Re: [Vrs-development] Cluster image security/privacy question

[Eric Altendorf]

On Thursday 02 May 2002 04:11, Chris Smith wrote:
> Why is the IP address of an LDS node regarded as 'sensitive' ?

Just the paranoia factor.  Should a VRS be serving information in a "hostile 
environment" and agents of that "hostile environment" were to break into or 
physically obtain one of the nodes in the VRS, the other nodes would want to 
be protected against identification as much as possible.  IP addresses can be 
used to track down computers and people...

> I suppose I could get Goldwater to 'hide' the IP addresses (so they can't
> be viewed through the administration tool), or even look them up on demand
> - but they've got to be stored 'somewhere' ultimately.

Right.  What I was suggesting is that they are stored in a distributed 
fashion, like DNS but not hierarchical.  A few IP addresses on this machine, 
a few on that.  It's not as efficient since it will frequently introduced an 
extra lookup to get the address of the machine to which you want to send a 
message, but it would help protect anonymity in the event of a node being 
compromised.

It's not a big deal; just something I thought of.

Cheers

Eric

-- 
"First they ignore you.  Then they laugh at you.
 Then they fight you.  And then you win."             -Gandhi