[Noisebridge-discuss] cryptoparty Tahoe-LAFS workshop

[David Stainton]

Dear Noisebridge,

I am returning to San Francisco tomorrow and I think we should now discuss when to have our Tahoe-LAFS workshop.

If we do it right this will not be a normal workshop where we just talk about things.
We will build a Tahoe-LAFS storage grid that will only be accessible over Tor Hidden Services.
Everyone contributing storage will benefit from the collective of storage nodes because your
stored ciphertext will have the option of data redundancy beyond your own storage node(s).

Additionally, Tahoe-LAFS grids whose storage nodes are controlled by several entities have more
robust security guarantees... and when the Tor Project fixes their Hidden Services implementation we also win.

How does a Saturday afternoon sound?
My schedule is extremely flexible... and I was just guessing that most people have jobs
or other responsibilities during the week.


One really cool thing you can do with your storage node is: use it to serve content directly from Tahoe-LAFS over
a seperate Tor hidden service onion address. Using nejucomo's Restrictive Proxy Gateway python program I generated an nginx config setup to safely proxy Tahoe-LAFS URIs from the URL to the Tahoe-LAFS node gateway which retrieves the content from the grid and decrypts it.
https://bitbucket.org/nejucomo/lafs-rpg

If this sounds confusing... it's not and I can help you set this up and explain the differing security guarantees.
It allows you to publish web content that is backed by the Tahoe-LAFS grid.
For instance you can create an APT mirror (for Debian, Mempo or whatever) with just a few lines of bash:

cat <<EOT>mirror.list
set base_path    /home/amnesia/apt-mirror
set defaultarch  amd64
set nthreads     20
set _tilde 0
deb http://deb.mempo.org/debian wheezy main
clean http://deb.mempo.org/debian
EOT
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install apt-mirror
apt-mirror mirror.list
tahoe create-alias mempo-repo
tahoe backup --verbose /home/amnesia/apt-mirror/mirror/deb.mempo.org mempo-repo:mempo

AND.... voila! an APT repository whose contents are censorship resistant and only accessible via the Tor network!
In my paricular case this content is now accessible from a Tahoe-LAFS grid using this URL:

http://ccwh54vx7qthzulj.onion/uri/URI:DIR2-RO:hmd3lcgt4s2fhc2px6k5iqivni:nandgvwyb3a2wrlc6yrut7lusyjxqxjbjuj2enfwkts4i45qxisa/Latest/


I now leave you with a reminder of the Cypherpunks Manifesto; if you attend my workshop and help us build our Tahoe-LAFS storage grid and use it instead of the inferior mainstream cloud storage implementations you will be participating in this Cypherpunks movement:

"""
We must defend our own privacy if we expect to have any.  We must
come together and create systems which allow anonymous transactions
to take place.  People have been defending their own privacy for
centuries with whispers, darkness, envelopes, closed doors, secret
handshakes, and couriers.  The technologies of the past did not allow
for strong privacy, but electronic technologies do.

We the Cypherpunks are dedicated to building anonymous systems.
...
""" → https://w2.eff.org/Privacy/Crypto/Crypto_misc/cypherpunk.manifesto


Sincerely,

David Stainton
my contact info → https://www.lumiere.net/~mrdavid/contact.txt


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