Analysis of flow-correlation attacks in anonymity network Academic Article

abstract

• Mix networks are designed to provide anonymity for users in a variety of applications, including privacy-preserving WWW browsing and numerous e-commerce systems. Such networks have been shown to be susceptible to a number of statistical traffic analysis attacks. Among these are flow correlation attacks, where an adversary may disclose the communication relationship between a sender and a receiver by measuring the similarity between the senders outbound flow and the receivers inbound flow. The effectiveness of the attacks is measured in terms of the probability that an adversary correctly recognises the receiver. This paper describes a model for the flow correlation attack effectiveness. Our results illustrate the quantitative relationship among system parameters such as sample size, noise level, payload flow rate and attack effectiveness. Our analysis quantitatively reveals how, under certain situations, existing flow-based anonymous systems would fail under flow-correlation attacks, thus providing useful guidelines for the design of future anonymous systems. 2007 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

authors

• Bettati, Riccardo

published proceedings

• International Journal of Security and Networks

author list (cited authors)

• Zhu, Y., Fu, X., Bettati, R., & Zhao, W.

complete list of authors

• Zhu, Y||Fu, X||Bettati, R||Zhao, W

publication date

• January 2007

published in

• International Journal of Security and Networks  Journal

start page

• 137

end page

• 153

volume

• 2

issue

• 1-2