[Twisted-Python] announcing: txmix, a twisted python mixnet library

[Glyph Lefkowitz]

> On Feb 19, 2017, at 12:56, David Stainton <dstainton415 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Hi. I'd like to announce txmix, a library for writing mixnets in python.
> 
> https://github.com/applied-mixnetworks/txmix
> 
> txmix is GPL3 licensed and currently depends on:
> sphinxmixcrypto, Twisted, txtorcon, attrs, eliot
> and Tor Project's chutney (for integration tests).
> 
> txmix allows you to write mixnets with reduced code complexity and
> transport agnosticism... however I've choosen to focus my development
> efforts on the Tor onion transport for several reasons, the onion
> transport has some properties which the UDP transport does not:
> 
> - reliability
> - forward secrecy
> - NAT penetration
> 
> Additionally the Tor anonymity properties are a welcome bonus since
> they aren't really overlapping with those of the mixnet, they are
> vulnerable to different types of attacks and accomodate for totally
> different threat models.
> 
> Currently txmix has some integration tests that use chutney to spin up
> a local 25 relay tor network; builds a mixnet using onion services
> as the transport and then tests functionality by sending and receiving
> messages on the mixnet.
> 
> 
> future development
> ------------------
> 
> - txmix could certainly be used to write various kinds of mixnets,
> however, we are missing a PKI. Without some kind of public key
> infrastructure how will mix clients learn about mix public keys?
> 
> - sphixmixcrypto library needs improvements that would allow us
> to specify more message types such as dummy/cover traffic message
> and heartbeat messages. These of course are essential for the defense
> against certain known active attacks against some mix types.
> 
> 
> questions, code review and pull requests welcome.
> 
> 
> David Stainton

Very cool.  To be perfectly honest I don't understand most of this in a lot of detail (starting with what a "mixnet" is), but thanks for using Twisted to do it :).

-glyph