kovri.sbv

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Monero is secure, untraceable, electronic cash.

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It is open-source, decentralized, and freely accessible to all.

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In this video, we will focus on an anonymity technology, called Kovri.

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Up to now, we have covered how Monero obfuscates information stored on the blockchain.

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Ring signatures obscure the sender.

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Stealth addresses prevent outside observers from knowing the receiving address.

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And RingCT hides the amount of Monero that's transmitted.

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However, some personally identifiable information may be leaked at the network level

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when making a transaction.

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This privacy leak is addressed with Kovri.

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Kovri is a free, decentralized, anonymity technology

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based on I2P's open specifications.

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Kovri uses both encryption and sophisticated routing techniques

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to create a private overlay-network across the Internet.

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This protected overlay allows users to hide their geographical location and IP address.

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An IP address is like a home address for the Internet,

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so this is quite sensitive information, to say the least.

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Let's go through a few scenarios

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to see how this lightweight, security-focused software

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helps strengthen a user's privacy.

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Suppose Alice wants to send Monero to Bob.

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Alice's wallet creates a transaction and then broadcasts it to the Monero network.

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The Monero network is made up of nodes that communicate with each other

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by directing messages using IP addresses.

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This means that it might be possible to geographically trace data

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as it travels over the open Internet,

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from start to finish and everywhere in between.

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Even though the sender's and recipient's wallet addresses

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- as well as the amount of Monero sent - remain private,

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Alice is taking a risk in broadcasting her transaction

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as some nodes may be logging IP addresses.

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An adversary with enough resources

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could attempt to associate transactions with IP addresses

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to determine from where transactions originate.

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This could potentially lead to an adversary not relaying her transactions to the rest of the network;

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or - worse - arriving at her front door.

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Now let’s imagine a different scenario.

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Suppose Charlie wants to support the Monero network by running a full node at his home.

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After a few weeks, he receives a cease and desist letter from his Internet Service Provider

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claiming that running a node is a violation of the terms of service.

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Or consider this,

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suppose Dave is an operator of a mining pool

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that donates a portion of block rewards to a political party or controversial cause.

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Other nodes could purposefully reject his solved blocks

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to express their disagreement with his political or social views.

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Alice, Bob, Charlie, and Dave all have at least one thing in common:

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their IP addresses were exposed.

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Users could try to hide IP addresses with the Tor or a VPN;

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however both of these strategies have serious weaknesses.

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The Tor network has "semi-trusted" Directory Authorities

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which give a handful of Tor node operators

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overreaching influence into network consensus.

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Network consensus ultimately determines who is allowed to relay traffic on the Tor network

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based on the views of the Authorities.

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Furthermore, correlation attacks are easily possible with trusted VPNs,

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making it easy for large attackers to de-anonymize a user's traffic.

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So what can Alice, Bob, Charlie, and Dave do to mitigate these threats?

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They could use Kovri!

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If they exclusively use Kovri to connect to the Monero network,

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no one will know their IP address,

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making passive surveillance impractical,

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while substantially improving Monero's censorship resistance.

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As you can see, Kovri is a software that allows users to send transactions

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more privately than ever before.

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Let's next go over some technical details

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to have a better understanding of how Kovri works under the hood.

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Kovri tunnels traffic through the I2P network

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utilizing “garlic encryption” and “garlic routing”.

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Information travels within a private overlay-network by way of messages,

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which are encrypted in layers each time the message is passed along to peers in the network,

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similar to a Matryoshka doll.

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For each inner doll there is a lock and public key to the next doll.

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Peers in the network are not able to read the contents of the message being relayed,

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so information sent from the sender to its destination

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(and vice-versa) are secured.

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The only information visible to peers is the instruction for sending messages to the next peer.

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To achieve greater privacy at a slight cost to performance,

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users are able to connect to several peers.

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Essentially, Kovri covers an application's Internet traffic to make it anonymous within the network.

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Given this characteristic,

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Kovri is a great solution for anonymously communicating over IRC, email, 

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or accessing hidden services.

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Kovri will revolutionize peer-to-peer connections

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and increase network resiliency and privacy worldwide.

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Malicious nodes can no longer threaten users who create transactions

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or block them from propagating across the network.

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Kovri will come bundled with future Monero releases

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and be enabled by default.

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In addition,

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Kovri will feature a common API that would allow other cryptocurrencies and applications to use it,

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not just Monero.

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To learn more about Monero and the Kovri project,

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check out getmonero.org. and getkovri.org.