 can try to do
> some anonymity by not sending it instant to me, but send it to another
> gnunet peer. This peer sends it to me. Better anonymity should be sending
> the block random to x peers not me (217.120.174.15), but network traces can
> give the infomation where the file is coming from!

  No. Network traces can say that some data is being sent from machine
A to machine B. They can't interpret the data, because it's encrypted,
so they don't know if that data is being forwarded on behalf of another
machine. They can't even tell if the data is meaningful, as the server
will send out a chunk of random noise sometimes to confuse things.
They can't use traffic analysis to say "ah, this packet from B to C
comes just after this one from A to B, so obviously B is forwarding a
packet", because the timing has a certain randomness, and gnunetd
can wait until it has several things to send before it sends anything,
etc... Plus it doesn't send a *file*, the files that are shared
get split up into lots of 1K chunks that get downloaded separately.

  The design of GNUnet always impresses me. (The *one* thing that
I suspect may be a flaw is that AFAIK requests for things must have
a TTL set, so presumably, even if it is made random, there will be
times when the first node it reaches would be able to tell that it
is a new request (not forwarded). Is this true, anyone?)


  If I (or prolly anyone else) thought that Gnunet and/or its AFS
system wasn't actually anonymous... then what would be the point?
There are numerous other p2p systems without anonymity, that are
faster and have gigantic user bases (and the higher amount of content
that comes with them). They would be better to use.

  But of course, practically anything you want to share in a p2p
filesharing system is likely to be opposed by *somebody*. Million
dollar lawsuits for giving away music? Being thrown into a prison
for longer than armed robbers for writing software, on setting foot
in a foreign country? (OK, Dmitry Skylarov has apparently been
released, and AFAIK he wasn't giving his code away free, but I doubt
it would have helped him if he was, and he did spend time in prison
for something as basic as writing software) People always seem to
say "Why would you want anonymity?", when really, why would you *not*?

> >perhaps both our projects could learn something from each other
> Seems a good suggestion to me ---)
> 
  Thanks! I hope it really will be useful in some way.

 Tomble




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