Проект невидимого интернета: интервью с анонимной сетью

As Roger Dingledine said in his talk at 25C3 (Dec. 29 2008), "Tor does not magically encrypt the internet". Neither does I2P. Accessing standard services through exit nodes can be done safely, but it takes great care. Snooping or worse by exit nodes, and blocking of exit nodes is problematic. That said, if your primary goal is anonymous access to the regular internet, Tor is the better solution.

I2P was designed from the beginning for anonymity and security of internal network traffic and services, and we've spent several years making it fast and reliable.

If you desire anonymous, encrypted communication primarily within an overlay network, I2P is a good choice. I2P is peer-to-peer friendly, we welcome p2p traffic.

Over 95% of I2P users also route traffic for others, unlike in Tor where the percentage is very small. In other words, almost everyone contributes to the capacity of the network, rather than just using the resources of a few large nodes.

Tor is much better at circumventing blocking by ISPs and state-level adversaries. As the I2P user base grows, that will become a priority for us as well.

In comparison with Anomos, in many ways, what they are working on (turnkey, anonymous, encrypted bittorrent) is what we already have with i2psnark. But we don't advertise I2P as such, and we have a lot of complexity and other stuff visible to a user that only cares about bittorrent. One possibility is creating an I2P package that hides some of that. We met the Anomos guys at 25C3 and wish them the best. I'm excited about their design and I look forward to their product, and I hope we get to work with them further.

Ghandy: I2P wasn't originally created for anonymous filesharing. What do you expect, how many people are using it anyway? How attractive is it to do it that way? Which speed do you reach?

zzz: We have just under 1000 users at any point in time, and over 3000 unique users per month. By that measure we are perhaps 100x smaller than Tor. But if you look at our "hidden service" count of perhaps 600 at a time (which includes bittorrent clients), maybe that is similar to Tor hidden services... I don't know.

I2P was designed as an overlay network for anonymous, encrypted communication. It's therefore ideal for peer-to-peer applications. Those applications push a tremendous amount of traffic, as you know - so they generate "cover traffic" for other applications. Trying to make p2p apps go faster helps us make the whole network better. So we don't discourage p2p at all:

All I2P p2p applications are in-network only, there is no access to "regular internet" torrents, for example. All p2p clients are modified to work with the I2P network and ensure security, you cannot use a standard client. As the network is small, so is the selection of available content. Typical bittorrent download speeds are 5 KByte/sec to 20 KBps, which is enough to get a 700MB movie in about a day. The network is much much faster than it used to be, and we continue to make improvements. Whether our anonymity and security, combined with these speeds and restrictions, is "attractive" is for each potential user to assess. As we like to say, "anonymity isn't free" - the encryption and routing add significant overhead.

Ghandy: Some analysts say that privacy doesn't exist in the USA. Do you think this might change since Obama is president? What's your assessment speaking of european countries?

zzz: I think privacy is under severe and increasing threat throughout the world. I don't think that Obama will have much effect on the global trend.

Ghandy: How easy or hard is it to install I2P?

zzz: It's a cross-platform product, and the installation goes smoothly for most people on Linux or Windows, including Vista.

(Hint from Ghandy: In case you're using a german distribution of Vista, create the directory for the software directly at C:/ and nowhere else and then it will work for sure!)

Ghandy: How safe is your service nowadays? I heard that you can't assure safety until version 1.0 is out. When can we expect the first official version?

zzz: I don't know if we can ever "assure" safety for a particular use. "Safety" is relative and depends on your "threat model", in other words the goals, resources and abilities of your adversaries.

To elaborate, the two areas of concern are that the network is relatively small, and the design and implementation have not received any independent review. However we haven't yet attracted the attention of determined adversaries, as far as I know. The basic architecture and cryptography of I2P have not changed in many years.

We also are working on several advanced features in I2P that will enhance anonymity and security. As a package, I think of it as "super-secret" mode, or an overlay on the overlay network.

When we find bugs or anonymity holes in the design or implementation, we fix them. When will it be "perfect" or "official" or "1.0"? Not very soon. Users of any anonymous network should do their own research and think carefully about what they want to use it for, and how to use it safely.

Ghandy: Did you ever think about working together with The Pirate Bay or MiniNova to create a common service?

zzz: The proposals posted last year at tfr.org or newteevee.com generated a lot of discussion within I2P. We are working closely with Onioncat, this may or may not be one piece of the puzzle. The path from here to there is not clear to me at this time.

Ghandy: Speaking of I2P: What are your plans, what can we expect during the next weeks, months and years?

zzz: #1 priority is to grow the network. We can do that through more press like this interview; by working more closely with other projects such as Tor, Anomos, and Onioncat; and by making our website and software better, faster, easier to understand and use, and available in more languages. So we're looking for more users and more contributors.

Thanks again for the opportunity and the great questions. If any of your readers have questions they can try our website, our forum, including a german section or IRC irc.freenode.net #i2p.

Ghandy: Thank you for filling out such long and in-depth answers! And generally spoken: Of course for providing us this service.