[Freedombox-discuss] Sunday HackFest

[intrigeri]

Hi,

Thank you for this report.

Michiel de Jong wrote (20 Feb 2011 18:59:44 GMT) :

> 2) Secure backup: Your data automatically stored in encrypted format
>    on the Freedom Boxes of your friends or associates, thus
>    protecting your personal data against seizure or loss;

> -> this doesn't seem to require much thought. Just a cronned rsync
> job would already do the trick. You would have to have a user
> interface where you request and allow backups from/to friends that
> you know from meatspace. maybe use PGP's WoT, or out-of-band
> passwords for confirmation. Nobody is currently actively looking
> into this.

duplicity seems like the perfect backend software to implement this.
Several front-ends are in Debian, among which:

 - deja-dup: wonderful desktop frontend. Probably does not fit the FB
   context, but is a nice show-case for duplicity.
 - backupninja: meta-backup system, drop a .ini-style file with the
   .dup extension into /etc/backup.d/ and you've got automated,
   incremental, encrypted remote backups; also see its ninjahelper
   configuration interface; editing backupninja configuration from a
   web interface seems pretty doable and it does not require changing
   conffiles shipped by the Debian package.

> 3) Network neutrality protection: If your ISP starts limiting or interfering
> with your access to services in the Net, your Freedom Box can communicate
> with your friends to detect and route traffic around the limitations.
> Network censorship is automatically routed around, for your friends in
> societies with oppressive national firewalls, or for you;

> -> i think this can only be done with a wifi mesh. Volunteers for looking
> into this?

If the threat model is "ISP censors this and that service", Tor is a
solution that does exist, does work, is pretty robust and backed by a
strong community.
If the threat model is "ISP blocks any access to the Internet", then
sure, other mitigation techniques need to be implemented.

I think the first issue can, and should be easily dealt with now using
today's tools. However, I fear the second one can be too high a bar to
start with... and maybe just another mesh routing project that the FB
could use when it's ready.

> 4) Safe anonymous publication: Friends or associates outside zones of
> network censorship can automatically forward information from people within
> them, enabling safe, anonymous publication;

> -> [...] Tor was highly regarded, but it needs to be combined with
> some sort of mirroring.

Why does it need this?

(playing the devil advocate a bit) While publishing content behind a
Tor hidden service is obviously not resistant to hardware failure and
lack of backups, its hidden nature makes it resistant to raids and
targeted censorship.

Once again, I fear we get lost looking for perfect solutions that
don't exist yet. Existing tools already allow geeks to do many great
things, let's use the FB to make it easy and appealing.

> 6) Encrypted email, with seamless encryption and decryption;

> -> this can easily be done with SquirrelMail. Somebody could
> experiment with setting this up, with the automatic PGP key
> generation and everything. Volunteers?

The SquirrelMail GPG plugin has a pretty ugly security history, and
runs gpg directly without any kind of library abstraction IIRC.
Last time I dared looking at it, a few security bugs in the remote
arbitrary code execution class were still unfixed for years, although
fixes where supposedly available... by private email to the author.

Also, I don't feel like we can make the FB look nice and appealing
with SquirrelMail's 90's-style interface. I'm told there is effort put
into a RoundCube GnuPG plugin, but I don't know how much it is ready.

> 7) Private voice communications: Freedom Box users can make
> voice-over-Internet phone calls to one another or to any phone. Calls
> between Freedom Box users will be encrypted securely;

> -> Asterisk has been mentioned. Any volunteers for experimenting
> with this?

I'm not sure we should encourage users to rely on some kind of VoIP
router, be it somehow trusted like their own FreedomBox, to encrypt
their calls and authenticate other parties. Maybe the FreedomBox could
help routing calls, bypassing NAT or whatever, but IMHO encryption and
authentication shall be done end-to-end, i.e. between desktop VoIP
client to another.

As a starting point, TAILS VoIP todo item [0] provides some general
encrypted VoIP info and also cryptography-focused information on the
client side. See especially the part about OnionCat, that provides
quite a nice way to build an end-to-end tunnel that traverse NAT
without any need for STUN tricks or alike (not even mentioning it also
hides who is calling who).

  [0] https://amnesia.boum.org/todo/VoIP_support/

Bye,
--
  intrigeri <intrigeri at boum.org>
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