[guardian-dev] NetCipher interface for anonymity configurations

Mark Murphy mmurphy at commonsware.com
Sun Nov 13 19:56:14 EST 2016


On Sun, Nov 13, 2016, at 04:22, Hans-Christoph Steiner wrote:
> For example:
> 
> * TLS Session Identifiers/Tickets

I have limited experience in this area and so cannot comment
authoritatively. My gut tells me that it'll be impractical for NetCipher
to affect, as app developers have very little visibility into the SSL
communications processing, and even less on Android 7.0+ (as
Conscrypt/network security configuration takes over that work).

> * detailed info in HTTP User Agent
> * HTTP ETag

With HTTP headers, usually, last one in wins. That's a problem, as
NetCipher is not the one executing the HTTP request. The app is.
NetCipher sets up an HTTP client API object (e.g., an HttpURLConnection,
an OkHttpClient) with some stuff pre-configured. NetCipher then hands
that over to the app, which makes the call. If NetCipher sets the
header, and the app sets the header, the app's header will win. And, by
"the app", I really mean, "the app's own code plus the code of any other
libraries that the developer is using that might be working with the
HTTP client object" (e.g., libraries like Retrofit or Picasso, that use
an OkHttpClient).

Now, if you're willing to say, "NetCipher will do the right thing, and
if the developer overrides it, that's the developer's problem", that's
doable.

> But since some of these things provide substantial speed
> improvements, we need to provide a way to disable them.

That would mostly be a matter of adding disable methods to the
StrongBuilder classes, and using that info when configuring the HTTP
client API objects.

> One idea would be to tell devs to use plain networking when going direct
> and not through Tor.  

What is "plain networking" in this context?

> Another would be to have methods to disable
> specific settings. I'm hoping to open up the discussion to hear other
> ideas.

While the StrongBuilder system right now assumes that the point is to
try to run through Tor, it could be change that Tor itself is an
optional thing. In that case, the StrongBuilders would configure this
other stuff and skip setting up the Tor proxy hooks.

-- 
Mark Murphy (a Commons Guy)
https://commonsware.com | https://github.com/commonsguy
https://commonsware.com/blog | https://twitter.com/commonsguy


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