Abstract
Existing low-latency anonymity networks are vulnerable to traffic analysis, so location diversity of nodes is essential to defend against attacks. Previous work has shown that simply ensuring geographical diversity of nodes does not resist, and in some cases exacerbates, the risk of traffic analysis by ISPs. Ensuring high autonomous-system (AS) diversity can resist this weakness. However, ISPs commonly connect to many other ISPs in a single location, known as an Internet eXchange (IX). This paper shows that IXes are a single point where traffic analysis can be performed. We examine to what extent this is true, through a case study of Tor nodes in the UK. Also, some IXes sample packets flowing through them for performance analysis reasons, and this data could be exploited to de-anonymize traffic. We then develop and evaluate Bayesian traffic analysis techniques capable of processing this sampled data.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Danezis, G., Dingledine, R., Mathewson, N.: Mixminion: Design of a Type III Anonymous Remailer Protocol. In: Proceedings of the 2003 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, IEEE Computer Society Press, Los Alamitos (2003)
Möller, U., Cottrell, L., Palfrader, P., Sassaman, L.: Mixmaster Protocol – Version 2. Draft (2003)
Dingledine, R., Mathewson, N., Syverson, P.: Tor: The second-generation onion router. In: Proceedings of the 13th USENIX Security Symposium (2004)
Berthold, O., Federrath, H., Köpsell, S.: Web MIXes: A system for anonymous and unobservable Internet access. In: Federrath, H. (ed.) Designing Privacy Enhancing Technologies. LNCS, vol. 2009, pp. 115–129. Springer, Heidelberg (2001)
Boucher, P., Shostack, A., Goldberg, I.: Freedom systems 2.0 architecture. White paper, Zero Knowledge Systems, Inc. (2000)
Serjantov, A., Murdoch, S.J.: Message splitting against the partial adversary. In: Danezis, G., Martin, D. (eds.) PET 2005. LNCS, vol. 3856, Springer, Heidelberg (2006)
Serjantov, A., Sewell, P.: Passive attack analysis for connection-based anonymity systems. In: Snekkenes, E., Gollmann, D. (eds.) ESORICS 2003. LNCS, vol. 2808, Springer, Heidelberg (2003)
Levine, B.N., Reiter, M.K., Wang, C., Wright, M.K.: Timing attacks in low-latency mix-based systems. In: Juels, A. (ed.) FC 2004. LNCS, vol. 3110, Springer, Heidelberg (2004)
Danezis, G.: The traffic analysis of continuous-time mixes. In: Martin, D., Serjantov, A. (eds.) PET 2004. LNCS, vol. 3424, Springer, Heidelberg (2005)
Dai, W.: Pipenet 1.1. Post to Cypherpunks mailing list (1998), http://www.eskimo.com/~weidai/pipenet.txt
Øverlier, L., Syverson, P.: Locating hidden servers. In: Proceedings of the 2006 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, IEEE CS, Los Alamitos (2006)
Bauer, K., McCoy, D., Grunwald, D., Kohno, T., Sicker, D.: Low-resource routing attacks against anonymous systems. Technical Report CU-CS-1025-07, University of Colorado at Boulder (2007)
Acquisti, A., Dingledine, R., Syverson, P.: On the Economics of Anonymity. In: Wright, R.N. (ed.) FC 2003. LNCS, vol. 2742, Springer, Heidelberg (2003)
Feamster, N., Dingledine, R.: Location diversity in anonymity networks. In: Proceedings of the Workshop on Privacy in the Electronic Society (WPES 2004), Washington, DC, USA (2004)
Jacobson, V.: Traceroute (1) (1987), ftp://ftp.ee.lbl.gov/traceroute.tar.gz
Team Cymru: IP to ASN lookup (v1.0), http://asn.cymru.com/
Jacobson, V., Leres, C., McCanne, S.: Tcpdump (1) (1989), http://www.tcpdump.org/
Claise, B.: Cisco systems NetFlow services export version 9. RFC 3954, IETF (2004)
Phaal, P., Panchen, S., McKee, N.: InMon corporation’s sFlow: A method for monitoring traffic in switched and routed networks. RFC 3176, IETF (2001)
Jasinska, E.: sFlow – I can feel your traffic. In: 23C3: 23rd Chaos Communication Congress (2006), http://events.ccc.de/congress/2006/Fahrplan/attachments/1137-sFlowPaper.pdf
Hughes, M.: LINX news (2006), http://www.uknof.org.uk/uknof4/Hughes-LINX.pdf
Clayton, R.: spamHINTS project (2006), http://www.spamhints.org/
Jaynes, E.T.: Probability Theory: The Logic of Science. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (2003)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2007 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Murdoch, S.J., Zieliński, P. (2007). Sampled Traffic Analysis by Internet-Exchange-Level Adversaries. In: Borisov, N., Golle, P. (eds) Privacy Enhancing Technologies. PET 2007. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 4776. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-75551-7_11
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-75551-7_11
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-75550-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-75551-7
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)