7 ms·

Alternative Internet

357 points by selvan 13y ago

Afforess 13y ago
I've always been curious about I2P. I2P is more decentralized than TOR, as TOR has the weakness of needing exit nodes, and today it is very hard to set one up yourself (and not be arrested/shutdown). However, I don't know enough about network/protocol security to even be able to tell if I2P is legitimately secure, and I haven't seen any scientific analysis of it. Anyone else aware of such an analysis?
- gw 13y ago
  Well the reliance on exit nodes isn't really what separates Tor from I2P; the latter requires exit nodes for accessing publicly-facing servers as well. Neither requires them for accessing servers that are internal to their network. This is sometimes confused because Tor puts more emphasis on outproxying, and I2P on inproxying, but both networks are capable of both activities.
- cmpctyd 13y ago
  I2P has been around since 2003, same time period as Tor's beginnings. You can read academic review here which may help answer your question: http://www.i2p2.de/papers.html http://www.i2p2.de/papers.html
rmrfrmrf 13y ago
Since I know the skill gap on HN is pretty wide, I just wanted to chime in to say that if this is some kind of counter-intelligence measure, it's not really going to work considering that the US government is collecting information at layer 1 (i.e. directly gathering information from the wire). A true "alternative internet" would, at this point, require its own infrastructure due to the routers and switches of the Internet using the TCP/IP stack. (assuming that an alternative internet would be a variation on the IP protocol). The entire issue with the government surveillance of today is that they're (allegedly) storing all data, even the encrypted data, and holding it to either brute-force crack, waiting until whichever cipher/protocol gets broken, or waiting until computing power is abundant enough to crack the encryption-du-jour in a reasonable amount of time. This is why ideas like Raspberry Pis on balloons have been proposed as true "alternative" internets. Not to get all tin-foily, but I would assume that any undertaking that ambitious would have government agents working from the inside. If you're transmitting any data that could be illegal, your safest bet is to use some kind of encryption that would take longer than the statute of limitations for whichever crime you're committing to break (you'd probably also have to factor Moore's law into your calculation and pray that quantum computing doesn't become viable in the next x years).
- ohwp 13y ago
  If you want to transmit illegal data the best option is to take the route where the chance of intersection is minimal. And then Internet is not an option. That's also why I think surveillance programs won't catch the real bad guys. Take a look at how long it took to get Osama.
- kimlelly 13y ago
  What if the encrypted data streams that flow over decentralized p2p networks like RetroShare (http://retroshare.sourceforge.net/ http://retroshare.sourceforge.net/) would hold up and not be "decryptable" for the time we need to "undo" the mass-surveillance apparatus? I mean, encryption could still be the one tool needed just to get activism going enough to beat the bastards (I mean, without being sabotaged, disinformed, killed, arrested, etc.). Snowden's statement regarding encryption was: "Encryption works. Unfortunately, endpoint security is still weak."
  - cmpctyd 13y ago
    Any cryptographic application could be vulnerable and not "hold up". It is wrong and dangerous to suggest that any program or tool is absolute. A court case in Germany not long ago involving RetroShare and its f2f nature did not end well[0]. [0] http://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-file-sharing-ruled-illegal-by-german-court-121123/ http://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-file-sharing-ruled-illegal...
    - mtgx 13y ago
      I think it actually did end well. The guy was acquitted last I heard. I don't think their changes held up in Court.
  - baddox 13y ago
    > for the time we need to "undo" the mass-surveillance apparatus You mean the apparatus that the vast majority of Americans are probably unaware of, and the vast majority of aware Americans are probably proponents of? What makes you think there will ever be an undoing on any reasonable time scale?
jpalomaki 13y ago
I think one problem with these initiatives is that money is usually not involved. When things like bandwidth are free, the demand tends to be higher than supply. Limited bandwidth then limits the possibilities. I'm not proposing a system where you would pay to "TOR Ltd" for their services. Instead the "economy" should be network based, with no single entity controlling it. If I wanted to send stuff through the network I could say that I'm willing to pay x coins for this. The network would figure out cost efficient route and the participating nodes would get the payment. If I wanted to earn money (or credits), I could do so by putting my machine as part of the network and offering my network capacity to others. If thinks would work out well, there would be people earning some money by running nodes on the network. Just like they are people investing in Bitcoin mining rigs.
- nhaehnle 13y ago
  At least right now, the problem is that the payments themselves might undermine what the system is set up to do, because the payments might be traceable. There are proposals for truly anonymous and decentralized digital currencies (ZeroCoin comes to mind). However, they are not exactly practical because their overhead is quite high.
cpfohl 13y ago
Suggested Pull: @user: NSA --- +++ In order to comply with NSA Directive [REDACTED] and FISA Court Order [Classified], anyone using these technologies will be required to install LiterallySpyingOnYou.exe or an equivalent binary for your OS of choice. Failure to comply will result in <strikeout>your immediate offshore imprisonment</strikeout> a fair and impartial trial by your peers. +++
znowi 13y ago
Most (if not all) of the "Currency Clones" listed are scams. Be careful. Generally, the only coins you want to pay attention to are BTC and LTC. Here you can watch the steady stream of altcoins and their scam practices. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=67.0 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=67.0
- rossj 13y ago
  I'd like to keep them for completeness sake, but will try and make it more obvious that they should be avoided.
  - tlrobinson 13y ago
    If you want a "complete" list you're missing a lot of other scams: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=134179.0 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=134179.0 I'd suggest only including the "major" ones listed on that page. The rest are trivial knockoffs.
    - rossj 13y ago
      Okay. At least fourth person who's told me now. Will remove the non-major ones.
- GigabyteCoin 13y ago
  FYI: Namecoin is not a currency clone.
abdullahkhalids 13y ago
Why is Tor not on the list?
- rossj 13y ago
  Because it was so obvious I missed it. I'll add it now.
  - stevenleeg 13y ago
    Also cjdns[0] is a good one to add! [0] http://cjdns.info/ http://cjdns.info/
wfn 13y ago
Haven't heard of Drogulus before, sounds interesting. Anything that implements a Kademlia-like decentralized key-value datastore (basically, a DHT) gets my curiosity. Kademlia is a system/protocol how to implement a DHT and how to perform searches on it. The idea is that all network nodes are identified by a (traditionally, 160bit I think) hash. If you want to implement a P2P filesharing network based on Kademlia (like Gnutella), you hash each file to a bitstring of the same hash length. Now, when you want to reach a particular node (and you have its hash but not its IP), you can do an efficient search by traversing the nodes in the direction of the target nodes. For direction, a distance metric is needed in this case. The distance between two given hashes is simply the result of [hash1] xor [hash2]. This is rather simple and ingenious: you get a value representing the amount of bits by which the two hashes differ. Hence you have a way to measure distances in the hashspace. Therefore, when trying to locate a node, you don't need to do an exhaustive exponential "ping all my neighbours and get all their neighbours" search; one could say that you are able to follow a vector in the hashspace. edit: by which I simply mean, the most simplistic way to achieve this would be - pick a node from pool/neighbourhood with id/hash closest to target; get id/hash from its pool closest to target; continue until reaching a critical distance within which nodes will be responsible for holding the desired key->value pair. (I'm sure the actual algo will need to be somewhat more complex, as it's very easy to run into dead-ends this way, and so on.) When there are files involved, nodes whose hashes are close enough to a given key (which is a hash of a file, more or less) are responsible for storing those key->value pairs ('value' differs on implementation, but basically it's another hash pointing to the node which actually has the file in question, if I'm not mixing things up; the whole thing is more complex, with a way to search using (hashed) keywords, etc.) Hence one can implement an efficient distributed search algorithm, where you focus on the hash-neighbourhood of a particular file hash, and get key->value responses from the nodes responsible. This kind of a system has its disadvantages and possible points of attack. See the wiki article on Kademlia. [1] Probably the most well known type of attack is Sybil attack: [2] In a Sybil attack the attacker subverts the reputation system of a peer-to-peer network by creating a large number of pseudonymous identities, using them to gain a disproportionately large influence. A reputation system's vulnerability to a Sybil attack depends on how cheaply identities can be generated, the degree to which the reputation system accepts inputs from entities that do not have a chain of trust linking them to a trusted entity, and whether the reputation system treats all entities identically. Now, Drogulus seems to propose at least a partial way around this, though I suppose it'd still be possible to actually flood/populate the hashspace with garbage(?): [3] The drogulus has three core components: * A distributed hash table (DHT) that provides the data store and replaces DNS. * Trust and identity enforced via cryptographic signing of digital assets. * Logos [...] (say "log-oss"), a simple implementation of a Lisp like programming language for asynchronously working with data stored in the DHT. The drogulus implements a version of the Kademlia distributed hash table. The innovation the drogulus brings is that keys and values (items) are signed in such a way that their provenance can be proven and content shown to be intact. Furthermore, users cannot interfere with each other's items stored within the distributed hash table unless they have access to the same private key. Items are self contained and any that do not pass the cryptographic checks are ignored and nodes on the network that attempt to propagate such values are punished by being blocked by their peers. I don't have time to actually delve into this now, but the next paragraph piqued my curiosity even more - if anyone is into this, would be interesting to hear some comment :) Logos programs are themselves values stored within the DHT, run in asynchronous "ensembles" that arrive at a consensus and process other items of data stored within the DHT. They are sandboxed and intentionally limited in terms of time (how long a computation may last) and space (how much memory may be used). Since Logos programs are also data there is a mind-bending side effect that Logos programs can rewrite other Logos programs in order to extend the Logos programming language itself. This is an important property: users have the autonomy to grow the Logos programming language to suite their own needs. So, something something - Kademlia-like crypto-signed homoiconic datastore - something. Hmm. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kademlia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kademlia [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sybil_attack http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sybil_attack [3]: http://drogul.us/how.html http://drogul.us/how.html
jpdoctor 13y ago
Something that seems to be missing from the current world: A P2P noise network. A sufficient amount of encrypted noise emitting from many nodes makes the task of capturing and decoding everything quite a bit more challenging for an intrusive regime. Effectively, this is steganography: Everything should be encoded in cat pictures with an accompanying text of hot keywords.
- cmpctyd 13y ago
  This is already done in a variety of networks for plausible deniability. https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/doc/TorFAQ#DoIgetbetteranonymityifIrunarelay https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/doc/TorFAQ#DoI... I2P does similar in making every user an internal participant. A network wholly dedicated to pushing redundant/null traffic is not a thing, AFAIK. Tor, I2P and other networks I'm sure, methods of doing things are more "useful" by providing bandwidth whilst also giving cover traffic.
  - jpdoctor 13y ago
    Sorry, I don't see where they are generating random noise or keywords from your link. The link seems to be discussing the merits of a relay of existing traffic.
    - cmpctyd 13y ago
      Relaying 'existing' traffic is the "random noise". It provides obscure, 'random' traffic between nodes but serves a purpose by providing bandwidth. The content of this traffic could easily be a useless packet, IRC, HTTP, etc.
- antocv 13y ago
  Ive been thinking about this and how to implement it, my conclusion was that NSA has the resources to filter out noise, especially seemingly random communication, as they already possess the social graph and have pretty good idea of who talks to whom and when. If suddenly a browser extension or app started sending "noise", to whom will it send it? A network? Where to get the list of IPs to spam? Just randomly? Just randomly is detectable! Thats easily filtered out - just exclude the network from the important data they tap. What if you randomly send a bunch of cat pictures and random noise to people of your contact list? This is called spam and receiving such, is not nice, as we can filter it on the receiving end, so can NSA filter it from their important calculations. But then you might think, lets send noise randomly and in the random noise let us communicate... meh, basically what a "P2P noise network" would do is increase the hassle and usability of computing systems for everyone involved but wouldnt really offer privacy for us. When you kind of begin to make it less random, then you basically introduce plausible deniability and onions and begin solving problems that people are already working on and who need your help there more than "p2p noise network", then youre back to "lets make a good usable p2p anonymous/deniable communication system that can withstand NSA as advesary". Still, it is an interesting idea, how to flood NSAs/FRA/GHCQs systems? Can we make a browser extension thats easy to use that would randomly GET pages from your history while you are actually away from computer - generating false content and increasing bandwidth usage, or a configurable spider to follow links/pages or even friends streams of choice? Would you use spammers techniques of markov chains to post random crap on open systems? Meh, thats still just an inconvenience for NSA. What seems to be really important is who talks to who then how do you get in contact with strangers on the internet without NSA knowing? How would you know the stranger youre talking to isnt a cover agent?
Interception 13y ago
Why is Project Byzantium not on the list when FNF is. These guys work on a very advanced mesh network, and would love community collaboration & support. project-byzantium.org
- rossj 13y ago
  Because nobody sent a pull request? Have added it.
GigabyteCoin 13y ago
Anybody who hasn't taken a look at Namecoin in the last month or so should take another peek. A GUI client with name registration platform came out recently and it's quite the change from the command-line-only options we have had available for the last few years.
cmpctyd 13y ago
I2PBote[0]: distributed, p2p, encrypted, anonymous (internal) email. It uses I2P's DHT. [0] http://i2pbote.i2p.us/ http://i2pbote.i2p.us/ (or http://i2pbote.i2p http://i2pbote.i2p from inside I2P)
mtgx 13y ago
What about the Phantom Protocol? Is it abandoned? Not feasible? I haven't heard much about it in the past few years: https://code.google.com/p/phantom/ https://code.google.com/p/phantom/
- rossj 13y ago
  I've added it because the homepage has links to some interesting papers.
  - mtgx 13y ago
    I know, that's why I've been such a fan of it. In theory it sounds almost perfect, but I haven't seen anyone put it into practice yet.
nkoren 13y ago
Firecloud is an architecture currently being explored within Mozilla that should be added to this list: http://literaci.es/firecloud http://literaci.es/firecloud
- rossj 13y ago
  Yeah, I'm just waiting on Vinay to give me a full list of what's involved.
synctext 13y ago
Some time ago I wrote a requirements document for the "Alternative Internet", published by Internet Society Journal: http://www.internetsociety.org/articles/moving-toward-censorship-free-internet http://www.internetsociety.org/articles/moving-toward-censor... This was discussed within the IETF and slowly moving forward. Key point is: too many fragmented single-person projects exist. No structured approach with documentation, unit testing and related work tracking.
icarus127 13y ago
Does anyone know anything about Project Meshnet? http://projectmeshnet.org/ http://projectmeshnet.org/ I discovered it a few days ago and it sounds promising but some of the cjdns whitepaper was over my head. Apparently there are a few hundred people participating in their alternative internet on a daily basis already.
everyone 13y ago
Oooohh!! Hey I will have a look at some of these myself. But what would some of ye with experience recommend for... irc/sharing some files with a network of friends only? I'd like to be able to have private chats with only one or multiple people aswell. cheers!
praguebakerr 13y ago
Makes sense to have good decentralized tools but what about endpoint security ? We have to suppose that average OS does have many 0day vulnerabilities so it's easy to get all important data from your computer. To have good firewall & IDS, automatic analysis, secured kernel - that's was should concern you people. And that's not all - we cannot be sure if hardware itself does not send any unique IDs to vendors... or network card can mark some packet by unique signature and agency can capture those packet as they pass through internet. I remember i read that few years ago : http://www.slideshare.net/the_netlocksmith/defcon-2012-hardware-backdooring-slides http://www.slideshare.net/the_netlocksmith/defcon-2012-hardw... I would bet there is many backdoors hidden in hardware.
mrcactu5 13y ago
for the uninitated, what does he mean decentralization?
batgaijin 13y ago
There's also Hyperboria, which is based on cjdns nodes. https://github.com/dansup/Hyperboria https://github.com/dansup/Hyperboria
apgwoz 13y ago
It's things like these that are illegal in a SOPA[0] nation [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Online_Piracy_Act#Autocratic_countries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Online_Piracy_Act#Autocra...

357 points by selvan 13y ago

I've always been curious about I2P. I2P is more decentralized than TOR, as TOR has the weakness of needing exit nodes, and today it is very hard to set one up yourself (and not be arrested/shutdown). However, I don't know enough about network/protocol security to even be able to tell if I2P is legitimately secure, and I haven't seen any scientific analysis of it. Anyone else aware of such an analysis?

gw 13y ago
Well the reliance on exit nodes isn't really what separates Tor from I2P; the latter requires exit nodes for accessing publicly-facing servers as well. Neither requires them for accessing servers that are internal to their network. This is sometimes confused because Tor puts more emphasis on outproxying, and I2P on inproxying, but both networks are capable of both activities.
cmpctyd 13y ago
I2P has been around since 2003, same time period as Tor's beginnings. You can read academic review here which may help answer your question: http://www.i2p2.de/papers.html http://www.i2p2.de/papers.html

rmrfrmrf 13y ago

Since I know the skill gap on HN is pretty wide, I just wanted to chime in to say that if this is some kind of counter-intelligence measure, it's not really going to work considering that the US government is collecting information at layer 1 (i.e. directly gathering information from the wire). A true "alternative internet" would, at this point, require its own infrastructure due to the routers and switches of the Internet using the TCP/IP stack. (assuming that an alternative internet would be a variation on the IP protocol). The entire issue with the government surveillance of today is that they're (allegedly) storing all data, even the encrypted data, and holding it to either brute-force crack, waiting until whichever cipher/protocol gets broken, or waiting until computing power is abundant enough to crack the encryption-du-jour in a reasonable amount of time. This is why ideas like Raspberry Pis on balloons have been proposed as true "alternative" internets. Not to get all tin-foily, but I would assume that any undertaking that ambitious would have government agents working from the inside. If you're transmitting any data that could be illegal, your safest bet is to use some kind of encryption that would take longer than the statute of limitations for whichever crime you're committing to break (you'd probably also have to factor Moore's law into your calculation and pray that quantum computing doesn't become viable in the next x years).

ohwp 13y ago
If you want to transmit illegal data the best option is to take the route where the chance of intersection is minimal. And then Internet is not an option. That's also why I think surveillance programs won't catch the real bad guys. Take a look at how long it took to get Osama.
kimlelly 13y ago
What if the encrypted data streams that flow over decentralized p2p networks like RetroShare (http://retroshare.sourceforge.net/ http://retroshare.sourceforge.net/) would hold up and not be "decryptable" for the time we need to "undo" the mass-surveillance apparatus? I mean, encryption could still be the one tool needed just to get activism going enough to beat the bastards (I mean, without being sabotaged, disinformed, killed, arrested, etc.). Snowden's statement regarding encryption was: "Encryption works. Unfortunately, endpoint security is still weak."
- cmpctyd 13y ago
  Any cryptographic application could be vulnerable and not "hold up". It is wrong and dangerous to suggest that any program or tool is absolute. A court case in Germany not long ago involving RetroShare and its f2f nature did not end well[0]. [0] http://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-file-sharing-ruled-illegal-by-german-court-121123/ http://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-file-sharing-ruled-illegal...
  - mtgx 13y ago
    I think it actually did end well. The guy was acquitted last I heard. I don't think their changes held up in Court.
- baddox 13y ago
  > for the time we need to "undo" the mass-surveillance apparatus You mean the apparatus that the vast majority of Americans are probably unaware of, and the vast majority of aware Americans are probably proponents of? What makes you think there will ever be an undoing on any reasonable time scale?

jpalomaki 13y ago

I think one problem with these initiatives is that money is usually not involved. When things like bandwidth are free, the demand tends to be higher than supply. Limited bandwidth then limits the possibilities. I'm not proposing a system where you would pay to "TOR Ltd" for their services. Instead the "economy" should be network based, with no single entity controlling it. If I wanted to send stuff through the network I could say that I'm willing to pay x coins for this. The network would figure out cost efficient route and the participating nodes would get the payment. If I wanted to earn money (or credits), I could do so by putting my machine as part of the network and offering my network capacity to others. If thinks would work out well, there would be people earning some money by running nodes on the network. Just like they are people investing in Bitcoin mining rigs.

nhaehnle 13y ago
At least right now, the problem is that the payments themselves might undermine what the system is set up to do, because the payments might be traceable. There are proposals for truly anonymous and decentralized digital currencies (ZeroCoin comes to mind). However, they are not exactly practical because their overhead is quite high.

cpfohl 13y ago

Suggested Pull: @user: NSA --- +++ In order to comply with NSA Directive [REDACTED] and FISA Court Order [Classified], anyone using these technologies will be required to install LiterallySpyingOnYou.exe or an equivalent binary for your OS of choice. Failure to comply will result in <strikeout>your immediate offshore imprisonment</strikeout> a fair and impartial trial by your peers. +++

znowi 13y ago

Most (if not all) of the "Currency Clones" listed are scams. Be careful. Generally, the only coins you want to pay attention to are BTC and LTC. Here you can watch the steady stream of altcoins and their scam practices. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=67.0 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=67.0

rossj 13y ago
I'd like to keep them for completeness sake, but will try and make it more obvious that they should be avoided.
- tlrobinson 13y ago
  If you want a "complete" list you're missing a lot of other scams: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=134179.0 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=134179.0 I'd suggest only including the "major" ones listed on that page. The rest are trivial knockoffs.
  - rossj 13y ago
    Okay. At least fourth person who's told me now. Will remove the non-major ones.
GigabyteCoin 13y ago
FYI: Namecoin is not a currency clone.

abdullahkhalids 13y ago

Why is Tor not on the list?

rossj 13y ago
Because it was so obvious I missed it. I'll add it now.
- stevenleeg 13y ago
  Also cjdns[0] is a good one to add! [0] http://cjdns.info/ http://cjdns.info/

wfn 13y ago

Haven't heard of Drogulus before, sounds interesting. Anything that implements a Kademlia-like decentralized key-value datastore (basically, a DHT) gets my curiosity. Kademlia is a system/protocol how to implement a DHT and how to perform searches on it. The idea is that all network nodes are identified by a (traditionally, 160bit I think) hash. If you want to implement a P2P filesharing network based on Kademlia (like Gnutella), you hash each file to a bitstring of the same hash length. Now, when you want to reach a particular node (and you have its hash but not its IP), you can do an efficient search by traversing the nodes in the direction of the target nodes. For direction, a distance metric is needed in this case. The distance between two given hashes is simply the result of [hash1] xor [hash2]. This is rather simple and ingenious: you get a value representing the amount of bits by which the two hashes differ. Hence you have a way to measure distances in the hashspace. Therefore, when trying to locate a node, you don't need to do an exhaustive exponential "ping all my neighbours and get all their neighbours" search; one could say that you are able to follow a vector in the hashspace. edit: by which I simply mean, the most simplistic way to achieve this would be - pick a node from pool/neighbourhood with id/hash closest to target; get id/hash from its pool closest to target; continue until reaching a critical distance within which nodes will be responsible for holding the desired key->value pair. (I'm sure the actual algo will need to be somewhat more complex, as it's very easy to run into dead-ends this way, and so on.) When there are files involved, nodes whose hashes are close enough to a given key (which is a hash of a file, more or less) are responsible for storing those key->value pairs ('value' differs on implementation, but basically it's another hash pointing to the node which actually has the file in question, if I'm not mixing things up; the whole thing is more complex, with a way to search using (hashed) keywords, etc.) Hence one can implement an efficient distributed search algorithm, where you focus on the hash-neighbourhood of a particular file hash, and get key->value responses from the nodes responsible. This kind of a system has its disadvantages and possible points of attack. See the wiki article on Kademlia. [1] Probably the most well known type of attack is Sybil attack: [2] In a Sybil attack the attacker subverts the reputation system of a peer-to-peer network by creating a large number of pseudonymous identities, using them to gain a disproportionately large influence. A reputation system's vulnerability to a Sybil attack depends on how cheaply identities can be generated, the degree to which the reputation system accepts inputs from entities that do not have a chain of trust linking them to a trusted entity, and whether the reputation system treats all entities identically. Now, Drogulus seems to propose at least a partial way around this, though I suppose it'd still be possible to actually flood/populate the hashspace with garbage(?): [3] The drogulus has three core components: * A distributed hash table (DHT) that provides the data store and replaces DNS. * Trust and identity enforced via cryptographic signing of digital assets. * Logos [...] (say "log-oss"), a simple implementation of a Lisp like programming language for asynchronously working with data stored in the DHT. The drogulus implements a version of the Kademlia distributed hash table. The innovation the drogulus brings is that keys and values (items) are signed in such a way that their provenance can be proven and content shown to be intact. Furthermore, users cannot interfere with each other's items stored within the distributed hash table unless they have access to the same private key. Items are self contained and any that do not pass the cryptographic checks are ignored and nodes on the network that attempt to propagate such values are punished by being blocked by their peers. I don't have time to actually delve into this now, but the next paragraph piqued my curiosity even more - if anyone is into this, would be interesting to hear some comment :) Logos programs are themselves values stored within the DHT, run in asynchronous "ensembles" that arrive at a consensus and process other items of data stored within the DHT. They are sandboxed and intentionally limited in terms of time (how long a computation may last) and space (how much memory may be used). Since Logos programs are also data there is a mind-bending side effect that Logos programs can rewrite other Logos programs in order to extend the Logos programming language itself. This is an important property: users have the autonomy to grow the Logos programming language to suite their own needs. So, something something - Kademlia-like crypto-signed homoiconic datastore - something. Hmm. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kademlia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kademlia [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sybil_attack http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sybil_attack [3]: http://drogul.us/how.html http://drogul.us/how.html

jpdoctor 13y ago

Something that seems to be missing from the current world: A P2P noise network. A sufficient amount of encrypted noise emitting from many nodes makes the task of capturing and decoding everything quite a bit more challenging for an intrusive regime. Effectively, this is steganography: Everything should be encoded in cat pictures with an accompanying text of hot keywords.

cmpctyd 13y ago
This is already done in a variety of networks for plausible deniability. https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/doc/TorFAQ#DoIgetbetteranonymityifIrunarelay https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/doc/TorFAQ#DoI... I2P does similar in making every user an internal participant. A network wholly dedicated to pushing redundant/null traffic is not a thing, AFAIK. Tor, I2P and other networks I'm sure, methods of doing things are more "useful" by providing bandwidth whilst also giving cover traffic.
- jpdoctor 13y ago
  Sorry, I don't see where they are generating random noise or keywords from your link. The link seems to be discussing the merits of a relay of existing traffic.
  - cmpctyd 13y ago
    Relaying 'existing' traffic is the "random noise". It provides obscure, 'random' traffic between nodes but serves a purpose by providing bandwidth. The content of this traffic could easily be a useless packet, IRC, HTTP, etc.
antocv 13y ago
Ive been thinking about this and how to implement it, my conclusion was that NSA has the resources to filter out noise, especially seemingly random communication, as they already possess the social graph and have pretty good idea of who talks to whom and when. If suddenly a browser extension or app started sending "noise", to whom will it send it? A network? Where to get the list of IPs to spam? Just randomly? Just randomly is detectable! Thats easily filtered out - just exclude the network from the important data they tap. What if you randomly send a bunch of cat pictures and random noise to people of your contact list? This is called spam and receiving such, is not nice, as we can filter it on the receiving end, so can NSA filter it from their important calculations. But then you might think, lets send noise randomly and in the random noise let us communicate... meh, basically what a "P2P noise network" would do is increase the hassle and usability of computing systems for everyone involved but wouldnt really offer privacy for us. When you kind of begin to make it less random, then you basically introduce plausible deniability and onions and begin solving problems that people are already working on and who need your help there more than "p2p noise network", then youre back to "lets make a good usable p2p anonymous/deniable communication system that can withstand NSA as advesary". Still, it is an interesting idea, how to flood NSAs/FRA/GHCQs systems? Can we make a browser extension thats easy to use that would randomly GET pages from your history while you are actually away from computer - generating false content and increasing bandwidth usage, or a configurable spider to follow links/pages or even friends streams of choice? Would you use spammers techniques of markov chains to post random crap on open systems? Meh, thats still just an inconvenience for NSA. What seems to be really important is who talks to who then how do you get in contact with strangers on the internet without NSA knowing? How would you know the stranger youre talking to isnt a cover agent?

Interception 13y ago

Why is Project Byzantium not on the list when FNF is. These guys work on a very advanced mesh network, and would love community collaboration & support. project-byzantium.org

rossj 13y ago
Because nobody sent a pull request? Have added it.

GigabyteCoin 13y ago

Anybody who hasn't taken a look at Namecoin in the last month or so should take another peek. A GUI client with name registration platform came out recently and it's quite the change from the command-line-only options we have had available for the last few years.

cmpctyd 13y ago

I2PBote[0]: distributed, p2p, encrypted, anonymous (internal) email. It uses I2P's DHT. [0] http://i2pbote.i2p.us/ http://i2pbote.i2p.us/ (or http://i2pbote.i2p http://i2pbote.i2p from inside I2P)

mtgx 13y ago

What about the Phantom Protocol? Is it abandoned? Not feasible? I haven't heard much about it in the past few years: https://code.google.com/p/phantom/ https://code.google.com/p/phantom/

rossj 13y ago
I've added it because the homepage has links to some interesting papers.
- mtgx 13y ago
  I know, that's why I've been such a fan of it. In theory it sounds almost perfect, but I haven't seen anyone put it into practice yet.

nkoren 13y ago

Firecloud is an architecture currently being explored within Mozilla that should be added to this list: http://literaci.es/firecloud http://literaci.es/firecloud

rossj 13y ago
Yeah, I'm just waiting on Vinay to give me a full list of what's involved.

synctext 13y ago

Some time ago I wrote a requirements document for the "Alternative Internet", published by Internet Society Journal: http://www.internetsociety.org/articles/moving-toward-censorship-free-internet http://www.internetsociety.org/articles/moving-toward-censor... This was discussed within the IETF and slowly moving forward. Key point is: too many fragmented single-person projects exist. No structured approach with documentation, unit testing and related work tracking.

icarus127 13y ago

Does anyone know anything about Project Meshnet? http://projectmeshnet.org/ http://projectmeshnet.org/ I discovered it a few days ago and it sounds promising but some of the cjdns whitepaper was over my head. Apparently there are a few hundred people participating in their alternative internet on a daily basis already.

everyone 13y ago

Oooohh!! Hey I will have a look at some of these myself. But what would some of ye with experience recommend for... irc/sharing some files with a network of friends only? I'd like to be able to have private chats with only one or multiple people aswell. cheers!

praguebakerr 13y ago

Makes sense to have good decentralized tools but what about endpoint security ? We have to suppose that average OS does have many 0day vulnerabilities so it's easy to get all important data from your computer. To have good firewall & IDS, automatic analysis, secured kernel - that's was should concern you people. And that's not all - we cannot be sure if hardware itself does not send any unique IDs to vendors... or network card can mark some packet by unique signature and agency can capture those packet as they pass through internet. I remember i read that few years ago : http://www.slideshare.net/the_netlocksmith/defcon-2012-hardware-backdooring-slides http://www.slideshare.net/the_netlocksmith/defcon-2012-hardw... I would bet there is many backdoors hidden in hardware.

mrcactu5 13y ago

for the uninitated, what does he mean decentralization?

batgaijin 13y ago

There's also Hyperboria, which is based on cjdns nodes. https://github.com/dansup/Hyperboria https://github.com/dansup/Hyperboria

apgwoz 13y ago

It's things like these that are illegal in a SOPA[0] nation [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Online_Piracy_Act#Autocratic_countries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Online_Piracy_Act#Autocra...