This Thursday, October 29th, the MCS Society will be hosting a talk by Roger Dingledine, project leader for the Tor Project. See below for the talk abstract. The event will be held at 5PM in University Crossings room 153. Food will be provided.
Tor and Censorship: Lessons Learned
Thursday, October 29 @ 5PM
UCROSS 153
FREE FOOD!!!
Abstract:
Tor was originally designed as a civil liberties tool for people in the West. But if governments can block connections *to* the Tor network, who cares that it provides great anonymity? A few years ago we started adapting Tor to be more robust in countries like China. We streamlined its network communications to look more like ordinary SSL, and we
introduced “bridge relays” that are harder for an attacker to find and block than Tor’s public relays.
In the aftermath of the Iranian elections in June, and then the late September blockings in China, we’ve learned a lot about how circumvention tools work in reality for activists in tough situations. I’ll give an overview of the Tor architecture, and summarize the variety of people who use it and what security it provides. Then we’ll focus on
the use of tools like Tor in countries like Iran and China: why anonymity is important for circumvention, why transparency in design and operation is critical for trust, the role of popular media in helping — and harming — the effectiveness of the tools, and tradeoffs between usability and security. After describing Tor’s strategy for secure
circumvention (what we *thought* would work), I’ll talk about how the arms race actually seems to be going in practice.
Bio:
Roger Dingledine is project leader for The Tor Project, a US non-profit working on anonymity research and development for such diverse organizations as the US Navy, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Voice of America. In addition to all the hats he wears for Tor, Roger organizes academic conferences on security and anonymity, speaks at such events as Blackhat, Defcon, Toorcon, CCC congresses, and Hacking at Random, and also does tutorials on anonymity for national and foreign law enforcement. Roger was honored in 2006 as one of the top 35 innovators under the age of 35 by Technology Review magazine.
Further links:
Tor Project website
Tor bridges page
Bridge distribution strategies