Abstract
Tor has become one of the most popular overlay networks for anonymizing TCP traffic. Its popularity is due in part to its perceived strong anonymity properties and its relatively low latency service. Low latency is achieved through Tor's ability to balance the traffic load by optimizing Tor router selection to probabilistically favor routers with highbandwidth capabilities. We investigate how Tor's routing optimizations impact its ability to provide strong anonymity. Through experiments conducted on PlanetLab, we show the extent to which routing performance optimizations have left the system vulnerable to end-to-end traffic analysis attacks from non-global adversaries with minimal resources. Further, we demonstrate that entry guards, added to mitigate path disruption attacks, are themselves vulnerable to attack. Finally, we explore solutions to improve Tor's current routing algorithms and propose alternative routing strategies that prevent some of the routing attacks used in our experiments.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | WPES'07 - Proceedings of the 2007 ACM Workshop on Privacy in Electronic Society |
| Pages | 11-20 |
| Number of pages | 10 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 2007 |
| Event | 6th ACM Workshop on Privacy in the Electronic Society, WPES'07, Held in Association with the 14th ACM Computer and Communications Security Conference - Alexandria, VA, United States Duration: Oct 29 2007 → Oct 29 2007 |
Other
| Other | 6th ACM Workshop on Privacy in the Electronic Society, WPES'07, Held in Association with the 14th ACM Computer and Communications Security Conference |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| City | Alexandria, VA |
| Period | 10/29/07 → 10/29/07 |
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Keywords
- anonymity
- load balancing
- tor
- traffic analysis
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Computer Networks and Communications
- Safety, Risk, Reliability and Quality
- Social Sciences (miscellaneous)
Cite this
Low-resource routing attacks against Tor. / Bauer, Kevin; McCoy, Damon; Grunwald, Dirk; Kohno, Tadayoshi; Sicker, Douglas.
WPES'07 - Proceedings of the 2007 ACM Workshop on Privacy in Electronic Society. 2007. p. 11-20.Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution
}
TY - GEN
T1 - Low-resource routing attacks against Tor
AU - Bauer, Kevin
AU - McCoy, Damon
AU - Grunwald, Dirk
AU - Kohno, Tadayoshi
AU - Sicker, Douglas
PY - 2007
Y1 - 2007
N2 - Tor has become one of the most popular overlay networks for anonymizing TCP traffic. Its popularity is due in part to its perceived strong anonymity properties and its relatively low latency service. Low latency is achieved through Tor's ability to balance the traffic load by optimizing Tor router selection to probabilistically favor routers with highbandwidth capabilities. We investigate how Tor's routing optimizations impact its ability to provide strong anonymity. Through experiments conducted on PlanetLab, we show the extent to which routing performance optimizations have left the system vulnerable to end-to-end traffic analysis attacks from non-global adversaries with minimal resources. Further, we demonstrate that entry guards, added to mitigate path disruption attacks, are themselves vulnerable to attack. Finally, we explore solutions to improve Tor's current routing algorithms and propose alternative routing strategies that prevent some of the routing attacks used in our experiments.
AB - Tor has become one of the most popular overlay networks for anonymizing TCP traffic. Its popularity is due in part to its perceived strong anonymity properties and its relatively low latency service. Low latency is achieved through Tor's ability to balance the traffic load by optimizing Tor router selection to probabilistically favor routers with highbandwidth capabilities. We investigate how Tor's routing optimizations impact its ability to provide strong anonymity. Through experiments conducted on PlanetLab, we show the extent to which routing performance optimizations have left the system vulnerable to end-to-end traffic analysis attacks from non-global adversaries with minimal resources. Further, we demonstrate that entry guards, added to mitigate path disruption attacks, are themselves vulnerable to attack. Finally, we explore solutions to improve Tor's current routing algorithms and propose alternative routing strategies that prevent some of the routing attacks used in our experiments.
KW - anonymity
KW - load balancing
KW - tor
KW - traffic analysis
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=79959681025&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=79959681025&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1145/1314333.1314336
DO - 10.1145/1314333.1314336
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:79959681025
SN - 9781595938831
SP - 11
EP - 20
BT - WPES'07 - Proceedings of the 2007 ACM Workshop on Privacy in Electronic Society
ER -