Abstract
We consider anonymous communication protocols based on onions: each message is sent in an encrypted form through a path chosen at random by its sender, and the message is re-coded by each server on the path. Recently, it has been shown that if the anonymous paths are long enough, then the protocols provide provable security for some adversary models. However, it was assumed that all users choose intermediate servers uniformly at random from the same set of servers.
We show that if a single user chooses only from a constrained subset of possible intermediate servers, anonymity level may dramatically decrease. A thumb rule is that if Alice is aware of much less than 50% of possible intermediate servers, then the anonymity set for her message becomes surprisingly small with high probability. Moreover, for each location in the anonymity set an adversary may compute probability that it gets a message of Alice. Since there are big differences in these probabilities, in most cases the true destination of the message from Alice is in a small group of locations with the highest probabilities.
Our results contradict some beliefs that the protocols mentioned guarantee anonymity provided that the set of possible intermediate servers for each user is large.
Partially supported by the EU within the 6th Framework Programme under contract 001907 (DELIS).
Chapter PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
Keywords
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
References
Agrawal, D., Kesdogan, D., Penz, S.: Probabilistic Treatment of MIXes to Hamper Traffic Analysis. In: Proceedings of the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (2003)
Berman, R., Fiat, A., Ta-Shma, A.: Provable unlinkability against traffic analysis. In: Juels, A. (ed.) FC 2004. LNCS, vol. 3110, pp. 266–280. Springer, Heidelberg (2004)
Chaum, D.: Untraceable Electronic Mail, Return Addresses, and Digital Pseudonyms. Communication of the ACM 24(2), 84–88 (1981)
Chaum, D.: Secret-Ballot Receipts and Transparent Integrity. Better and less-costly electronic voting and polling places, Available at http://theory.lcs.mit.edu/~rivest/voting/papers/Chaum-SecretBallotReceiptsTrueVoterVerifiableElections.pdf
Czumaj, A., Kanarek, P., Kutyłowski, M., Loryś, K.: Distributed Stochastic Processes for Generating Random Permutations. In: ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms SODA 99, 271–280 (1999)
Danezis, G.: Designing and Attacking Anonymous Communication Systems. CAM-CL-TR-594, University of Cambridge, Computer Laboratory (2004)
Serjantov, A., Danezis, G.: Towards an information theoretic metric for anonymity. In: Dingledine, R., Syverson, P.F. (eds.) PET 2002. LNCS, vol. 2482, pp. 41–53. Springer, Heidelberg (2003)
Danezis, G., Serjantov, A.: Statistical disclosure or intersection attacks on anonymity systems. In: Fridrich, J. (ed.) IH 2004. LNCS, vol. 3200, pp. 293–308. Springer, Heidelberg (2004)
Dingledine, R., Mathewson, N., Syverson, P.: Tor: the Second Generation Onion Router. USENIX Security (2004)
Gogolewski, M., Kutyłowski, M., Łuczak, T.: Mobile mixing. In: Park, C.-s., Chee, S. (eds.) ICISC 2004. LNCS, vol. 3506, pp. 380–393. Springer, Heidelberg (2005)
Gülcü, C., Tsudik, G.: Mixing E-mail with BABEL. In: ISOC Symposium on Network and Distributed System Security, pp. 2–16. IEEE, Los Alamitos (1996)
Goldschlag, D.M., Reed, M.G., Syverson, P.: Private Web Browsing. Journal of Computer Security, Special Issue on Web Security 5, 237–248 (1997)
Gomułkiewicz, M., Klonowski, M., Kutyłowski, M.: Provable Unlinkability Against Traffic Analysis Already After O(log(n)). In: Steps! Information Security Conference 2004. LNCS, vol. 3381, pp. 229–238. Springer, Heidelberg (2004)
Jakobsson, M., Juels, A.: Mix and Match: Secure Function Evaluation via Ciphertexts. In: Advances in Cryptology - Asiacrypt 2000. LNCS, vol. 1976, pp. 162–177 (2000)
Kesdogan, D., Egner, J., Büschkes, R.: Stop-and-go-mIXes providing probabilistic anonymity in an open system. In: Aucsmith, D. (ed.) IH 1998. LNCS, vol. 1525, pp. 83–98. Springer, Heidelberg (1998)
Pfitzmann, A., Köhntopp, M.: Anonymity, unobservability, and pseudonymity - A proposal for terminology. In: Federrath, H. (ed.) Designing Privacy Enhancing Technologies. LNCS, vol. 2009, pp. 1–9. Springer, Heidelberg (2001)
Klonowski, M., Kutyłowski, M., Zagórski, F.: Anonymous communication with on-line and off-line onion encoding. In: Vojtáš, P., Bieliková, M., Charron-Bost, B., Sýkora, O. (eds.) SOFSEM 2005. LNCS, vol. 3381, pp. 229–238. Springer, Heidelberg (2005)
Kurosawa, K., Ogata, W.: Bit-slice auction circuit. In: Gollmann, D., Karjoth, G., Waidner, M. (eds.) ESORICS 2002. LNCS, vol. 2502, pp. 24–38. Springer, Heidelberg (2002)
Rackoff, C., Simon, D.R.: Cryptographic Defense Against Traffic Analysis. In: ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing(STOC), vol. 25, pp. 672–681 (1993)
Serjantov, A., Dingledine, R., Syverson, P.: From a trickle to a flood: Active attacks on several mix types. In: Petitcolas, F.A.P. (ed.) IH 2002. LNCS, vol. 2578, pp. 36–52. Springer, Heidelberg (2003)
Syverson, P., Reed, M.G., Goldschlag, D.M.: Anonymous Connections and Onion Routing. IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communication 16(4), 482–494 (1998)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2005 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Gogolewski, M., Klonowski, M., Kutyłowski, M. (2005). Local View Attack on Anonymous Communication. In: di Vimercati, S.d.C., Syverson, P., Gollmann, D. (eds) Computer Security – ESORICS 2005. ESORICS 2005. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 3679. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/11555827_27
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/11555827_27
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-28963-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-31981-8
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)