Hi everyone,
Is there a way right now to get Tor hidden service functionality (hosting a
hidden service, connecting to hidden services) on a connection where the
Internet is so slow and unreliable that the initial download of network
information currently takes ~forever, provided one is willing to sacrifice
metadata protection?
Is there a way to download, say, 100x less network information on startup and
still effectively host and connect to hidden services? Or is there a way to
hardcode network information with the client, since that can be installed
before going into the slow Internet zone, from a CDN that is less impacted, or
from a source on the local network? (I read that this is how Tor worked in the
past?)
The context is the following:
I have a p2p messaging app that uses Tor and hidden services (Quiet) in a way
similar to Ricochet or Onionshare. I'm going to a conference where last year
the Internet was so slow that Tor's initial download of network information
took too long and kept timing out, rendering Quiet unusable. The Internet was,
however, fairly reliable and usable for e.g. web browsing and messaging. I'd
like to be able to use Quiet at this conference. It would be used purely as a
demo for a few days, and we could warn everyone that our use of Tor did not
offer its typical security properties. (Then in future years we might support
p2p connectivity over local wifi, like Briar does!)
My understanding is that the network information download step is to protect
users against epistemic attacks. My intuition is that for situations where this
doesn't matter there is some way to use Tor with a small subset of the network
information and that the initial download could be skipped.
Is this true? What's the best way to do it in the Tor client we ship?
(I'm familiar with the Walking Onions paper, but looking for something that is
ready now. There isn't already an implementation of Walking Onions, is there?)
Thanks!
Holmes
_______________________________________________
tor-dev mailing list
tor-dev@lists.torproject.org
https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-dev
