[tor-bugs] #9385 [BridgeDB]: bridgedb's email responder should fuzzy match email addresses within time periods

Tor Bug Tracker & Wiki blackhole at torproject.org
Tue Apr 22 15:35:08 UTC 2014


#9385: bridgedb's email responder should fuzzy match email addresses within time
periods
--------------------------+--------------------------------------------
     Reporter:  isis      |      Owner:  isis
         Type:  defect    |     Status:  new
     Priority:  normal    |  Milestone:
    Component:  BridgeDB  |    Version:
   Resolution:            |   Keywords:  bridgedb-email, bridgedb-0.2.x
Actual Points:            |  Parent ID:
       Points:            |
--------------------------+--------------------------------------------

Comment (by wfn):

 Replying to [comment:2 mparte]:
 >
 > {{{
 > However, going down the path of finding clever regexes to match things
 like the fake .onion address looking email addresses in addition to all
 the other things which are clearly patterns to a human sounds like a good
 way to either write unreadable code or accidentally block honest users.
 > }}}
 >
 > Could you test for Kolmogorov Complexity?

 This is venturing into crazy territory, but fwiw: it might be possible to
 calculate similarity simply using Hamming Distances:
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamming_distance which at the binary/bit
 level is 'the number of XORs needed to make $given_string into
 $some_target_string.'

 Actually implementing such a distance metric on top of email address
 storage (god forbid) would entitle making an email address storage
 mechanism (probably) based on binary trees. I fear it would be simple to
 produce false positives, though; the mechanism could prefer calculating
 distances starting from the right-hand-side of the first part of the email
 address, whatnot.

 In any case, I guess I agree that this does indeed sound like a losing
 battle with some insane code to top it off. :(

--
Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/9385#comment:8>
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