Call for Talks: HotPETs 2018

The Workshop on Hot Topics in Privacy Enhancing Technologies (HotPETs) fosters new ideas and spirited debates on privacy. Held in conjunction with the 18th Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium (PETS), the 11th HotPETs will be held July 27, 2018 in Barcelona, Spain.

HotPETS is calling for engaging and informative 10-15 minute talks on hot topics in privacy enhancing technologies (PETs), with each talk to be followed by a 5-10 minute question period. The nature of HotPETs' discussion-oriented format is especially suited to works in progress and new ideas that have not yet been fully formed.

Last year there was an interesting discussion about whether a separate Tor network should be set up for safer research and another discussion around I2P. What idea, experience, lessons, or theories would you like to talk through?

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

PET use or deployment with at-risk users

Anonymous communications and publishing systems

Censorship resistance

Location privacy

Online surveillance

Privacy and identity management

Privacy-enhanced access control and authentication

Privacy in social networks

Public policy regulating the use and development of PETs

Usability of PETs

See more suggestions

Who should submit

Submissions are open and welcome from activists, artists, developers, journalists, lawyers, public servants, researchers, scholars, and any others who can give a compelling, novel talk about privacy and privacy-enhancing technologies. You don't have to be someone who writes full research papers. PETS and HotPETS attract world-renowned experts on the research, development, and practice of PETs. If you are excited to give a talk to such a group, and you think they would be excited to hear it, then you should submit.

Deadlines

Submission Deadline: May 10, 2018

Submission Notification: May 18, 2018

Learn more about the call for talks then send submissions or questions to hotpets18@petsymposium.org.

There is a russian law to…

There is a russian law to block proxies and vpns.
https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-putin-signs-vpn-law-internet/28648976.ht…

Will russian Tor exit nodes keep working?

Corse! Under control FSB

And RU has explicitly banned…

And RU has explicitly banned Telegram.

What is Tor Project's plan if USG follows the RU lead and bans Tor?

Techdirt points out that…

Techdirt points out that Comey admits irrational motivations for his "Going Dark" campaign:

techdirt.com
The FBI's War On Encryption Is Personal, According To Comey's New Book
from the fight-for-the-future dept
Tim Cushing
23 Apr 2018

FWIW, so far hypothetical…

FWIW, so far hypothetical devices I'd love to see developers working on include:

o Torified ADS-B receivers (for detecting spyplanes)
o Inexpensive power spectrum analyzers (for investigating your RF threat environment)
o drone control/datalink detectors
o more sophisticated "Stingray" detectors
o anonymized decentralized FOSS corporate/government-free urban intranet (e.g. for communications among street protest organizers)

offtopic but important: -…

offtopic but important:

- Warning Message:

"[warn] Your log may contain sensitive information - you're logging more than "notice". Don't log unless it serves an important reason. Overwrite the log afterwards."

- Source: /var/log/tor/log
- Tails version: 3.6.2 (and confirmed in some previous versions)
- Problem: When using obfs4 bridges, log level is set to a high (probably 'debug') level.
- Solution: properly configure log to the 'notice' level when using obfs4 bridges
- Reproduce-able?: Yes

Since Tails lacks a public…

Since Tails lacks a public/archived mailing list for general discussion, (like torproject has tor-talk) I'll ask here.

How do I change the loglevel in the torrc* files to avoid the problem you describe?

What's about China? How can…

What's about China? How can I use there private connections?

Sir i have a question. I get…

Sir i have a question.
I get the new iPhone but the seller sad that he get from robbery.so maybe police tracking me. So when am i install this app on his phone so police can still find me.
By the way it's only for gernal knowledge hole thing is mide story.
But please tell the answer.

Hello friends! I'm trying to…

Hello friends!
I'm trying to access a site similar to Ebay that is www.mercadolivre.com.br but give this error:
403 ERROR
The request could not be satisfied.
Request blocked.
Generated by cloudfront (CloudFront)
Request ID: lZMhIcOooP8b5YMGB_lH_qprEEigSBuo23995MXKncZYXJgQgerc4Q==
Can you help me?

There is not much we can do…

There is not much we can do right now. CloudFront decided that they don't like Tor and blocked your request. You could ask the folks at http://www.mercadolivre.com.br/ if they could reconsider their decision to either not use CloudFront for their website or try to set an exception for Tor in their CloudFront managing application.

Has Tails still problems…

Has Tails still problems with no output S.M.A.R.T on
HDD-portable with USB3?

Join the discussion...

New Releases: Tor 0.4.0.2-alpha, 0.3.5.8, 0.3.4.11, and 0.3.3.12

There are new source code releases available for download. If you build Tor from source, you can download the source code for 0.4.0.2-alpha and 0.3.5.8 from the download page. You can find 0.3.4.11 and 0.3.3.12 at dist.torproject.org. Packages should be available over the coming weeks, with a new alpha Tor Browser release likely in the same timeframe.

These releases all fix TROVE-2019-001, a possible security bug involving the KIST cell scheduler code in versions 0.3.2.1-alpha and later. We are not certain that it is possible to exploit this bug in the wild, but out of an abundance of caution, we recommend that all affected users upgrade once packages are available. The potential impact is a remote denial-of-service attack against clients or relays.

Also note: 0.3.3.12 is the last anticipated release in the 0.3.3.x series; that series will become unsupported next week. The remaining supported stable series will 0.2.9.x (long-term support until 2020), 0.3.4.x (supported until June), and 0.3.5.x (long-term support until 2022).

Below are the changes in Tor 0.3.5.8 and in 0.4.0.2-alpha. You can also read the changelog for 0.3.4.11 and the changelog for 0.3.3.12.

Changes in version 0.3.5.8 - 2019-02-21

Tor 0.3.5.8 backports serveral fixes from later releases, including fixes for an annoying SOCKS-parsing bug that affected users in earlier 0.3.5.x releases.

It also includes a fix for a medium-severity security bug affecting Tor 0.3.2.1-alpha and later. All Tor instances running an affected release should upgrade to 0.3.3.12, 0.3.4.11, 0.3.5.8, or 0.4.0.2-alpha.

Major bugfixes (cell scheduler, KIST, security):
- Make KIST consider the outbuf length when computing what it can put in the outbuf. Previously, KIST acted as though the outbuf were empty, which could lead to the outbuf becoming too full. It is possible that an attacker could exploit this bug to cause a Tor client or relay to run out of memory and crash. Fixes bug 29168; bugfix on 0.3.2.1-alpha. This issue is also being tracked as TROVE-2019-001 and CVE-2019-8955.
Major bugfixes (networking, backport from 0.4.0.2-alpha):
- Gracefully handle empty username/password fields in SOCKS5 username/password auth messsage and allow SOCKS5 handshake to continue. Previously, we had rejected these handshakes, breaking certain applications. Fixes bug 29175; bugfix on 0.3.5.1-alpha.