2018/Berlin/censorresist

Building a Censorship Resistant Web was a session at IndieWebCamp Berlin 2018.

Notes archived from: https://etherpad.indieweb.org/berlin-censorship

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IndieWebCamp Berlin 2018
Session: Building a Censorship Resistant Web
When: 2018-11-03 16:00

Participants

• tiara miller (tiaramiller.com)
• https://joelpurra.com/
• dylan harris
• Jeremy Keith
• Sebastian Greger
• Dietrich Ayala
• Add yourself here… (see this for more details)

Notes

Current web infrastructure

• single centralized server has 100% control
• all the client can do is request
• single point of failure
• how can we design systems that might mitigate the sensorabilituy of projects today?
• distributed web projects
• 1.5 billion estimated sites
• how can we make sure they stay accessible?
• ipfs
  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InterPlanetary_File_System
• only for content that doesnt change
• peer discovery
  • behind the router so you can host the ip address
• browsers have been passive clients that can only make request
• p2p is not a direct request between two parties
• ipfs is not a two party direct response relationship
• response can come from the nearest peer holding the hash
• mesh networkd
  • 20 requests sent until someone holding the hash returns it saying they have it
  • distributed hash table
• single object dispensed between many different holders
  • similar to tcp/ip architecture
• passed along until someone says that they have it
• honey pots
• what are the pros and cons for censorship
• request based on hash, hash is not immutable, series of changes --> similar to git
• relation to a browser-doesnt particularly matter
• Beaker is a Chromium-based browser for DAT.
  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaker_(web_browser)
  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dat_(software)
• dat stream is referred to as dat archive
  • folder that contains all data of web app
• ipfs has immutable data.
• site that is ipfs enable can the url
• Can retrieve data from local peers.
  • Can it be configured to only request locally?
• access a javascript api that allows you to write new files to the folder
• can this be synced
• front end and back end dont make sense anymore when you have them both running in the same space
• forking a dat archive is easy, with cryptographical signatures to differentiate between authors
• ipfs is about immutability- dat is about changes
• if i write something very critical about a government, the government can then blacklist my site
• immutable content can also get hacked
  • trust being misplaced
• does tor content play well with ipfs format?
  • its not all traffic
• proxy p2p traffic to tor
  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tor_(anonymity_network)
• will site work served from ipfs inside censored country?
• trust is the problem no matter what
• trust anchor
  • certificate authority (CA) infrastructure
• trust is through domain name on regular web browser
• out of band (OOB) key exchange
  • SSL public key and private key
• mirrors CA problem
  • always delegating authority when trusting others
• exposure
• bitcoin chain contains several pieces of "illegal material" (both for certain legislative areas/countries, and for a large number of legislative areas/countries)
• new architectures for publishing but not protecting individuals doing the publishing
  • these new architectures are very different from the status quo
• understanding the architectual differences that keep these two worlds seperated
• how do you bring these things together?
• service that copy and serve through a gateway
• filecurrency is backed by file storage services

See Also

• 2018/Berlin/Sessions