Traffic analysis attacks and trade-offs in anonymity providing systems

Abstract

We discuss problems and trade-offs with systems providing anonymity for web browsing (or more generally any communication system that requires low latency interaction). We focus on two main systems: the Freedom network [12] and PipeNet [8]. Although Freedom is efficient and reasonably secure against denial of service attacks, it is vulnerable to some generic traffic analysis attacks, which we describe. On the other hand, we look at PipeNet, a simple theoretical model which protects against the traffic analysis attacks we point out, but is vulnerable to denial of services attacks and has efficiency problems. In light of these observations, we discuss the trade-offs that one faces when trying to construct an efficient low latency communication system that protects users anonymity. © 2001 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.