Hi George,
On Wednesday 17 May 2017 05:21 PM, George Kadianakis wrote:
1.1. Visuals
Here is how a hidden service rendezvous circuit currently looks like:
-> middle_1 -> middle_A -> middle_2 -> middle_B -> middle_3 -> middle_C -> middle_4 -> middle_D HS -> guard -> middle_5 -> middle_E -> Rendezvous Point -> middle_6 -> middle_F -> middle_7 -> middle_G -> middle_8 -> middle_H -> ... -> ... -> middle_n -> middle_nthis proposal pins the two middles nodes to a much more restricted set, as follows:
-> guard_3A_A -> guard_2_A -> guard_3A_B -> guard_3A_C -> Rendezvous Point HS -> guard_1 -> guard_3B_D -> guard_2_B -> guard_3B_E -> guard_3B_F -> Rendezvous PointNote that the third level guards are partitioned into buckets such that they are only used with one specific second-level guard. In this way, we ensure that even if an adversary is able to execute a Sybil attack against the third layer, they only get to learn one of the second layer Guards, and not all of them. This prevents the adversary from gaining the ability to take their pick of the weakest of the second-level guards for further attack.
I think this scheme works like if there are x number of third level guards, then they are divided into buckets of x/k number of guards each, where k is the number of second level guards. Now, I feel that dividing guards into buckets is a little pointless. Suppose we have 1000 possible third level guards, and 500 possible second level guards. We have to select 4 third level guards for each bucket, and 2 second level guard for each hidden service. Now even in this case the adversary has to do as much effort as before. What if the guards are divided into buckets, at least now the possible pool of third level guards in which the sybil attack is to be conducted get reduced. So the 1000 third level guards get divided into pool of 500 each. Hence easier to accomplish that attack, but for that the adversary has to allocate 2x resources if she wants to take advantage of that. So net result is zero.
I haven't had my coffee, so please correct me if I'm wrong somewhere :)
Regards,