Detecting denial of service attacks in tor

Abstract

Tor is currently one of the more popular systems for anonymizing near real-time communications on the Internet. Recently, Borisov et al. proposed a denial of service based attack on Tor (and related systems) that significantly increases the probability of compromising the anonymity provided. In this paper, we propose an algorithm for detecting such attacks and examine the effectiveness of the obvious approach to evading such detection. We implement a simplified version of the detection algorithm and study whether the attack may be in progress on the current Tor network. Our preliminary measurements indicate that the attack was probably not implemented during the period we observed the network. © 2009 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.