computer science

Roger Dingledine

Roger Dingledine is a computer science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Roger Dingledine rather than just read about it. In short: Roger Dingledine is an American computer scientist who co-founded the Tor Project. An MIT graduate in mathematics, computer science, and electrical engineering, Dingledine is also known by the pseudonym arma.

Key takeaways

Roger Dingledine belongs to computer science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Roger Dingledine to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Roger Dingledine from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Roger Dingledine is an American computer scientist who co-founded the Tor Project. An MIT graduate in mathematics, computer science, and electrical engineering, Dingledine is also known by the pseudonym arma. As of December 2016, he is Project Leader, Director, and Research Director at the Tor Project.

Education Dingledine graduated from MIT with Bachelor of Science degrees in Mathematics and Computer Science and Engineering in 2000. He later obtained a Master of Engineering in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT.

Career

Tor Project Tor was developed by Dingledine—with Nick Mathewson and Paul Syverson—under a contract from the United States Naval Research Laboratory.As of 2006, the software they developed was being distributed using proceeds from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, by the Tor Project. As described at the end of 2015,

The Tor Project develops and maintains ... The Tor Browser system, also known as The Onion Router ... a free, open source and sophisticated privacy tool that provides anonymity for web surfing and communication as well as developing and maintaining other software tools and applications.

Publications and presentations Dingledine has written several highly cited papers, including the Tor design paper titled Tor: The Second-Generation Onion Router, which won the Usenix Security "Test of Time" award. Other highly cited papers include Mixminion’s protocols for anonymous email, the Free Haven Project distributed anonymous storage service, various attacks and vulnerabilities related to anonymity technologies, and the economics and network effects of technologies for anonymity. As an advocate for strong privacy, Dingledine is frequently invited to speak about security and privacy, including at academic conferences, the NSF (2014), the NSA (2007), and periodic interviews.

Awards and honors Dingledine was named as one of the 2006 thirty-five Innovators Under 35 by MIT Technology Review, for his work on internet anonymization technologies through the Tor Project. The Review described the importance of the work in this way:

A dissident in China uses Web-based e-mail to contact a journalist in Canada. An intelligence agency wants to surveil a foreign website. Like every operation on the Internet, these activities leave tracks. Online anonymity measures provide a way around this problem; one of the most advanced is Tor, or the Onion Router. / Computer scientist Roger Dingledine developed Tor ... In 2012, Dingledine and the other two initial developers of Tor, Nick Mathewson and Paul Syverson, were recognized by Foreign Policy magazine as #78 in their top 100 global thinkers.

Media attention Dingledine has drawn attention after the leak of NSA documents by Edward Snowden, and public disclosure of the rules guiding the operation of XKeyscore, the NSA's collection system, given XKeyscore's targeting of Tor Project onion servers, including the one Dingledine runs at MIT, which serves a directory authority for the system, as well as being the base of operation of the Mixminion mail service, and host to various gaming and other websites (from which the NSA might be collecting IP addresses).

Further reading Roger Dingledine publications indexed by Google Scholar Goodin, Dan (2016-11-29). "Firefox 0-Day in the Wild is Being Used to Attack Tor Users". ArsTechnica. Retrieved 2016-01-04. Publicly released exploit works reliably against a wide range of Firefox versions. Zetter, Kim (2015-12-11). "Tor Hires a New Leader to Help It Combat the War on Privacy" (print and online). Wired. Retrieved 2016-01-04. Zetter, Kim (2014-07-03). "The NSA Is Targeting Users of Privacy Services, Leaked Code Shows" (print and online). Wired. Retrieved 2016-01-04.

References

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Roger Dingledine

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Roger Dingledine claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In computer science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Roger Dingledine before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Roger Dingledine ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Roger Dingledine

In research: Roger Dingledine appears in computer science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Roger Dingledine in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Roger Dingledine is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics American computer scientists, Free software programmers, Living people, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Roger Dingledine outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Roger Dingledine in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Roger Dingledine means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Roger Dingledine out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Roger Dingledine in simple terms?

Why does Roger Dingledine matter?

Because it connects several computer science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Roger Dingledine?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Roger Dingledine.