Entropy Project Closes Up Shop 143
k0fcc writes "In a disappointing move to privacy enthusiasts, the Entropy Project's creator has released a statement that the project is shutting down. Entropy was a very popular, and some say faster, alternative to Freenet which supported a number of different cryptographic protocols. The creator alluded to the possibility that the project could continue if a new owner could be found."
Ironic (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Ironic (Score:1)
Re:Ironic (Score:1)
Re:Ironic (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Ironic (Score:2)
Re:Ironic (Score:2)
Re:Ironic (Score:2)
Maybe... (Score:2)
Re:Ironic (Score:2)
Or maybe even a free ride if you've already paid?
Re:Ironic (Score:2)
Re:Ironic (Score:1)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irony [wikipedia.org]
Re:Ironic (Score:2)
Not sure where else I'll be able to use this... (Score:2)
Hashes aren't unique! (Score:1)
that was fun... (Score:5, Funny)
GNUnet (Score:5, Informative)
Re:GNUnet (Score:2)
mmm really? (Score:3, Insightful)
Not quite true IMHO: it's obviously not sufficient to compromise one client/server to compromise the whole network. If it was, it would be a piece of cake to take the existing source code and use it to build this "compromised" client/server.
If you want to compromise the whole network with one buffer overflow exploit, I guess you will have to find an exploit that works with all versions of GNUnet, and you will have to r
One word: Cascade (Score:2)
2. Create program exploiting said exploit, and to do the same to all nodes it connects to.
3. There is no step 3. You've compromised the entire network.
Kjella
Re:One word: Cascade (Score:2)
Re:One word: Cascade (Score:1)
On another field, an exploit like the one described wouldn't work because if you manage to exploit GNUnet you could exploit one node, but couldn't make it reproduceable to the other nodes.
Maybe the the gandparent and grand-...-parent should read more about GNUnet before making such claims.
Step 3: PROFIT! (Score:2)
Step 2: Compromise everyone
Step 3: PROFIT!
Re:GNUnet (Score:2)
Does that sound silly? You can say that about any network program. In practice, things keep humming along because of diversity {versions, codebases}, etc. For example, browsing the GNUnet site I see a Java GNUnet [ovmj.org] port. No need to worry about stack smashing attacks there. Just the 100 or so other vulnerabilities (eg. race conditions) that make softwar
Re:GNUnet (Score:2)
It still has the feel of a research project and the fact that it defines itself as a framework rather than an application means that 99.9% of their potential audience won't be able to figure it out or use it. (Could your Mother download, compile and install gnunet-gtk?)
With that said, the project is really interesting.
But in its current state, its not ready for p
Re:GNUnet (Score:1)
apt-get install gnunet-gtk, or your prefered graphical package manager
Re:GNUnet (Score:3, Interesting)
What if its not much different than installing a virtual ethernet adapter, or if all your experience setting your computer up for TCP/IP counts for something on it?
What if you get to use all your current internet apps, rather than scratching around for keyhashes of some file that is pieced together all over the network?
What if only one guy can snitch on you, and he's somewhere in South Korea?
Mayb
Re:GNUnet (Score:1)
GNUnet is not a network: it is a framework, and the people using it are building a network of GNUnet nodes.
GNUnet is not a file-sharing application, it is a framework that, having the AFS protocol, creates a way of people writting and using file-sharing applications that run over GNUnet (as gnunet-gtk).
Re:GNUnet (Score:2)
Re:GNUnet (Score:1)
Well, GNUnet is well versioned, like most of GNU apps, and it's intended to be friendly, popular and without "the feel of a research project" when a version 1.0 comes out. We're still at version 0.6.2b, version 0.6.3 is expected to be released in August... So yes, there's lot's of work to do until v1.0 is out.
I2P (Score:2)
IRC and HTTP work great over it.
Erm (Score:4, Interesting)
Freenet seems to me to be one of those ivory tower projects that has little relation to the real world. Proof? No search engine, and very little chance of ever having one. How the hell can it ever be useful? [/rm101 resists making a dig about their choice to implement in Java]
Re:Erm (Score:1)
Can't we get some more fun articles here? People building a bar out of an old VAX? People building beer chillers with Rocket Engines? Does it have to be all this lame-ish stuff that's been on the front page a for a few weeks now?
Re:Erm (Score:1)
Re:Erm (Score:2)
Unfortunately it's pretty much useless, so I don't use it anymore.
Re:Erm (Score:2)
Re:Erm (Score:2)
Re:Erm (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Erm (Score:3, Informative)
sort of.
if you are talking dial-up, then it's going to take a while for your node to learn the neighborhood; you would probably want to turn it on and run FROST [sourceforge.net] for about an hour; you still are going to have problems getting to some freesites. You will also want to go into your default.ini file and change transient=false to true.
BTW, when people are saying FREENET is not searchable, they are mainly wrong; the Internet isn't searchable, or at least most search engines don't search it the way it would be se
Re:Erm (Score:4, Informative)
Freenet doesn't even HAVE an UI (Score:2)
Of course, there's no point in nagging unless you actually have something better to suggest... which I don't. So if the choice is a slow Java project, or a C++ project which doesn't exist - I'll take the Java project...
Kjella
Azureus current version is okay (Score:2)
So before I agreed that java was a piece of crap whose only saving grace was that it could be portable (plenty of java apps are not). Now that azureus works very stable (constant run since the last update) I must admit that java can work. HOWEVER
I also
Re:Erm (Score:2)
if you have an idea for a search-engine in a (still) anonymous network you're free to submit it.
For now spider-generated indexes will have to suffice.
Re:Erm (Score:2)
Re:Erm (Score:1)
In a p2p network search you send your search to your peers, but, in Freenet's case the peers only index the contents by key number (or whatever it's called), not for description of the contents.
A spider basically follows all the links it can find and sorts them according to some meta-data every page has (title, description...)
Also, dynamic webpages aren't
Re:Erm (Score:1)
about dynamic pages: between "some" and "calling" a SCRIPT tag is missing...
Re:Erm (Score:1, Informative)
You obviosuly haven't throught this through -- Freenet and any other anonymous P2P protocol (including GNUnet) already guard against this type of information leakage by routing requests and searches through a number of nodes on the network. For a given server it is impossible to know whether a given node which makes a request is actually making the request its
Re:Erm (Score:2, Informative)
Work is underway... (Score:1)
It is being worked upon. Not search engine, but a means to efficiently find content (that *wants* to be found, that has been posted publicly, mind you) within the context of the network itself. And no, I'm not talking about Frost/FMB which chokes on just a couple messages a day, but something ready to scale to become as large as the Internet itself. Speaking of which, something Freenet isn't able to do.
There a
Re:Work is underway... (Score:1)
Re:Erm (Score:2)
Re:Erm (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't think it has to do with being ivory tower--it's just that anonymity comes with a bandwidth/convenience cost, and at this time most people don't consider it worth paying. As computer resources increase, or political reality changes, anonymity might start to grow in relative importance.
You don't know what you are talking about (Score:1, Insightful)
Thats a pretty bold statement for someone who has clearly never tried it. Freedom of speech may not bear much relation to your reality, but you will probably get a different view from someone from some other [freenet-china.org] countries I can think of.
Its a research project, and they are solving hard problems. Yes its not as easy to use as it could be, but either was Linux for a long time, and in many ways Freenet is
Listing Engines Exist Today (Score:2)
A true 'search engine' might even be detrimental to the privacy goals of Freenet.
But yes, it is currently a bit esoteric for the average Joe, but that will change in time. Its already MUCH friendlier then in the beginning... ( and the speed troubles seem to improve with each release.. )
And don't bash the java thing without realizing that one goal was for it to run everywhere, and to be browser friendly.. Java ( in theory
Re:Erm (Score:3, Informative)
Couldn't really say, since few people who use anonymous filesharing/messaging use their real names in said anonymous network.
Quickly scanning The Freedom Engine, I found Fahrenheit 9/11, IIP Revival (which tries to bring back the Invisible IRC), mirror of XBOX Linux, TrekLit (a collection of Star Trek novels in MS Reader .LIT format), various blogs, Freecraft (an open-so
Re:Erm (Score:1)
Re:Erm (Score:2)
Spider the network, generate lookup tables appropriate for search, insert them into the network, and have a client-side script that takes the user's query and responds with the list of results. No changes to the network necessary.
This currently is held back by the unavailability of client side scripting (which is not fundamental, it's just unimplemented) and the current network not having sufficent performance for such a tool to be faster than
Re:Erm (Score:2)
Oh yes! Child porn. Vast amounts of child porn. One could go so far as to say that Freenet is one of the main, if not THE main mechanism for distributing pedophile pornography.
FN was designed for distributing files with maximum anonymity, no matter the performance penalty (speed is horrible). So, it is used only by people who know that their neck would b
Re:Erm (Score:1)
And 'semi-normal' is not an adjective I would apply to child porn distributers.
Re:Erm (Score:1)
Re:Erm (Score:1)
I was really thinking back to when IIP was working, and was plainly being used as a distribution mechanism in concert with Freenet. Any sites publicised that way would be unlikely to be spidered. But you've called me out, I can't prove it's the main channel of distribution - just make the point that it's a highly visible one (it shoc
Re:Erm (Score:1)
Re:Erm (Score:1)
Re:Erm (Score:1)
Re:Erm (Score:1)
Re:Erm (Score:2)
It's all reactionary. It never occurs to the Libertarian that by creating a market for child porn (i.e., the free trading of it), you create demand for more.
Reminds me of a debate with a Libertarian I had one time who said that shooting guns at people should be completely legal. What's illegal is actually hitting them. ::rolls eyes::
Re:Erm (Score:2)
Of course, if I shoot at you with a real gun, then even if I miss I am guilty of *attempted* hitting-you-with-a-bullet, which would be a crime even in a libertarian society.
That's what YOU say, not what the other Libertarian said. In a pure Libertarian society, shooting a gun one inch from someone's head should not be illegal, because they are not harmed in any way. His point was that you just make the punishment for hitting someone so draconia
Re:Erm (Score:1)
Some say faster?! (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, entropy ain't what it used to be. (Score:2, Insightful)
Anonymity and Entropy (Score:5, Interesting)
Furthermore, it is often the content which speaks more about the authorship, than the chain of technical events that leads to the publishing of the information. In Slashdot, for example, I have chosen not to show my e-mail, etc., but by reading my comments even a 10-years old kid can make a deduction about my real identity. Does it make sense for me to use IP-tunneling then?
Finally, I do not understand the author. He just seems pissed. Maybe he will reconsider his opinion and revive the project. Is he sick from the lies (?) about the crypto-protocols used in the software which is written? IMHO the theory proves quite stable and if there is a room for attacks it is more in the implementations than in the protocols themselves. How many broken cryptosystems do you recollect (I know, I know "the knapsack", but it got broken on the conference on which it was presented).
Still, even with this project retreating, the subject remains interesting.
Re:Anonymity and Entropy (Score:2)
Part of that is because we are talking about national governments trying to control information flow (notably the U.S. government), and litterally thousands of patents that control who can d
Re:Anonymity and Entropy (Score:2)
Can you elaborate some more? I skimmed the linked paper, although I didn't read it thoroughly, and it appears to claim exactly the opposite. Did I completely misunderstand?
Re:Anonymity and Entropy (Score:1)
The practical problem with the work of Chaum is that it requires a reliable broadcast network, which is unachievable.
Besides the above difficulty, this is the best work I've read discussing anonymity.
Re:Anonymity and Entropy (Score:1)
BTW, it is much more difficult to show that something does not exist, than the opposite.
Logically, there are faults in what I am claiming, but this discussion is quite informal
Re:Anonymity and Entropy (Score:2)
>4. Conclusion
This solution to the dining cryptographers problem demonstrates that unconditional secrecy channels can be used to construct an unconditional sender-untraceability channel. It also shows that a public-key distribution system can be used to construct a computationally secure sender-untraceability channel. The approach appears able to satisfy a wide range of practical concerns.
Are you arguing that Internet communication channels can't offer unconditional secrecy?
Re:Anonymity and Entropy (Score:1)
Re:Anonymity and Entropy (Score:1)
So, you are the dissident (for short Bob) and you want to talk anonymously. The first problem is that if you are doing that periodically it should be possible to correlate (something) in your statements. I don't know what can be correlated, for example wording or referral to specific events
Re:Anonymity and Entropy (Score:1)
And it depends on what you want to do. If al
Re:Anonymity and Entropy (Score:1)
Re:Anonymity and Entropy (Score:1)
Re:Anonymity and Entropy (Score:3, Interesting)
There are resources available on my network that are at least trying to train people how not to give themselves away. Simple example, someone invites you, and right away you jump on IRC as trifakir. Someone showing up there as "trifakir" isn't necessarily you, of course. But if I wanted to track someone down that had that n
Re:Anonymity and Entropy (Score:1)
Join the club :-)
I do. See, when he doesn't believe even in the cryptographic methods used, something is really wrong. I really support his decision to "abandon the sip", even if I think it is a great loss to this kind of projects that someone with his experience and skills doesn't intend to join his mind to any other project in the field.
Check out my own project. (Score:2)
Cons: Still small, restrictions on who you can invite, win95/98 not supported very well, some dullards have trouble understanding how anonymity works (if it uses TCP/IP your address can be tracked!).
In particular, I need to find people that favor linux/unix (even OSX would be fine), would be willing to invite others, and plan on residing in any country other than the USA for the next
Re:Check out my own project. (Score:1)
In short, what you've written sucks.
Re:Check out my own project. (Score:2)
Besides, you can be playing Quake3 or IRCing on my own network an hour after talking to me. Even if those were possible on freenet, could you be up and running that quickly?
So, is it my (lack of) writing style you dislike, or the theory?
BTW, the icon is mostly for comcast's sake. The internet feels so impersonal, not being able to show them a friend
Re:Check out my own project. (Score:1)
That's interesting. I take a mental note to look into your project once more, although I don't have much time for fun these days. Maybe you deserve a small credit for an efficient implementation of tunneling.
It is not the writing style what I disliked. I'm simply old-fashioned and I like projects which are based on (scientific) paper
Re:Check out my own project. (Score:2)
As for tunneling, I'm not even writing new software. Would rather let the experts do that, freeswan (openswan now?) and OpenVPN are just fine (I tend not to trust the others as much).
I do have some new ideas for transport and routing protocols though. But they aren't necessary at this point, and the network is fully viable, as is. Plu
Re:Check out my own project. (Score:2)
Many people have done this, or attempted it, I'll grant you. But my version is far simpler, requires no new software, and it truly gives you an IP network. It's passably fast. As in, pings (yes, ICMP works! try t
Re:Check out my own project. (Score:2)
Re:Check out my own project. (Score:2)
Not knowing where you are from, it's hard to say if you are dumb and just don't understand the scale of gigantic byzantine bureaucracies or if you are somehow insulated from them. I would be willing to risk my safety to such more so th
Re:Check out my own project. (Score:2)
I come from a family where everyone works in government. I think you are lacking a clue of what goes on "behind the scenes". There is A LOT of cooperation between law enforcement, no matter what terms the any two countries appear to be on. I was giving the leaders case as just an example. Look, people know each other the worl
Tried it, looked suspicious (Score:4, Interesting)
"Wow, great project!". It was like Freenet, only faster, lower latency, some stuff was cooler. It looked really promising. It was much easier to install in a chroot jail than Freenet.
However. From what I saw, I wouldn't trust it for any serious purpose. It looked like the author was only interested in using it for testing his own crypto algorithms, and as anybody who read on this stuff should know, rolling your own crypto is a really bad idea unless you're really, really good, and then make sure it gets well tested for a few years.
It had a nice possibility of restricting the node to chosen allowed crypto algorithms, but none of the available ones was in widespread use. I mean, AES, DES and Blowfish weren't in the list last time I checked. That makes me rather suspicious.
I voiced my concerns once in the Entropy forum, and the author replied saying this is basically a research project and not intended for serious use (IIRC).
If somebody does decide to continue with it, I certainly hope that one of the first things that will be done is to put some tested crypto in it instead of a bunch of homebrew methods. Nothing personal against the author, but I believe that if it was easier to trust it, it could become more popular.
Oh no ... (Score:3, Funny)
What are they doing to me???!
CVS Repository itself.. (Score:2)
Privacy enthusiasts? (Score:1)
Mute: The Searchable Alternative (Score:4, Interesting)
There is one alternative called Mute [sourceforge.net], which solves one key problem with Freenet or Entropy which is that it is searchable.
This discussions is about Entropy? (Score:2)
Jeez, dood [slashdot.org], this article was about Entropy... ;)
Overview of anonymous filesharing networks (Score:1)
Irony (Score:2)
Ah the irony....
Entropy Project Closes Up Shop... (Score:3, Funny)