Re: [TLS] About encrypting SNI

[Brian Sniffen <[e-mail]>]

Marsh Ray <[e-mail]> writes:

> From: TLS [mailto:[e-mail]] On Behalf Of Brian Sniffen
>>
>> Bitcoin's also hard to check: if the client says it found no bitcoin in a
>> particular region, how do you know?  And a whole bitcoin's too
>> much to ask.
>> 
>> An identity scheme tied to giving away bitcoin---much like a credit
>> rating ties to many transactions profitable for the counterparty---
>> has a lot in its favor.  It would make a great (research) extension
>> on top of TLS 1.3, and I hope that any puzzle mechanism will be
>> flexible enough to support that.
>
> Years back, Microsoft was looking into a proof-of-work scheme for antispam sender-pays email.
> http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/pennyblack/

Thanks!  I hadn't remembered the name, but that work was surely on my
mind as I wrote.

> One challenge is that botnets (that are conduits for most of the spam) also have plenty of spare CPU capacity.

Yes, but each bad node's CPU capacity only outstrips many good node's
capacities by a little bit---compared to network bandwidth, where very
often botnets outstrip good nodes' capacity by orders of magnitude.  Of
course the bad nodes will beat out cell phone CPUs; a client puzzle
scheme has to be about, in some part, "acceptable losses."  If we can
drop new mobile nodes and the botnet, but keep service up for (say)
established connections and "real" computers, that may be okay.

-Brian

-- 
Brian Sniffen
Information Security
Akamai Technologies