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AOS: an anonymous overlay system for mobile ad hoc networks

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Abstract

Providing anonymous communications in mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) is an effective countermeasure against malicious traffic analysis. This paper presents AOS, an Anonymous Overlay System for MANETs, which provides provably strong source and destination anonymity under a rather strong adversary model. AOS differs significantly from previous anonymous communication systems for MANETs mainly in three aspects. First, AOS is an overlay system independent of the underlying MANET protocol stack. Second, AOS resolves the conflict between anonymous communications and secure routing in MANETs and enables providing both at the same time. Last but not least, AOS can satisfy diverse anonymity requirements with different communication and computation overhead. AOS is the first system of its kind, and its efficacy and efficiency are confirmed by detailed qualitative and quantitative analysis.

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Notes

  1. If D is chosen as an onion node at multiple layers, we select l as the smallest layer.

  2. The real onion node O i,1 is not compromised.

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Acknowledgments

The work of Y. Zhang was partially supported by the US National Science Foundation under grants CNS-0716302 and CNS-0844972. The work of Y. Fang was partially supported by the US National Science Foundation under grant CNS-0716450, the National Natural Science Foundation of China under grant 61003300, and China 111 Project under grant B08038.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Electrical, Computer, and Energy Engineering, Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, 85287-5706, USA

    Rui Zhang & Yanchao Zhang

  2. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Florida, 435 Engineering Building, P.O. Box 116130, Gainesville, FL, 32611, USA

    Yuguang Fang

  3. Changjiang Scholar Chair Professor, National Key Laboratory of Integrated Services Networks, Xidian University, Xi’an, 710071, China

    Yuguang Fang

Authors
  1. Rui Zhang
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  2. Yanchao Zhang
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  3. Yuguang Fang
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Correspondence to Yuguang Fang.

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Zhang, R., Zhang, Y. & Fang, Y. AOS: an anonymous overlay system for mobile ad hoc networks. Wireless Netw 17, 843–859 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11276-010-0319-2

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