On 01/02/2017 12:53 AM, Rana wrote: > @Mirimir >>> This is not Blockchain where hundreds of thousands of greedy selfish >>> genes are working together for non-collusion. A practically zero- >>> effort collusion of already fully cooperating FIVE EYE agencies (US, >>> UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand) is needed to sprinkle several tens >>> of rogue relays every month all over the globe, hosted at unsuspected >>> hosters, looking perfectly bona fide. All they need is maintain some >>> bandwidth and stability (why not?) and wait 70 days and - hop! - they >>> are guards. > >> That seems plausible. I don't know how the community of relay operators >> works. But I suspect that, if you're right, many known and trusted relay >> operators must be covert operatives. While that's not impossible, it >> would represent a huge investment. > > I've been through this already, and made a calculation of the completely > negligible - in government terms - amount required to pay for hosting > 4000 powerful nodes that are indiscernible from honest relays and are > scattered all over the world. A huge investment is emphatically NOT > required for this. As to operatives, I see no reason why a single > employee could not control 500 rogue relays from a single $1000 PC. > Say, spending her day revisiting 25 relays daily, doing maintenance. > That's assuming zero automation. With some automation software (say, > flagging relays that need attention, most of them don't most of the > time), a single employee could control the entire 7000. Where's > the "huge investment"?
Yes, there's no huge investment in equipment or operator time. But it's my impression that there's a community of relay operators. Who know each other. And I doubt that an appreciable percentage of entry guards are run by anonymous cowards, such as myself ;) If that's the case -- and I'd appreciate knowledgeable comment -- many known and trusted relay operators must be covert operatives. I expect that running a long-term covert operation isn't cheap. But upon reflection, it would arguably not cost more than a hundred million USD per year. So maybe so. > Tor model breaks down when facing a modest government adversary for the > simple reason that having only 7000 relays total, with a minority of > them carrying most of the traffic, invites cheap infiltration and > takeover by state adversaries. Yeah, that's a problem :( > Rana > > _______________________________________________ > tor-relays mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-relays > _______________________________________________ tor-relays mailing list [email protected] https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-relays
