[Cryptography] Implementations, attacks on DHTs, Mix Nets?

[Perry E. Metzger]

On Sun, 25 Aug 2013 16:42:57 -0700 "Christian Huitema"
<huitema at huitema.net> wrote:
> I studied such systems intensely, and designed some
> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer_Name_Resolution_Protocol). Using
> a distributed hash table securely is really hard. The basic idea of
> DHT is that information is spread on the network based on matches
> between the hash of a resource identifier and the hash of a node
> identifier. All nodes are effectively relying on every other node.
> In an open network, that is pretty much equivalent to "relying on
> the goodness of strangers." You can be sure that if our buddies at
> the NSA set up to watch the content of a DHT, they will succeed.

That is not my worry. Signing the data posted to the DHT can prevent
spoofing, querying it over a mix network or using a PIR protocol can
prevent eavesdropping. I'm more worried about various sorts of denial
of service attacks, or service being shut down by inadvertent
behavior.

Perry
-- 
Perry E. Metzger		perry at piermont.com