Riffle: Even more anonymous than Tor.

A new anonymizing internet tool designed by MIT and the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne is soon to be released, and claims it has fixed Tor’s blind spots.

Riffle takes the best bits of Tor and the basic principles that function in the background, and have created a new anonymity network from scratch.

In basic terms, Riffle still operates in the same way that Tor anonymises its users by running its connections through a veritable mix of network nodes and seemingly randomly bouncing data packets from system to system to obscure the original source of the packets.

The apparent difference between Tor and Riffle however, is that Riffle has made itself bullet proof from malicious entities that run rogue servers on the Tor network in a technique that has become known as a Sybil Attack.

In real terms, Riffle connections should remain invulnerable to Sybil attacks, as it uses mathematical algorithm that means that any verified machine on the Riffle network will be able to tell when the mathematical proofing that protects the network has been compromised. remains uncompromised, that one machine will detect when the mathematical proof has been broken,

Riffle still uses Tor’s amazingly good layered Onion protocol to encrypt its messages does not completely overhaul how Tor works because it still uses the ground-breaking Onion protocol to encrypt its messages, so attackers will still have to break several layers of encryption to reach Riffle content.

The result, is that Riffle, in theory at least should be efficient and strongly defended from within. That’s the theory at least.

The other good news about Riffle is that its designers say it uses almost 90% less resources to run than other similar anonymizing tools and services.

Time will tell if it is as unbreakable as its boffin designers hope it is.