[tor-talk] Tor as ecommerce platform

Mike Perry mikeperry at torproject.org
Sat Aug 11 17:54:04 UTC 2012


Thus spake grarpamp (grarpamp at gmail.com):

> > Still, it is a little surprising they can't trace bitcoin yet, though.
> > Maybe they can.
> 
> If you're using an anonet, a new address for every transaction, a
> good mix that at least guarantees lack of per session taint, and
> are willing to accept a random variance in your input and output BTC
> amount and timing to prevent lining up the net totals, I don't think
> anyone could. Part of it probably hinges on the overall coin flux
> rate through commerce at scale too. I'm sure the answer is on
> bitcointalk somewhere.

Yeah, thats the thing.. Individual buyers and perhaps even some of the
small-time sellers might be able to take enough precautions (if they
know how) that will significantly reduce their visibility.

But from the paper, it sounds like the BTC flow to Silk Road itself is
quite large and might be measurable or at least can be approximated from
the website itself... Also, if it ever exits the BTC network and starts
moving into the old-skool financial system at that quantity, there's (at
least currently) not very many points it can do that without being seen.

The problem is that even with mixes and batching, bitcoin provides a
Global Passive Adversary for free, which can be used to map and measure
total BTC flow through the network to various sinks (eigenvectors +
eigenflow). Based on the established dogma that still rules the Tor
threat model, "BTC cannot win!!!1" for this reason. At least, not when
you're a substantial and atypical chunk of the BTC flow versus norm.

Like I said, it will be very interesting to watch. It's almost like some
aliens came down from space and double-dog-dared the ballsiest,
craziest, most aggro humans on the planet to try to solve timing
correlation attacks and then called them all pussies, threw the bitcoin
source code at their feet, and then flew off. You know, because they
needed that shit to interact with our violent monkey society at a safe
enough distance and everybody else on this planet had given up. The bad
Sci Fi just writes itself. ;)

> > I think my bet is also on Silk Road not surviving in the
> > long run for that reason...
> 
> Good systems are usually stronger than human factors.
> 1BTC says SR screws up the real life parts first.

Hrmm.. Yeah, this is probably also likely. I wonder if they started
sporting the bling yet. Unless they're *also* cackling madly from their
space ship, wondering why the monkeys didn't learn the futility of this
whole game a century ago with alcohol...


-- 
Mike Perry
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