Re: Anonymous Anonymity - Request For Comments

[gandalf () digital net]

Greetings and Salutations:

From: Craig Skelton <cskelton () gmail com>
> Take a look at Tor.
> http://tor.eff.org/
> One of the biggest problems with Tor is bandwidth disparity.

Many people have suggested that I take a look at TOR, and I have.  In fact I was able to talk to some of the authors of 
that system (I need to add a reference to TOR in my paper).  Extremely knowledgeable I must say.

I have installed TOR on a network that I have pretty well locked down.  My router filled up the syslog file with 
packets to "strange" ports when I started TOR up.  If I wanted to block TOR it would be fairly easy.

The other issue (I think I understand TOR correctly) is that if one of the "routers" is not a "trusted" machine 
(specifically the first one) then a rogue "router" can "act" like it is the other "routers" and will know the entire 
transaction.  There is also a centralized server to hold the addresses of servers (which could be compromised).  I 
don't want to have anything centralized.  I propose that all nodes are servers.  I am trying to get away from trusting 
anybody yet spreading the information around so much so that nobody can piece together the information.

One other issue with TOR and FreeNet is searching.  They do not have searches integrated into the design.  Someone has 
to produce a web page that does the searching.  The system I propose has searching as an integral part.

I am looking for something that is almost invisible (i.e. port 80, 81, 443, 21, 22, 23, 8080 etc.) to any monitoring 
system.  The alternative is to do like AOLIM and just start trying ports until something works.  The other issue is 
making the traffic "look" like standard HTML to bypass application level firewalls.

I like the idea of TOR, tho', and it is interesting and the people I spoke to gave me tons of pointers on other issues 
with Anonymous Systems.  I will add / update to the file at:
http://digital.net/~gandalf/Anonymous_Anonymity.htm

Ken Hollis

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