Os fatores que afetam o anonimato no sistema de comunicação

The fifteen year struggle of decentralizing

privacy-enhancing technology

Rolf Jagerman, Wendo Sab

́

ee, Laurens Versluis, Martijn de Vos,

Johan Pouwelse (course supervisor)

F

Abstract

—Ever since the introduction of the internet, it has

been void of any privacy. The majority of internet traffic currently

is and always has been unencrypted. A number of anonymous

communication overlay networks exist whose aim it is to provide

privacy to its users. However, due to the nature of the internet,

there is major difficulty in getting these networks to become

both decentralized and anonymous. We list reasons for having

anonymous networks, discern the problems in achieving decen-

tralization and sum up the biggest initiatives in the field and their

current status. To do so, we use one exemplary network, the

Tor network. We explain how Tor works, what vulnerabilities this

network currently has, and possible attacks that could be used

to violate privacy and anonymity. The Tor network is used as a

key comparison network in the main part of the report: a tabular

overview of the major anonymous networking technologies in

use today.

1 I

NTRODUCTION

All feelings of privacy concerning browsing the

internet, talking on the telephone or location

tracking of cellphones are an illusion. In recent

years the need for privacy-enhancing technol-

ogy has become more apparent. Revelations by

Edward Snowden of government misconduct

and constitutional violations have sent shock

waves through the internet.

We failed to make an internet that is secure

and private. Although much research has been

done on anonymous internet communication,

only few systems have been actually imple-

mented and only one is actively being used.

One of the most important factors that impact

anonymity in a communication system is the

number of users. A sufficiently large number of

users are required for a system to make guaran-

tees about its ability to protect the privacy of its

users. This makes it difficult to introduce a new

anonymous internet system, due to the