3 ms·

This is a brilliant suggestion actually. If I ever make a crypto messaging system I'll surely bake in a module that sends bogus messages to random nodes in the

This is a brilliant suggestion actually. If I ever make a crypto messaging system I'll surely bake in a module that sends bogus messages to random nodes in the system. Then any sorts of metadata are useless to evil people.

cbr 13y ago
Filtering out the random noise wouldn't be very hard.
- guard-of-terra 13y ago
  How are you going to figure out whether it's random encrypted noise or an unrandom encrypted message?
  - varjag 13y ago
    White noise has distinct statistical properties that allow to mitigate it's effect on detection of meaningful signal. E.g. filtering white noise from audio stream is a very common operation. Sending packets to all contacts at random is a form of introducing white noise, vulnerable to signal processing techniques known and used from 1950s.
    - Karunamon 13y ago
      I thought the point of encryption was that the end result is supposed to be indistinguishable from noise.
      - varjag 13y ago
        We're talking about metadata here (who talks to whom), not the content of messages.
    - guard-of-terra 13y ago
      Your noise can be non-white. Your noise can favour some of your peers, some time of day, messages can be elaborately routed around in circles. You can even make clients download new message distribution patterns each day. Genetically enchanced patterns.
      - varjag 13y ago
        If your noise is algorithmic, and even worse, the algorithm is known (as would be the case of an open source project), it makes your protection fairly vulnerable. E.g. in case of biasing the method towards time of day, the attacker likely can filter it out using fairly basic statistical methods. Generally any kind of pseudo-randomization would render the method vulnerable; at least to the caliber of mathematicians which work at NSA. If there's messaging system's own statistical analyzer, that learns your communication patterns and adjusts false messaging to rectify that, it could work. However the other messaging clients have to play along, which makes it fairly challenging problem.
surrealize 13y ago
Pond does something along those lines: > Pond doesn't transmit messages as needed because that would disclose when messages were being sent. Instead it transmits messages at random, whether there's anything to be sent or not. When there's a real message pending, it has to wait until the next randomly timed slot, which could be many minutes. https://pond.imperialviolet.org/ https://pond.imperialviolet.org/

cbr 13y ago

Filtering out the random noise wouldn't be very hard.

guard-of-terra 13y ago
How are you going to figure out whether it's random encrypted noise or an unrandom encrypted message?
- varjag 13y ago
  White noise has distinct statistical properties that allow to mitigate it's effect on detection of meaningful signal. E.g. filtering white noise from audio stream is a very common operation. Sending packets to all contacts at random is a form of introducing white noise, vulnerable to signal processing techniques known and used from 1950s.
  - Karunamon 13y ago
    I thought the point of encryption was that the end result is supposed to be indistinguishable from noise.
    - varjag 13y ago
      We're talking about metadata here (who talks to whom), not the content of messages.
  - guard-of-terra 13y ago
    Your noise can be non-white. Your noise can favour some of your peers, some time of day, messages can be elaborately routed around in circles. You can even make clients download new message distribution patterns each day. Genetically enchanced patterns.
    - varjag 13y ago
      If your noise is algorithmic, and even worse, the algorithm is known (as would be the case of an open source project), it makes your protection fairly vulnerable. E.g. in case of biasing the method towards time of day, the attacker likely can filter it out using fairly basic statistical methods. Generally any kind of pseudo-randomization would render the method vulnerable; at least to the caliber of mathematicians which work at NSA. If there's messaging system's own statistical analyzer, that learns your communication patterns and adjusts false messaging to rectify that, it could work. However the other messaging clients have to play along, which makes it fairly challenging problem.

surrealize 13y ago

Pond does something along those lines: > Pond doesn't transmit messages as needed because that would disclose when messages were being sent. Instead it transmits messages at random, whether there's anything to be sent or not. When there's a real message pending, it has to wait until the next randomly timed slot, which could be many minutes. https://pond.imperialviolet.org/ https://pond.imperialviolet.org/