An optimal strategy for anonymous communication protocols Conference Paper uri icon

abstract

  • For many Internet applications, the ability to protect the identity of participants in a distributed applications is critical. For such applications, a number of anonymous communication systems have been realized over the recent years. The effectiveness of these systems relies greatly on the way messages are routed among the participants. (We call this the route selection strategy.) In this paper, we describe how to select routes so as to maximize the ability of the anonymous communication systems to protect anonymity. To measure this ability, we define a metric (anonymity degree), and we design and evaluate an optimal route selection strategy that maximizes the anonymity degree of a system. Our analytical and experimental data shows that the anonymity degree may not always monotonically increase as the length of communication paths increase. We also found that variable path-length strategies perform better than fixed-length strategies.

name of conference

  • Proceedings 22nd International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems

published proceedings

  • 22ND INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON DISTRIBUTED COMPUTING SYSTEMS, PROCEEDINGS

author list (cited authors)

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

citation count

  • 26

complete list of authors

  • Guan, Y||Fu, XW||Bettati, R||Zhao, W

publication date

  • January 2002