Tor working on adding traffic padding

[Keksjdjdke 35]

In the latest alpha of Tor the change log notes. "includes a new timing backend that we hope to use for better support for traffic padding" https://blog.torproject.org/blog/new-alpha-release-tor-0291-alpha

Comments on this future patch.

Edited ... by Keksjdjdke

[zhang888 1066]

Since anyone can become an entry, middle and exit node, because of the way Tor works, more and more "Sybil attacks" became popular.

That's when an adversary puts up various geographically distributed servers, and trying to match patterns between the entry and exits.

 

https://blog.torproject.org/blog/traffic-correlation-using-netflows

 

Timing attacks are not new in Tor, and the developers try to fix whatever is still left, however it's a sensitive topic because it makes the

already slow network even slower - potentially discouraging users who might want to use it.

 

Also, note it's not a future feature, it's just a few patches to the TCP timing part of the tor daemon.

The original "feature" was introduced after the "Spying in the dark" paper a few years ago:

 

http://freehaven.net/anonbib/cache/tcp-tor-pets12.pdf

[Keksjdjdke 35]

Since anyone can become an entry, middle and exit node, because of the way Tor works, more and more "Sybil attacks" became popular.

That's when an adversary puts up various geographically distributed servers, and trying to match patterns between the entry and exits.

 

https://blog.torproject.org/blog/traffic-correlation-using-netflows

 

Timing attacks are not new in Tor, and the developers try to fix whatever is still left, however it's a sensitive topic because it makes the

already slow network even slower - potentially discouraging users who might want to use it.

 

Also, note it's not a future feature, it's just a few patches to the TCP timing part of the tor daemon.

The original "feature" was introduced after the "Spying in the dark" paper a few years ago:

 

http://freehaven.net/anonbib/cache/tcp-tor-pets12.pdf

Thank you for explaining the new patches being added Tor. And thanks for the research paper.