Improving Security and Performance in the Tor Network through Tunable Path Selection

Snader, Robin; Borisov, Nikita

doi:10.1109/tdsc.2010.40

Cited by 45 publications

(24 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…In contrast, PeerFlow uses relays' observations of each other in order to determine relay bandwidths. EigenSpeed [27][28][29] is a proposed scheme for secure bandwidth estimation thatlike PeerFlow -uses peer measurements. Presented as a scheme for use in the Tor network, it is also proposed more generally for use in peer-to-peer distribution networks.…”

Section: Background and Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

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PeerFlow: Secure Load Balancing in Tor

Johnson

Jansen

Hopper

et al. 2017

Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies

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Abstract:We present PeerFlow, a system to securely load balance client traffic in Tor. Security in Tor requires that no adversary handle too much traffic. However, Tor relays are run by volunteers who cannot be trusted to report the relay bandwidths, which Tor clients use for load balancing. We show that existing methods to determine the bandwidths of Tor relays allow an adversary with little bandwidth to attack large amounts of client traffic. These methods include Tor's current bandwidthscanning system, TorFlow, and the peer-measurement system EigenSpeed. We present an improved design called PeerFlow that uses a peer-measurement process both to limit an adversary's ability to increase his measured bandwidth and to improve accuracy. We show our system to be secure, fast, and efficient. We implement PeerFlow in Tor and demonstrate its speed and accuracy in large-scale network simulations.

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Section: Background and Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The main alternative to TorFlow is the EigenSpeed system of Snader and Borisov [27][28][29]. In EigenSpeed, each Tor relay measures the speeds of its connections to other Tor relays and reports them to an authority, who applies Principal Component Analysis (PCA) to produce bandwidth estimates.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

PeerFlow: Secure Load Balancing in Tor

Johnson

Jansen

Hopper

et al. 2017

Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies

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“…As such flexibility may attract more users and relays, we will have a larger anonymity set and thus achieve better anonymity. A similar idea was proposed in [14], which allows users to select different anonymity levels. However, their focus is on the Tor loadbalancing algorithm, not on the influence of the whole system.…”

Section: B Reputation Systems and Proposed Rrsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…RRS is embedded into the threelevel Tor hierarchy to evaluate relays based on client experiences. Furthermore, we propose to enhance path selection with multiple attributes instead of single bandwidth estimate [14][15] to improve user experienced performance. As RRS does not expose any historical communication relationships, no communication patterns are leaked.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Relay recommendation system (RRS) and selective anonymity for tor

Xue

Yang

et al. 2012

2012 IEEE Global Communications Conference (GLOBECOM)

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As one of the most popular low-latency anonymous communication systems, Tor has been a great success but still faces some challenges, e.g., subject to low-resource attacks and no explicit mechanisms to explore tradeoffs between anonymity and performance. In this paper, we propose a Relay Recommendation System (RRS) for Tor to provide reliable relay information for building paths with better performance, mitigate low-resource attacks, and enable users to explore the tradeoffs between performance and anonymity based on their needs. We first present the design of RRS, and show its performance improvement and resistance to low-resource, high-resource, and reputation attacks. We further analyze the potential anonymity decrease, and propose new path selection schemes to enable selective anonymity based on user needs. We have evaluated RRS via both analysis and experiments on a Tor simulation platform. Our results show that RRS achieves significant performance improvement with a small decrease of anonymity.

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“…The choice of the number of 'hops' within a circuit and the decision to select a path with the highest available bandwidth are two notable examples of how the need to maintain this balance has influenced Tor's design [3] [22]. However, it is not only the design which can affect this critical balance.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Doswell

Aslam

Kendall

et al. 2013

Proceedings of the Third ACM Workshop on Security and Privacy in Smartphones &Amp; Mobile Devices

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The number of mobile devices, connecting to the Internet, is predicted to surpass desktop connections by 2014. The likely growth in their mobile client base will offer an additional challenge for anonymity networks, such as Tor, in maintaining an efficient privacy service. We have conducted a simple experiment that illustrates this challenge. We have simulated the performance achieved by a mobile Tor node as it roams at varying speeds between wireless networks. The results show that the impact on performance for the mobile user, and potentially the wider Tor network, is significant when roaming, and as expected, increases with higher mobility speeds and longer recovery times. We review a range of solutions and suggest that, although the use of a lighter transport protocol and/or adaptive client throttling may reduce the performance impact of mobility, a better strategy is to provide a persistent connection to the Tor network for roaming mobile users.

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Improving Security and Performance in the Tor Network through Tunable Path Selection

Cited by 45 publications

References 19 publications

PeerFlow: Secure Load Balancing in Tor

PeerFlow: Secure Load Balancing in Tor

Relay recommendation system (RRS) and selective anonymity for tor

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