5 ms·

Any background on who "Conformal Systems" are and why they would operate exit nodes ? I'm not really familiar with who they are and what they do, but they seem

by Wilya 14y ago

Any background on who "Conformal Systems" are and why they would operate exit nodes ? I'm not really familiar with who they are and what they do, but they seem to be the only one in the top-25 that isn't either a hosting company or a residential ISP. (apart from Formless Networking, but that one is a bit more well known) Not that it's not nice of them, but it seems a bit out of place.

EwanG 14y ago
Government contractor. Feel free to guess what they're being paid to do...
- jazzyb 14y ago
  Everything I can find on them indicates that they are simply an open source company who takes privacy and data security very seriously [1] -- which would explain why they are running tor exit nodes. What information do you have that they are government contractors? [1] https://www.conformal.com/ https://www.conformal.com/
- jcr 14y ago
  Casting doubts and aspersions when you don't know anything and haven't bothered to read up on what they do is extremely unfair. They do some very impressive cryptographic deduplication. Essentially it's a method to deduplicate already encrypted data reliably. If you don't realize how amazingly cool that is, you need to do some reading. It's a really tough problem, and it solves a major pain point for anyone with large volumes of encrypted data (i.e. governments). EDIT: Links https://www.conformal.com/ https://www.conformal.com/ https://www.cyphertite.com/ https://www.cyphertite.com/
  - JonnieCache 14y ago
    "cryptographic deduplication" How is that even possible? Surely a custom crypto scheme is needed?
    - jcr 14y ago
      I wish I could tell you. I understand some of the parts involved but do not understand the method completely, so it's best for everyone that I don't speculate blindly. The Ciphertite web site is a far better reference than I could ever be. I'll go to the top of the building and light up the tptacek bat signal.
    - sp332 14y ago
      Yes, it's possible with certain kinds of algorithms. A while back IBM found a way to do general computation on data without decrypting it, like adding encrypted dollar amounts together etc. But it's about a million times slower than normal data processing.
      - betterunix 14y ago
        General computation on encrypted data was discovered by a graduate student at Stanford named Craig Gentry. He now works for IBM, and has been pretty active in that field, along with a handful of other experts. It's very slow, sure, but over the past 4 years speeds have increased to the point where it is reasonable to start talking about practical applications. It is also worth pointing out that systems supported restricted classes of functions preceded Gentry's work. If you are willing to limit yourself to NC1 functions (i.e. those that can be represented as boolean circuits with depth that is the logarithm of the input size), you can use oblivious transfer or the SYY construction (cannot recall their names off the top of my head). If you only need products in certain groups, you can use ElGamal. If you only need an XOR, you can use the Goldwasser-Micali system. Also, there are garbled circuits, which date back to the 1980s. That is a somewhat different notion of computing on encrypted data, since it requires messages to be sent every time the computation is performed. Garbled circuits are substantially faster than FHE right now, although that may change due to FHE's low communication overhead and the rate at which FHE speeds have been improving. Also in this category are multiparty protocols that use arithmetic circuits, which have seen at least one major real-world use: http://fc09.ifca.ai/papers/15_Secure_MPC_goes_live.pdf http://fc09.ifca.ai/papers/15_Secure_MPC_goes_live.pdf
    - conformal 14y ago
  - tzury 14y ago
    We changed our logo. It no longer looks like a vagina https://blog.cyphertite.com/we-changed-our-logo-it-no-longer-looks-like-a-vagina/ https://blog.cyphertite.com/we-changed-our-logo-it-no-longer... That was an hilarious blog title I've encountered for a long time.
- conformal 14y ago
  that's a pretty definite statement that is definitely false. Conformal Systems LLC has no government contracts at this time.
jolan 14y ago
Conformal is primarily a group of former OpenBSD developers.
lost_name 14y ago
https://www.conformal.com/about-us.html https://www.conformal.com/about-us.html Seems to me like it fits in with what else they do.
jcr 14y ago
Conformal is a startup run by a group of former OpenBSD developers including Marco Peereboom (marco@), Owain Ainsworth (oga@), and others. I've met most of them in person, and I've interacted with them on mailing lists for nearly a decade and a half. They are all good people in my book, and they're very talented. On many occasions, both Marco and Owain have helped me debug problems while adding support for new hardware. I can think of one time when Marco asked for both root and serial access to one of my boxes so he could debug a HBA. I gave him root on the system, root on the serial concentrator box, and root access to the network enabled power strip for hard reboots. Yes, I trust him.
- Surio 14y ago
  Very nice answer. Qualified, thoughtful with no loose ends.
  - jcr 14y ago
    Heck, he knows I can't outrun him, and he knows where I live, so it had better be a nice answer. ;-)
    - Surio 14y ago
      Ha! If only it were only that ;-). (I know you are being faceticious). No, really it was a genuinely thoughtful and respectful description of the person. I only hope that at my own level, and at some point in life, people I am associated with think of me in (somewhat) similar terms ;-)
- conformal 14y ago
  hi there jcr, this is jy-p, thanks for the kind words :)
  - jcr 14y ago
    You're welcome jy-p. I just realized that I left out something important that nearly everyone on HN could relate with and appreciate. Conformal is comprised of some of the same people who helped to give the world OpenSSH which absolutely everybody uses. Of course they don't get all the credit, but they helped, and it probably wouldn't take too long to search the commit logs and find some of your names committing/OK'ing patches. Knowingly or not, anyone running OpenSSH is already trusting the work of the people at Conformal.
conformal 14y ago
we have more bandwidth than we use and we donate this bandwidth to the tor project. we are fans of the tor project and care about protecting personal privacy and individual expression. we have 3 nodes running up to 4 processes on each node. each node is capable of pushing out up to ~600 Mbps with 4 processes on it. the nodes run bitrig, a fork of openbsd that several of our developers hack on. EDIT: i just read the linked article and i see why we are listed - we have our own ASN and run openbgpd from our colo space.
- malandrew 14y ago
  Can you guys write up about your exit nodes, like how they are setup and whatnot? Maybe even post images of the software setup on the machines. This would make it easier for others to run an exit node, since they wouldn't have to worry about setting anything up.

by Wilya 14y ago

EwanG 14y ago

Government contractor. Feel free to guess what they're being paid to do...

jazzyb 14y ago
Everything I can find on them indicates that they are simply an open source company who takes privacy and data security very seriously [1] -- which would explain why they are running tor exit nodes. What information do you have that they are government contractors? [1] https://www.conformal.com/ https://www.conformal.com/
jcr 14y ago
Casting doubts and aspersions when you don't know anything and haven't bothered to read up on what they do is extremely unfair. They do some very impressive cryptographic deduplication. Essentially it's a method to deduplicate already encrypted data reliably. If you don't realize how amazingly cool that is, you need to do some reading. It's a really tough problem, and it solves a major pain point for anyone with large volumes of encrypted data (i.e. governments). EDIT: Links https://www.conformal.com/ https://www.conformal.com/ https://www.cyphertite.com/ https://www.cyphertite.com/
- JonnieCache 14y ago
  "cryptographic deduplication" How is that even possible? Surely a custom crypto scheme is needed?
  - jcr 14y ago
    I wish I could tell you. I understand some of the parts involved but do not understand the method completely, so it's best for everyone that I don't speculate blindly. The Ciphertite web site is a far better reference than I could ever be. I'll go to the top of the building and light up the tptacek bat signal.
  - sp332 14y ago
    Yes, it's possible with certain kinds of algorithms. A while back IBM found a way to do general computation on data without decrypting it, like adding encrypted dollar amounts together etc. But it's about a million times slower than normal data processing.
    - betterunix 14y ago
      General computation on encrypted data was discovered by a graduate student at Stanford named Craig Gentry. He now works for IBM, and has been pretty active in that field, along with a handful of other experts. It's very slow, sure, but over the past 4 years speeds have increased to the point where it is reasonable to start talking about practical applications. It is also worth pointing out that systems supported restricted classes of functions preceded Gentry's work. If you are willing to limit yourself to NC1 functions (i.e. those that can be represented as boolean circuits with depth that is the logarithm of the input size), you can use oblivious transfer or the SYY construction (cannot recall their names off the top of my head). If you only need products in certain groups, you can use ElGamal. If you only need an XOR, you can use the Goldwasser-Micali system. Also, there are garbled circuits, which date back to the 1980s. That is a somewhat different notion of computing on encrypted data, since it requires messages to be sent every time the computation is performed. Garbled circuits are substantially faster than FHE right now, although that may change due to FHE's low communication overhead and the rate at which FHE speeds have been improving. Also in this category are multiparty protocols that use arithmetic circuits, which have seen at least one major real-world use: http://fc09.ifca.ai/papers/15_Secure_MPC_goes_live.pdf http://fc09.ifca.ai/papers/15_Secure_MPC_goes_live.pdf
  - conformal 14y ago
- tzury 14y ago
  We changed our logo. It no longer looks like a vagina https://blog.cyphertite.com/we-changed-our-logo-it-no-longer-looks-like-a-vagina/ https://blog.cyphertite.com/we-changed-our-logo-it-no-longer... That was an hilarious blog title I've encountered for a long time.
conformal 14y ago
that's a pretty definite statement that is definitely false. Conformal Systems LLC has no government contracts at this time.

jolan 14y ago

Conformal is primarily a group of former OpenBSD developers.

lost_name 14y ago

https://www.conformal.com/about-us.html https://www.conformal.com/about-us.html Seems to me like it fits in with what else they do.

jcr 14y ago

Conformal is a startup run by a group of former OpenBSD developers including Marco Peereboom (marco@), Owain Ainsworth (oga@), and others. I've met most of them in person, and I've interacted with them on mailing lists for nearly a decade and a half. They are all good people in my book, and they're very talented. On many occasions, both Marco and Owain have helped me debug problems while adding support for new hardware. I can think of one time when Marco asked for both root and serial access to one of my boxes so he could debug a HBA. I gave him root on the system, root on the serial concentrator box, and root access to the network enabled power strip for hard reboots. Yes, I trust him.

Surio 14y ago
Very nice answer. Qualified, thoughtful with no loose ends.
- jcr 14y ago
  Heck, he knows I can't outrun him, and he knows where I live, so it had better be a nice answer. ;-)
  - Surio 14y ago
    Ha! If only it were only that ;-). (I know you are being faceticious). No, really it was a genuinely thoughtful and respectful description of the person. I only hope that at my own level, and at some point in life, people I am associated with think of me in (somewhat) similar terms ;-)
conformal 14y ago
hi there jcr, this is jy-p, thanks for the kind words :)
- jcr 14y ago
  You're welcome jy-p. I just realized that I left out something important that nearly everyone on HN could relate with and appreciate. Conformal is comprised of some of the same people who helped to give the world OpenSSH which absolutely everybody uses. Of course they don't get all the credit, but they helped, and it probably wouldn't take too long to search the commit logs and find some of your names committing/OK'ing patches. Knowingly or not, anyone running OpenSSH is already trusting the work of the people at Conformal.

conformal 14y ago

we have more bandwidth than we use and we donate this bandwidth to the tor project. we are fans of the tor project and care about protecting personal privacy and individual expression. we have 3 nodes running up to 4 processes on each node. each node is capable of pushing out up to ~600 Mbps with 4 processes on it. the nodes run bitrig, a fork of openbsd that several of our developers hack on. EDIT: i just read the linked article and i see why we are listed - we have our own ASN and run openbgpd from our colo space.

malandrew 14y ago
Can you guys write up about your exit nodes, like how they are setup and whatnot? Maybe even post images of the software setup on the machines. This would make it easier for others to run an exit node, since they wouldn't have to worry about setting anything up.