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Low Latency Anonymity with Mix Rings

Burnside, Matthew Spindel; Keromytis, Angelos D.

We introduce mix rings, a novel peer-to-peer mixnet architecture for anonymity that yields low-latency networking compared to existing mixnet architectures. A mix ring is a cycle of continuous-time mixes that uses carefully coordinated cover traffic and a simple fan-out mechanism to protect the initiator from timing analysis attacks. Key features of the mix ring architecture include decoupling path creation from data transfer, and a mechanism to vary the cover traffic rate over time to prevent bandwidth overuse. We analyze the architecture with respect to other peer-to-peer anonymity systems -- onion routing and batching mixnets -- and we use simulation to demonstrate performance advantages of nearly 40% over batching mixnets while protecting against a wider variety of adversaries than onion routing.

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Title
Information Security: 9th International Conference, ISC 2006, Samos Island, Greece, August 30 - September 2, 2006: Proceedings
Publisher
Springer
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/11836810_3

More About This Work

Academic Units
Computer Science
Series
Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 4176
Published Here
March 14, 2012