[tor-talk] Tor Weekly News — October 23th, 2013

[Joe Btfsplk]

On 10/23/2013 8:04 AM, Lunar wrote:
> Tor Weekly News                                       October 23th, 2013
>
> “some circuits are going to be compromised, but it’s better to increase your
> probability of having no compromised circuits at the expense of also
> _INCREASING THE PROPORTION_ of your circuits that will be compromised if
> any of them are.”
I read the paper -  slept since then.

Would someone please clarify this general statement & that part of the 
design concept?

The statement in https://www.torproject.org/docs/faq#EntryGuards is a 
bit confusing.
/"But profiling is, for most users, as bad as being traced all the time: 
they want to do something often without an attacker noticing, and the 
attacker noticing once is as bad as the attacker noticing more often."/

How is being "noticed" once, perhaps for 15 seconds,  visiting one 
website - that yields very little info, better than being noticed many 
times, over a long period?

Is it that once an adversary correlates your machine (fingerprint) w/ an 
originating IP & a Tor entry / exit, they could theoretically ID you?

If so, doesn't that beg the question of why does TBB keep the same 
browser fingerprint from entry to exit?
Why (have or allow TBB to) keep the same fingerprint over long periods, 
even if some of that data is spoofed, rather than TBB randomly change 
(spoof) the fingerprint, from end to end on one circuit and / or over time?

One big problem as I understand, is a Tor user (specific browser on 
specific machine) is potentially identifiable from entry to exit, by 
having the same fingerprint.
Why not change the fingerprint?  Put on a "hat & glasses" or "different 
colored coat" part way through the circuit?  TBB already spoofs SOME 
browser data - it just remains constant.  Maybe other tracking issues 
completely over shadow this.

Even if having TBB change fingerprints along a circuit and / or at other 
times doesn't solve all problems, could it be a *part* of reducing 
fingerprinting and / or tracking?