acase@tulane.edu / This thesis considers systems for anonymous communication between users of a cybersystem. Specifically, we consider the scenario where communications generated by the same user repeatedly over time can or must be linked. Linked user behavior can leak information, which adversaries can use to de-anonymize users. Analyzing linked behavior can also generate information about the use of anonymity protocols that can be valuable for research, leading to more effective protocols. But techniques to collect such data must include assurances that the methods and outputs do not compromise user privacy.
A main result of this thesis is an anonymity protocol called Private Set-Union Cardinality, designed to aggregate linked private user data safely. We prove that Private Set-Union Cardinality securely calculates the noisy cardinality of the union of a collection of distributed private data sets. This protocol is intended to take measurements in real-world anonymity systems like Tor and we prove it is secure even if a majority of the participants are dishonest as well as under general concurrent composition.
The remaining results analyze path selection in anonymous routing systems. To obtain our results, we develop a mathematical framework to measure information leakage during repeated linkable path selection and propose new metrics: a radius that measures worst-case behavior, and a neighborhood graph that visualizes degradation of the system over time as a whole. We use these metrics to derive theoretical upper bounds on an adversary's accuracy in de-anonymization.
Finally, we investigate an attack where users can be de-anonymized due to the information an adversary learns when failing to observe some event. We call these occurrences non-observations and we develop a theory of non-observations in anonymous routing systems, deriving theoretical bounds on the information leakage due to this behavior in the general case and for Tor. / 1 / Ellis Fenske
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TULANE/oai:http://digitallibrary.tulane.edu/:tulane_79040 |
| Date | January 2018 |
| Contributors | Fenske, Ellis (author), Mislove, Michael (Thesis advisor), School of Science & Engineering Mathematics (Degree granting institution) |
| Publisher | Tulane University |
| Source Sets | Tulane University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | electronic, 123 |
| Rights | 12 months, Copyright is in accordance with U.S. Copyright law. |
Page generated in 0.0022 seconds