3 ms·

This is really where I think p2p things like torrents can be a big help. There are obvious drawbacks such as verifying your getting the original version, for ex

This is really where I think p2p things like torrents can be a big help. There are obvious drawbacks such as verifying your getting the original version, for example. But if we give up the idea that the creator's website should be the gateway to that information, we have the methods to work around ddos attacks.

runeks 10y ago
A torrent with one million public keys of the most prominent journalists wouldn't be big (32 MB if we use Ed25519), and would allow them to host their content from torrents with few seeders, without fear of being over-crowded by malicious nodes with wrong data. Of course, we'd have to make sure that this particular public key-torrent is not taken over either, but it's a lot easier to secure a single torrent than to secure the torrents containing all articles of all journalists. krebsonsecurity.com basically works as Brian Krebs' public key: any information you get from that domain via HTTPS is considered signed by Brian Krebs. But it constitutes a fairly crude PKI system, where the public key is tied to a domain that simultaneously has the job of distributing the signed information. The solution requires a separation of public key and information distribution: information must not be tied to a location, and the location of the public key should differ from that of the signed information. All in all, I would say that (D)DoS is a problem of the transport protocol, not of the internet. Distributing information of high negative value to certain parties requires a different protocol than serving cat pictures does, which is why the BitTorrent protocol appeared in the first place: to counter the takedown of information (copyrighted content) whose publication is deemed of negative value to certain parties (copyright holders).
- mynameislegion 10y ago
  krebsonsecurity.com doesn't use Brian Krebs' public key, it uses Google's public key (and before that, Akamai).

runeks 10y ago

A torrent with one million public keys of the most prominent journalists wouldn't be big (32 MB if we use Ed25519), and would allow them to host their content from torrents with few seeders, without fear of being over-crowded by malicious nodes with wrong data. Of course, we'd have to make sure that this particular public key-torrent is not taken over either, but it's a lot easier to secure a single torrent than to secure the torrents containing all articles of all journalists. krebsonsecurity.com basically works as Brian Krebs' public key: any information you get from that domain via HTTPS is considered signed by Brian Krebs. But it constitutes a fairly crude PKI system, where the public key is tied to a domain that simultaneously has the job of distributing the signed information. The solution requires a separation of public key and information distribution: information must not be tied to a location, and the location of the public key should differ from that of the signed information. All in all, I would say that (D)DoS is a problem of the transport protocol, not of the internet. Distributing information of high negative value to certain parties requires a different protocol than serving cat pictures does, which is why the BitTorrent protocol appeared in the first place: to counter the takedown of information (copyrighted content) whose publication is deemed of negative value to certain parties (copyright holders).

mynameislegion 10y ago
krebsonsecurity.com doesn't use Brian Krebs' public key, it uses Google's public key (and before that, Akamai).