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Anonymity Protocols as Noisy Channels

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Abstract

We propose a framework in which anonymity protocols are interpreted as particular kinds of channels, and the degree of anonymity provided by the protocol as the converse of the channel’s capacity. We also investigate how the adversary can test the system to try to infer the user’s identity, and we study how his probability of success depends on the characteristics of the channel. We then illustrate how various notions of anonymity can be expressed in this framework, and show the relation with some definitions of probabilistic anonymity in literature.

This work has been partially supported by the INRIA DREI Équipe Associée PRINTEMPS. The work of Konstantinos Chatzikokolakis and Catuscia Palamidessi has been also supported by the INRIA ARC project ProNoBiS.

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Ugo Montanari Donald Sannella Roberto Bruni

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Chatzikokolakis, K., Palamidessi, C., Panangaden, P. (2007). Anonymity Protocols as Noisy Channels. In: Montanari, U., Sannella, D., Bruni, R. (eds) Trustworthy Global Computing. TGC 2006. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 4661. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-75336-0_18

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-75336-0_18

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-75333-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-75336-0

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