
Introduction to Mix Networks and Anonymous Communication Networks - rendx
https://leastauthority.com/blog/mixnet-intro/
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jancsika
> The saying goes, "Anonymity loves company" which means that an anonymous
> communication system cannot provide high anonymity assurances if there are
> very few people using it.

I see this often repeated but never elucidated. It is particularly problematic
in light of the stated non-goal:

> Hiding the fact that someone is utilizing an anonymity network is not an
> intrinsic goal of anonymity networks.

So here's a straightforward counter-example I mentioned before:

Create a PIR where messages-- let's say "tweet-sized" for this example-- are
sent once daily, and the only allowed participants are Debian developers. If a
participant has no message to send, they send a "tweet-sized" message composed
of randomly chosen bits.

The clients try to decode all messages with their private key. The message or
messages that are successfully decoded were the messages that were intended
for that client.

Let's even put a single point of failure like a centralized server where all
messages are sent and retrieved.

Now you've got:

* sender anonymity

* receiver anonymity

* sender and receiver anonymity with respect to third party observers

* maximum practical resistance to Sybil attacks

* resistance to timing correlation attacks

* resistance to compulsion attacks

Anyway, for this example the saying "anonymity loves company" is false.

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SamPatt
Have you looked into BitMessage?

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glitchcat
I don't think BitMessage scales well at all.

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eigenrick
This is a great summary of anonymous routing networks. If you're interested in
anonymous distributed computation, you might want to have a look at Feralcore
(I am not the author)

[http://www.feralcore.com/fcfiles/download/feralcoredoc.pdf](http://www.feralcore.com/fcfiles/download/feralcoredoc.pdf)

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visarga
Interesting. Is it possible to make a bittorrent-like protocol that is
anonymous? I mean, hiding what is being downloaded, hiding the source of the
download and replicating/caching data so more rarely downloaded files are
still available.

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yjftsjthsd-h
Doesn't i2p do that?

EDIT: Sorry, meant freenet.

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mirimir
Using Freenet is extremely hazardous. One should not use it, except through
Tor. Adversaries can readily discover IPs of Freenet nodes. Once you've been
arrested, you will find "plausible deniability" a useless abstraction. At
best, you may negotiate a minimal sentence.

