[Cryptography] Internet synthetic traffic generator or ad scamming?

[Christian Huitema]

On 4/20/2017 12:36 PM, hbaker1 wrote:
> If one needs a synthetic internet traffic generator in order to
> protect against traffic analysis, how does one tell the difference
> from an ad scamming scheme?
"Protect against traffic analysis" is a rather vague specification. What
is your threat model, exactly?

There are some threats that are mitigated by cover traffic, but many
others are not. For example, if your goal is to mask your visits to
"www.questionable-chocolate.xxx", your generating cover traffic won't
help. The needle will still be somewhere in the bigger haystack.

Of course, one way to protect against the threat is to have lots of
cover traffic generated by *other people*. They will do random loads of
"www.questionable-chocolate.xxx", and in a quid pro quo you will do
random loads of "www.furry-mammals-playing.org". The hope would be that
the censors would be befuddled, and won't know who is loading this or
that site for real or as a cover. It would be a variation of "safety in
numbers". But it will only work if there is a big enough number of
people playing that game.

-- Christian Huitema
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