IMHO we should attempt to fix, or at least realistically work around, the two big known security issues for 0.8.0, and get a paper published at the same time as the release. These are: 1. The Pitch Black attack. Oskar has a good idea how to fix it but has not yet simulated a fix. This blocks publishing a paper, and it also prevents use of darknet anywhere where there may be internal attackers. As I understand it implementation should not be particularly difficult - the main work needed here is to implement it in a simple simulator and tweak it until it works, right? 2. The mobile attacker source tracing attack. What this means is an attacker knows what is to be inserted (or requested), and he is initially distant from the inserter. He recognises the blocks, and uses the keys' locations (and path folding, and possibly announcement) to move towards the originator, gaining more and more of the stream as he moves closer. This is primarily a problem on opennet, but it is also feasible on darknet - it's just massively more expensive. It can be worked around for inserts by: i) Inserting with a random splitfile key. THIS IS IMPLEMENTED AS OF 1255, provided you insert to SSK@, AND ii) Providing an easy to use selective reinsert mechanism, AND iii) Putting a timestamp on the inserts on any small reinsert, and only routing to nodes that were connected prior to that timestamp. IMHO the second and third items are relatively easy.
At the same time, we can substantially improve data persistence (1255 already does that for big files, but the insert tweaks that are going to be tested real soon now would probably gain us a lot more), ship Freetalk, WoT and FlogHelper for improved end-user functionality, a fixed wininstaller, lots of bug fixes and minor usability tweaks, and everything else we've done since 0.7.5. And having a paper published at the same time would surely help with publicity amongst certain kinds of folk. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 197 bytes Desc: This is a digitally signed message part. URL: <https://emu.freenetproject.org/pipermail/devl/attachments/20100709/e0dc7256/attachment.pgp>
