Nick Mathewson: TECHNICAL CHANGES SINCE YOU LAST HEARD ABOUT TOR

Published: Jan. 9, 2006, 11:10 p.m.

There hasn't been a talk from the developers of Tor (the popular anonymity network) at Defcon since 2004. Since then, we've revised the protocols, added piles of new features to the software, tightened security, integrated more helper tools, made hard strategic decisions, and suffered growing pains. There have been new attacks, new defenses, new research, and new ideas.

In this talk, I'll present the most important technical changes and developments since you last heard about Tor at Defcon. Time permitting, I'll talk about the big technical challenges we're facing for the next year, some of the more interesting feature proposals we're considering, and some of the more interesting ways that smart programmers can help spread privacy to the world.

Nick Mathewson Nick Mathewson is an anonymity researcher, software engineer, and privacy hacker. His research at MIT concentrated in verifying privacy properties in Java bytecodes; he received an M.Eng in 2000. Since 2002, he has worked on anonymity, first as lead developer on Mixminion; and as a core developer on the Tor Project since 2002. His research focuses on attacking and strengthening anonymity networks. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.