How To Break Anonymity Networks

Presented at The Fifth HOPE (2004), July 10, 2004, 11 p.m. (Unknown duration).

Today's anonymous communication software (such as Mixmaster, Mixminion, Nymservers, JAP, Tor, Anonymizer, etc.) allows people to communicate while concealing their identities from each other and from external attackers. But no deployed system is strong enough to protect every pattern of user behavior against a sufficiently resourceful adversary, and many of them fall to far simpler attacks. In this talk, Nick will discuss working attacks against today's anonymity networks, drawing from past technical and social attacks on deployed networks and from recent academic research in traffic analysis, stylometry, and mix-net design. He will present defenses to these attacks when such defenses are known to exist.


Presenters:

  • Nick Mathewson
    Nick Mathewson is one of the main designers of the Type III anonymous remailer protocol, the one that has been selected to replace the type II protocol currently used by the Mixmaster software. He is the lead developer on the Mixminion remailer software and a core developer on the Tor anonymizing proxy.

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