On Sat, Jul 13, 2013 at 12:36 PM, Mitar <[email protected]> wrote: > For me it seems far from something which would be resistant to any > adversary trying to prevent communication from happening. It seems to > me that it just ignores many of issues with DHTs and routing in > overlay networks put out in research literature until today. Which is
DHT's are basically a complete joke when it comes to attack resistance, and so it's with much face palming that I've endured near constant suggestions to "Use a DHT!", often in completely inapplicable contexts, from people whos only exposure to distributed systems is DHTs. It's basically a running joke in the Bitcoin development community at this point. That said CJ is, in fact, aware of these issues— and CJDNS is at least intended to be resistant to sibyl attacks under some assumptions (I believe the main assumption is that you choose honest peers for your transport links (and that your honest peers also do so), because it isn't simply a topology blind DHT). The system is setup to require manual peering, so it isn't just a handwave— it's how you're expected to use it. (Now, how strong that requirement is isn't clear to me, e.g. how does your security fall off as a function of distance to honest nodes— or how realistic even the weakest form of that requirement is in practice, e.g. can even a spherical-technical-expert manage to reliably pick non-sybil peers— is another question.) Some of the other concerns about CJDNS is that its not— by itself— an anonymity network. Its anonymity properties are weaker than TOR's, for example. Though it may be the case that the composition of CJDNS and a high latency (/CBR) mix network might better address the spectrum of needs, there is still the risk that people may misunderstand what is actually being provided. -- Too many emails? Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password by emailing moderator at [email protected] or changing your settings at https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech
