Nice historical insights Tom. Did you remember the 2004 paper, or did you search for it?
reillyb
· 3 years ago
Minor correction...
"Slipping in the Window" was Paul Watson, not Robert.
Dennis Cox
· 3 years ago
"By writing papers about the “insecurity” of the PRC filters, the Clayton paper makes the PRC filters stronger."
- Yes, it's ego over public good. The author is more interested in being known than solving the problem of cenorship IMHO. It's equilvant is the "upstanding" people that bragged about them helping the underground railroad while it was happening for politicial/fame means, which caused parts of the underground railroad to fail. It's selfish - plain an simple. I wonder what happens when some poor freedom loving person in China that has been using these methods and gets caught?
ivan
· 3 years ago
I think all of this is irrelevant. My impression is that those "poor freedom loving persons in China" are way smarter that the Watson group and all the rest of us. They do not need to be schooled about MITM attacks and IP/TCP tricks. What's next? Other clever people will tell them how to break hash functions and how to write exploits...
Thomas Ptacek
· 3 years ago
Do I sound patronizing, Ivan? You have a point. There are lots of very smart security people in China.
That's kind of my point. Papers like the Cambridge study aren't really speaking to real Chinese security researchers, who clearly already know the shortcomings of RST sniping. Many of those people are sponsored by the PRC. Instead, the Cambridge study (and, more importantly, the hype) is speaking to casual Internet users, who will get into trouble applying "kindergarten evasion" to a monitoring system of unknown sophistication provisioned by one of the best-funded service providers in the world.
bobby fletcher
· 3 years ago
My problem with the Clayton paper is the subtext I got from it. The 16 page document mentioned DoS attack 16 times (once per page), identified potential target for such attack, and encouraged prolonged attack by citing some time trial data.
All Comments
"Slipping in the Window" was Paul Watson, not Robert.
- Yes, it's ego over public good. The author is more interested in being known than solving the problem of cenorship IMHO. It's equilvant is the "upstanding" people that bragged about them helping the underground railroad while it was happening for politicial/fame means, which caused parts of the underground railroad to fail. It's selfish - plain an simple. I wonder what happens when some poor freedom loving person in China that has been using these methods and gets caught?
That's kind of my point. Papers like the Cambridge study aren't really speaking to real Chinese security researchers, who clearly already know the shortcomings of RST sniping. Many of those people are sponsored by the PRC. Instead, the Cambridge study (and, more importantly, the hype) is speaking to casual Internet users, who will get into trouble applying "kindergarten evasion" to a monitoring system of unknown sophistication provisioned by one of the best-funded service providers in the world.
This reads like a "bombmaker's manifesto" to me.