Anonymity attacks on mix systems: A formal analysis

Sami Zhioua

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

Abstract

Information theory turned out to be very useful in analyzing anonymity attacks in general. The concept of channel information leak is a good indicator of how successful an attack can be. While different information leak measures exist in the literature, the problem of representing anonymity systems using noisy channels has not been well studied. The main goal of this paper is to show how anonymity attacks on mix systems can be formally represented as noisy channels in the information-theoretic sense. This formal representation provides a deeper understanding of mix systems and prepares the field for a more rigorous and accurate analysis of possible attacks. We performed empirical analysis using three information leak measures (mutual information, KLSD, and Min-entropy) which revealed interesting findings about some mix variants. This paper tries to bridge the gap between theory and practice in the field of anonymous communication systems.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationInformation Hiding - 13th International Conference, IH 2011, Revised Selected Papers
Pages133-147
Number of pages15
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 26 Sept 2011
Externally publishedYes
Event13th International Conference on Information Hiding, IH 2011 - Prague, Czech Republic
Duration: 18 May 201120 May 2011

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Volume6958 LNCS
ISSN (Print)0302-9743
ISSN (Electronic)1611-3349

Conference

Conference13th International Conference on Information Hiding, IH 2011
Country/TerritoryCzech Republic
CityPrague
Period18/05/1120/05/11

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