[tor-talk] Speculation: Next 10 years of Tor?

Andrea Shepard andrea at torproject.org
Fri Jul 5 06:53:31 UTC 2013


On Thu, Jul 04, 2013 at 09:01:27PM +0000, adrelanos wrote:
> China doesn't succeed to 100%, but that's not much of a win. Look how
> many users used the Tor network before any Tor-network censorships and
> how many people figure out using bridges. The goal of preventing many
> people from gaining that information and slowing down the flow of
> information works very well for them.
> 
> Don't forget the assumption behind Tor: there are enough free
> countries, which tolerate volunteers hosting Tor servers. If that
> assumption breaks down, Onion Routing doesn't work.
> 
> Also keep in mind, that there are no Tor servers in China. When the US
> starts banning Tor, it will be almost the end of the Tor network. The
> core developers live in the US, when they get told, to take another
> job, it will be difficult to find new developers. Without Tor servers
> in the US and a few other countries with a noticeable amount of Tor
> servers, there is usable Tor network anymore.

I would move out of the US rather than submit to such an order; I don't
think I'm the only one of us who would.  That said, the Tor network *is*
vulnerable to attempts to suppress the relay operators and directory
authorities, which are more dangerous than attacks on the developers -
one can release software pseudonymously easily enough.

The directory authority attack vector could be weakened by adding support
for DAs as hidden services and moving a voting plurality of them to HSes.
Recently, Jake and I talked about some ideas for a more radical change,
eliminating the DAs *as servers* and just having them intermittently
poll directory mirrors to learn descriptors for new routers and upload
their votes.  I think there will be effective defense strategies for the
DAs if it should become necessary.

The hardest problem, I think, is defending against attempts to suppress
relays by legal force; the current model of total connectivity means it's
trivial to enumerate the IPs of all relays.

-- 
Andrea Shepard
<andrea at torproject.org>
PGP fingerprint (ECC): BDF5 F867 8A52 4E4A BECF  DE79 A4FF BC34 F01D D536
PGP fingerprint (RSA): 3611 95A4 0740 ED1B 7EA5  DF7E 4191 13D9 D0CF BDA5
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 840 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-talk/attachments/20130704/b2b99d7d/attachment.sig>


More information about the tor-talk mailing list