On Sat, 23 Dec 2000, Brandon wrote:
> > The sneaky part was requiring hash cash only when an identity is
> > generated. Normal posting wouldn't require any hash cash, because the
>
> Indeed, that is clever. I'd be interested in seeing a concrete proposal on
> how to use hash cash to generate identities.
Especially in Freenet.
> > 1 kilobyte per insert. The hash cash is essential; without it, the
> > flooders could post under thousands of identities and make filtering
> > impossible.
>
> It would make filtering by identity on a fully public forum impossible.
Which would effectively rule out any posts from other than the group
regulars (who are specified in the "allow-file" -- a killfile would not
work, obviously).
> > Like how? An obnoxious kid can render any public forum useless by flooding
> > it all day long. fnnews wouldn't stand a chance. My proposed mechanish is
> > the only way I can think of to diminish the effects of flooding from
> > "dooming" to "annoying." Once you hit that critical threshold, flooding is
> > boring and nobody does it.
>
> Moderated mailing lists due just fine on the Internet today. IRC survives
> despite having the highest concentration of obnoxious punk ass kids trying
> to flood everything. So it seems to be that there must be some reason that
> these things are surviving even though they have the same problems of
> anonymous flooders. Sure, you can say they just ban flooders by IP or
> e-mail address and of course they'd have to ban all anonymous e-mail like
> hotmail. But I think there's more to it than that. I think if you just
> have a moderated space then flooders get bored because they never see the
> fruits of their labor. There are of course the few really obnoxious people
> that will change nick/address over and over again to continue to try to
> flood a space until their entire ISP has been blocked. That's particularly
> tricky. I'd still like to think some more before we institute a system for
> stopping obnoxious people that also makes it harder for low-end
> participants to participate and doesn't stop Them from flooding.
The threshold for boredom is far too high, when you take into account the
hype surrounding Freenet. Usenet has been happening for millennia. The
punks know what happens when war is declared against a group. It's
arduous labor, it's risky, and it's been done before, a lot. The same with
mailing lists and IRC. They're boring, mundane, and "real."
We're going to be assaulted by punks delighted at what they perceive to be
the opportunity to shatter our perfect crystalline heavens and all their
divine motions. It's not going to be pretty.
But it needs to be filterable, somehow, and easily. When a flood begins,
there should be mechanisms in place to ignore it, somehow, even if that
means filtering out posts from all but group regulars. With a basic system
like fnnews, one malicious attacker can trivially destroy the entire
system. He can insert archive posts for a hundred years, he can cram in so
many posts that normal posters cannot afford to increment the appended
integer all to way to the next available slot. There is absolutely nothing
you can do about it. If you can't afford to download all the chaff, you
can't read any content. The group grinds to a halt, and the attacker wins.
That sucks.
Moderation can ameliorate this situation to an extent. If The Moderator
has a public submissions subspace and a secret subspace that only group
regulars know about, if the public subspace is flooded horribly, the
regulars can keep posting and nobody will even know. But that's a cop-out.
--
Mark Roberts
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