A quantitative analysis of anonymous communications Academic Article

abstract

• This paper quantitatively analyzes anonymous communication systems (ACS) with regard to anonymity properties. Various ACS have been designed & implemented. However, there are few formal & quantitative analyzes on how these systems perform. System developers argue the security goals which their systems can achieve. Such results are vague & not persuasive. This paper uses a probabilistic method to investigate the anonymity behavior of ACS. In particular, this paper studies the probability that the true identity of a sender can be discovered in an ACS, given that some nodes have been compromised. It is through this analysis that design guidelines can be identified for systems aimed at providing communication anonymity. For example, contrary to what one would intuitively expect, these analytic results show that the probability that the true identity of a sender can be discovered might not always decrease as the length of communication path increases.

authors

• Bettati, Riccardo

published proceedings

• IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON RELIABILITY

author list (cited authors)

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

citation count

• 15

complete list of authors

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

publication date

• March 2004

publisher

• Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)  Publisher

published in

• IEEE Transactions on Reliability  Journal

keywords

• Anonymous Communication
• Network Security
• Rerouting
• Sender/receiver Anonymity

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

• 10.1109/TR.2004.824826

start page

• 103

end page

• 115

volume

• 53

issue

• 1