3 ms·

There's a difference between "User X browses Wikipedia" and "User X browses Wikipedia articles about topics A, B, C" where topics A, B, C could be anything

There's a difference between "User X browses Wikipedia" and "User X browses Wikipedia articles about topics A, B, C" where topics A, B, C could be anything user X doesn't want people recording them reading about: for instance, various political articles, articles about mental illness, articles about LGBT issues, etc. Fill in the blanks.

schoen 12y ago
I use this example myself quite a bit, although we've also got to figure out the distinguishability from page sizes issue. Different Wikipedia pages are different sizes, and they're still different sizes when they're encrypted. One interesting idea I heard from someone recently is tuning compression so that you target a small number of total page sizes -- rather than padding to expand pages to the same sizes, just don't compress them all quite as well as you could have.
- desdiv 12y ago
  I use this example myself quite a bit, although we've also got to figure out the distinguishability from page sizes issue. Different Wikipedia pages are different sizes, and they're still different sizes when they're encrypted. Both GnuTLS[1] and Nginx[2] have length hiding implemented. But AFAIK OpenSSL doesn't have it yet, so most users are still left in the dark. [1]http://www.manpagez.com/info/gnutls/gnutls-3.2.10/gnutls_180.php#gnutls_005frecord_005fcan_005fuse_005flength_005fhiding http://www.manpagez.com/info/gnutls/gnutls-3.2.10/gnutls_180... [2]http://nulab-inc.com/blog/nulab/securing-nginx/ http://nulab-inc.com/blog/nulab/securing-nginx/
  - schoen 12y ago
    Thanks, I didn't realize that process was so far along! It might still be challenging to get large sides to adopt padding that will increase the amount of traffic they send (of course, the idea of reducing the efficiency of compression has the same net effect). But it's great to know that there's already a tool in place for traffic padding, at least in some implementations.

schoen 12y ago

I use this example myself quite a bit, although we've also got to figure out the distinguishability from page sizes issue. Different Wikipedia pages are different sizes, and they're still different sizes when they're encrypted. One interesting idea I heard from someone recently is tuning compression so that you target a small number of total page sizes -- rather than padding to expand pages to the same sizes, just don't compress them all quite as well as you could have.

desdiv 12y ago
I use this example myself quite a bit, although we've also got to figure out the distinguishability from page sizes issue. Different Wikipedia pages are different sizes, and they're still different sizes when they're encrypted. Both GnuTLS[1] and Nginx[2] have length hiding implemented. But AFAIK OpenSSL doesn't have it yet, so most users are still left in the dark. [1]http://www.manpagez.com/info/gnutls/gnutls-3.2.10/gnutls_180.php#gnutls_005frecord_005fcan_005fuse_005flength_005fhiding http://www.manpagez.com/info/gnutls/gnutls-3.2.10/gnutls_180... [2]http://nulab-inc.com/blog/nulab/securing-nginx/ http://nulab-inc.com/blog/nulab/securing-nginx/
- schoen 12y ago
  Thanks, I didn't realize that process was so far along! It might still be challenging to get large sides to adopt padding that will increase the amount of traffic they send (of course, the idea of reducing the efficiency of compression has the same net effect). But it's great to know that there's already a tool in place for traffic padding, at least in some implementations.