Protecting access privacy of cached contents in information centric networks

Abstract

In recently proposed information centric networks (ICN), a user issues "interest" packets to retrieve contents from network by names. Once fetched from origin servers, "data" packets are replicated and cached in all routers along routing and forwarding paths, thus allowing further interests by other users to be fulfilled quickly. However, the way ICN caching works poses a great privacy risk: the time difference between responses for an interest of cached and uncached content can be used as an indicator to infer whether or not a near-by user has previously requested the same content as that requested by an adversary. This work introduces the extent to which the problem is applicable in ICN and provides several solutions that try to strike a balance between their cost and benefits, and raise the bar for the adversary to apply such attack.

A Privacy Preserving Strategy Based on Anonymous Group in Content Centric Network

“…(3) The encryption method proposed in the literature [6,7] can protect the privacy of content, but it cannot play the advantage of the universal cache of nodes. The strategy of this paper does not add extra time delay to response time, and there is also no additional proxy servers.…”

“…However, this scheme has a large computational cost. Mohaisen A et al [6] proposed to increase response time to protect the cache privacy, but it would bring additional response delay and reduce the network transmission performance. Silva R S D et al [7] proposed a content data access control mechanism by using attribute encryption algorithm, which needs to configure a trusted proxy server.…”

Investigating Regulative Implications for User-generated Content and a Design Proposal

“…This means that the content cached in the network can be a source of private information related to content viewer also (e.g., usage patterns or preferences). Adding random delays for new requests and routers will make the identification of a cache location by attackers difficult [24], which Investigating Regulative Implications for User-generated Content and a Design Proposal in turn will make the retrieval of private information of content viewer more complicated.…”

“…As mentioned before, monitoring usage of cached content of any content publishing platform on the cache can reveal patterns of end-user behavior [24]. Also, traces of cached content can reveal private information about content owners, such as personal profile details.…”

Exploiting information centric networking to build an attacker-controlled content delivery network

“…Thus, the information centric paradigm provides a more neutral service to the user, but leaves room for a malicious user to implement entirely new attacks to the cache management process. The literature identifies two broad classes of attacks: cache pollution attacks, in which the attacker forces an ICN node to keep unpopular contents in its cache in order to exhaust it [3], [4] and cache snooping, in which the cached content is used to get information about the downstream users [5], [6].…”