This to me is the web 3.0/4.0 of BT.Its especially important now that the other side thinks its winning. hopefully with our support and resources the final product may at least be able to address this issue of privacy to a certain level of comfort.It will obviously require some adopting but with what is happening in sweden right now,this may just be what is required, especially by them.Their trackers imo should totally consider signing up for the beta tracker tests currently offered by these guys even as they consider their options.Anyways just my ones and twos.
foreward:
interview with the creators:Anomos is a pseudonymous, encrypted multi-peer-to-peer file distribution protocol. It is based on the peer/tracker concept of BitTorrent in combination with the onion routing anonymization layer of Tor, with the added benefit of end-to-end encryption. By combining these technologies, we have created a platform whereby no party outside of the trusted tracker will have any information about who a peer is or what they are downloading...
Anonymous file-sharing is one of those tricky words that is often advertised in the P2P world. The true application of anonymous file-sharing is rather difficult in practical application, as the realities of P2P networking make anonymity a matter of degrees rather than an absolute. The closest one can achieve to true file-sharing anonymity is Usenet, however, anonymity is enhanced largely because of the one way transfer of files.As stellar as Usenet is to many people, BitTorrent is the file-sharing medium of choice - and a bull's eye for many ISPs looking to cut down on bandwidth consumption. To resolve this, end-to-end encryption has provided some relief. However, strapping a BitTorrent client onto TOR, a network overlay that provides online anonymity, is far from a solid resolution.In an effort to protect anonymity, provide safe communications for dissidents, and enhance the general welfare of the file-sharing community, two developers, Rich Jones and John Schanck are developing a "pseudonymous" BitTorrent application called Anomos. Understanding the limitations of anonymity, Rich and John are working within this concept to provide a safer alternative to having no protection at all. Slyck interviewed Rich and John, two university students who just might help change the face of BitTorrent.
File-sharing anonymity is something long desired, yet the practical application of this, at least in the file-sharing world, has been spotty.What does Anomos bring to the table?
BitTorrent is king of peer to peer filesharing at the moment. People seem to really like the BitTorrent model for a number of reasons, particularly ease, speed and sheer abundance, so that's what we've decided to expand upon.Anomos takes BitTorrent and combines it with the Onion Routing model of Tor, but in a tracker-oriented way, with the added benefit of end-to-end encryption. By doing this, we create a system whereby a person can download a file from numerous sources anonymously, where the uploader doesn't know where the download is going to, the routing peers don't know what a file is or where its destination is, and a downloader doesn't know where a file originated from.Explain Anomos to us. What's happening in our world that motivated its creation?
Governments and ISPs in lots of countries are conspiring against Internet users for fairly nefarious purposes, domestic surveillance and copyright extortion. One of the worst examples of this is the UK's 3 strikes proposal.We believe that open access to information is a fundamental human right and it needs to be protected.Who would most benefit from using Anomos?
Plenty of folks! Whistle blowers, citizen journalists, people with limited freedom of speech/press, citizens of countries where the accusation of apostasy or sexual deviance could be life threatening, documentarians, mash-up artists. Anyone who feels their freedom may be unjustly threatened by their activities on the Internet.What experience do you have in anonymous protocols and applications?
I've used Tor and FreeNet before, but unfortunately they both have some implementation problems which makes them undesirable solutions for the problem we're trying to solve.Over the past year I've done everything I can to familiarize myself with the field, and I'm confident that we know what we're doing. Of course we are students, not experts, so we're very interested in talking with other people who have worked on anonymizing protocols and applications before and having them examine our protocol.The network overhead from the protocol specifications seems robust. Should the end user expect to dedicate more bandwidth than the average BitTorrent client?
Yes. We agreed very early on that unfortunately, some speed and CPU power would have to sacrificed in the name of security. Pipes get thicker and computers get faster, the important thing is that there is a secure platform.Anomos' technology doesn't appear to get along with the current tracker inventory. How much retooling would be required to accommodate Anomos?
Well, that depends. To connect to an Anomos tracker you're going to have to be using an Anomos compatible client. The only change for the end user will be that, for now, they have to open their Anomos .torrents with a different program than they use for BitTorrent. Similarly, someone running a tracker will see very little change. If the protocol gets popular and people want to create alternative Anomos compatible Trackers or Clients, they'll have a bit of work set out for them. But we're being sure to thoroughly document every part of the protocol to make the process as simple as possible.In your blog, you mention Anomos' anonymity is a matter of degrees. Can you describe its vulnerabilities or weakness?
The link encryption and onion routing make the path and peer connections very safe, assuming the implementation is sound. The biggest threat to client anonymity is the amount of trust placed in the tracker. Ultimately, we could enhance this trust using a variety of methods, but that's still in our future ideas box. We also know that, like all low-latency networks, we're vulnerable to traffic analysis. If an adversary suspects two individuals of communicating, and is capable of watching both of their connections, they may be able to break the anonymity. Such an attack would be extremely difficult for anyone to perform, but it is possible.What are Anomos' strengths?
Anomos is fast (as it uses multi-sourcing), ad-hoc, strongly encrypted, pseudonymous, and easy to use.In the comments of the blog coverage we've had so far, a lot of people don't seem to recognize the difference between our model and just running BT over Tor. In ours, the user's ratio is rewarded for sharing, whereas for BitTorrent over Tor, they're punished in effect for it.Who is the team behind Anomo? How does Free Culture fit into this picture? How are your goals similar?
Rich goes to Boston University and John goes to Hampshire College. We are friends from high school.We're both interested in the ideas of the Free Culture movement. I (Rich) actually started the BU Free Culture chapter. My main goal with BUFC has nothing to do with filesharing but with OpenCourseWare (see ocw.mit.edu).Anomos is the epitome of a Free Culture project, it strongly encourages broader access to information, the preservation of civilliberties, and collaboration.How did you come up with the application's name?
The Greek for "anonymous" is something like "anonumos," but we shortened it to Anomos, which is the Greek word for Lawless.We talked about having a recursive acronym with a lot of clicking sounds in it just because we liked the people idea of getting a lot of white people to make clicking noises at each other but that name didn't make the cut for some reasonIs there anything else you'd like to add?
Thanks for your interest in the project!Editor's note: Anomos isn't the only BitTorrent entity looking to enact encryption and a level of anonymity. The Pirate Bay and isoHunt have also announced recent plan to implement such protection, as the stakes have been raised by ISPs, the entertainment industry and government intervention.
Source: slyck
project URLanomo
The linux client can be readily obtained from their site.They weren't keen on windows till recently so for testing purposes u can obtain a copy from their irc at
irc.freenode.org/anomos
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