TorMentor

A collaborative machine learning framework that operates through Tor.

Publications

• TorMentor is described as part of a paper on brokered learning:

  Brokered Agreements in Multi-Party Machine Learning. Clement Fung, Ivan Beschastnikh. APSys 2019

  @inproceedings{Fung2019,
    author = {Fung, Clement and Beschastnikh, Ivan},
    title = {{Brokered Agreements in Multi-Party Machine Learning}},
    year = {2019},
    doi = {10.1145/3343737.3343744},
    booktitle = {Proceedings of the 10th ACM SIGOPS Asia-Pacific Workshop on Systems (APSys)},
    pages = {69–75},
  }
  

• TorMentor is further detailed in an Arxiv paper:

  Dancing in the Dark: Private Multi-Party Machine Learning in an Untrusted Setting. Clement Fung, Jamie Koerner, Stewart Grant, Ivan Beschastnikh.

  @article{DBLP:journals/corr/abs-1811-09712,
    author    = {Clement Fung and Jamie Koerner and Stewart Grant and Ivan Beschastnikh},
    title     = {{Dancing in the Dark: Private Multi-Party Machine Learning in an Untrusted Setting}},
    journal   = {CoRR},
    volume    = {abs/1811.09712},
    year      = {2018},
  }
  

Talks and Presentations

May 11th - UBC Cybersecurity Summit: Talk Poster

Instructions

Everything is stored in two directories: DistSys (in Golang, all the distributed systems logic) and ML (in Python, all the ML logic)
We use go-python to link the two.

Before running the system, all machines need to have tor installed.
https://www.torproject.org/projects/torbrowser.html.en

If your ISP blocks Tor, a mirror is available here: https://thetorproject.github.io/gettor/

Once Tor is installed, the service machine needs to open up the hidden service. Do this by modifying the torrc (config file).
I found this file in: <tor_dir>/Browser/TorBrowser/Data/Tor

Add the following config parameters:

HiddenServiceDir <your_directory>  
HiddenServicePort 80 127.0.0.1:6767       # Port for the webinterface
HiddenServicePort 5005 127.0.0.1:5005     # Control port, used for joining and curating
HiddenServicePort 6000 127.0.0.1:6000     # Worker ports: By default we use from 6000 - 6010
HiddenServicePort 6001 127.0.0.1:6001  
HiddenServicePort etc... 127.0.0.1:etc...    
Log notice file /home/cfung/workspace/tor-browser_en-US/Browser/TorBrowser/Log/tor.log  
UseBridges 1

Add one HiddenServicePort for every connection you want the tor server to handle.

Example:

On server machine:
go run torserver.go

On each client machines:
go run torcurator.go curatorName minClients isLocal
go run torclient.go node1 datasetName epsilon isLocal
go run torclient.go node2 datasetName epsilon isLocal
go run torclient.go node3 datasetName epsilon isLocal

A good test set is the credit dataset: and use: credit1, credit2, creditbad.... etc.

An example deployment, 3 clients, with epsilon=1, running through Tor: go run torserver.go
go run torcurator.go c1 3
go run torclient.go h1 credit1 1
go run torclient.go h2 credit2 1
go run torclient.go h3 credit3 1