http subversion URLs should be discontinued in favor of https URLs

John-Mark Gurney jmg at funkthat.com
Sun Dec 10 22:53:28 UTC 2017


Michelle Sullivan wrote this message on Mon, Dec 11, 2017 at 09:41 +1100:
> Yuri wrote:
> > On 12/10/17 10:15, Igor Mozolevsky wrote:
> >> They are not "hypothetical characters," they are invented characters 
> >> that
> >> are used in a threat model. But that's reframing the problem- a
> >> hypothetical threat model is very different to a real threat model.
> >
> >
> > This is a very real threat model. There are a lot of malicious Tor 
> > exit node operators, and a lot of FreeBSD users update their system 
> > over subversion. The only thing that the Tor node operator needs to do 
> > is to detect relevant requests and serve malware.
> >
> > How is this not real?
> 
> Sounds to me the proper solution is stop using Tor.
> 
> If you can't trust the network (wire) no matter what you do you can't 
> guarantee safety.

IMO, all security needs to be node-to-node.  It needs to be assumed
that the network is compromised.  Be it public wifi, tor, or malicious
actor rerouting traffic via BGP spoofing, node-to-node protection is
the answer to all of those.

Considering that China has redirected large segments of the inet traffic
through them, you can't even trust the inet back bone to be secure.  I
know I've never gotten notification from my ISP that my traffic may have
been compromised this way, and w/o notification, I cannot properly assess
what may have been compromised.

-- 
  John-Mark Gurney				Voice: +1 415 225 5579

     "All that I will do, has been done, All that I have, has not."


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