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It's odd state of the world where we will have to add significant amounts of noise to prevent browsers from revealing what site they are visiting because of tra
by mdale 6y ago
It's odd state of the world where we will have to add significant amounts of noise to prevent browsers from revealing what site they are visiting because of traffic request protocols getting too efficient and browsers trying to be efficient in predictable ways.
- zdragnar 6y agoIsn't predictability the problem? It seems that many hardware and software attacks, at a very very high level, amount to being too predictable.
- monadic3 6y agoNo, the problem is the business model that incentivized selling their users up the river.
- infogulch 6y agoI don't find it particularly surprising that optimizing for efficiency makes systems more predictable -- efficient implementations often lie in a local minimum that are independently discoverable.
- nine_k 6y agoRemember how truly secure channels keep transmitting random noise at a constant rate when they are not transmitting encrypted messages at the same rate. Anything which is non-uniform is an attack surface. If an efficiency improvement makes things more predictable, then it adds a possibility of a new snooping attack. All your interactions have to be as inefficient as your most inefficient interaction, else an adversary can tell them apart
- anticristi 6y agoI never thought about this. Also, I find it depressing. Basically my browser needs to "keep watching some YouTube stream", so an attacker can't figure out that I switched to reading emails.
- smichel17 6y agoThere is a middle ground, where you have a couple of tiers.
- nine_k 6y agoThis applies if you don't want these two activities to be told apart badly enough. Most of the time, it's not the case, and just the fact you are checking emails does not give your adversaries enough information to care about. Being uninteresting and unimportant is one of the best possible defenses. The higher the stakes go, the more minor details become important to conceal. These constant-rate white-noise channels are used by military and intelligence.
- gcblkjaidfj 6y agoThis is core to the onion routing protocol. And a huge knowledge hole on the p2p/dweb and IETFF people both.