Publicação
MIRACE: Multi-Path Integrated Routing Architecture for Censorship Evasion Privacy-Preserved Internet Communication with Unobservable and Anonymous Mixnet Traffic
| Resumo: | Contemporary research has underscored the alarming surveillance and censorship practices of totalitarian regimes and government agencies in observing traffic in com- munication networks, including the Internet. In response to these pressing challenges, anonymization networks have gained prominence in the digital landscape. Among these, Tor stands out as one of the most popular solutions, playing an essential role in protecting user privacy and anonymity, combating online censorship, and upholding the fundamen- tal rights of free expression and communications. However, recent studies have uncovered vulnerabilities in the Tor network, including risks of deanonymization, often exploited with fingerprinting or correlation attacks launched by state-level adversaries or through the collaboration of multiple ones. In this dissertation, we examine the issues of anonymity and privacy breaches within anonymization networks. To address these concerns, we present MIRACE - a multipath integrated routing architecture for a communication system that enhances privacy through mixed circuits, making communications resilient to tracing, blocking, and thus censorship. MIRACE mixed circuits are established through covert channels layered upon TLS, QUIC tunnels and WebRTC media streams, with different segments of a single circuit potentially using distinct covert methods. Our architecture allows traffic to be split across N circuits composed of M nodes, and each node incorporates advanced techniques like traffic encapsulation, shaping, and induced jitter. To the extent of our knowledge, our solution emerges as a pioneering contribution by combining per-packet traffic splitting with multi- protocol encapsulation, and it aims at bolstering the defences against state-of-the-art Internet censorship mechanisms. Moreover, the techniques addressed in this proposal are also potential candidates for future enhancements of Tor. We have implemented a prototype and performed extensive validations to observe the correctness and experimental performance of MIRACE. The obtained results show that the proposed solution operates as expected with throughput on the order of Mbps and maintains latency conditions suitable for diverse application contexts and usage scenar- ios. Furthermore, the proposed system is also resistant to unobservability evaluations regarding website fingerprinting. |
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| Autores principais: | Pereira, Hugo Gamaliel dos Santos |
| Assunto: | Anonymization Communication Systems Privacy-Preserving Communication Internet Censorship Anti-censorship Mixed Circuits Traffic Randomization and Shaping |
| Ano: | 2024 |
| País: | Portugal |
| Tipo de documento: | dissertação de mestrado |
| Tipo de acesso: | acesso aberto |
| Instituição associada: | Universidade Nova de Lisboa |
| Idioma: | inglês |
| Origem: | Repositório Institucional da UNL |
| Resumo: | Contemporary research has underscored the alarming surveillance and censorship practices of totalitarian regimes and government agencies in observing traffic in com- munication networks, including the Internet. In response to these pressing challenges, anonymization networks have gained prominence in the digital landscape. Among these, Tor stands out as one of the most popular solutions, playing an essential role in protecting user privacy and anonymity, combating online censorship, and upholding the fundamen- tal rights of free expression and communications. However, recent studies have uncovered vulnerabilities in the Tor network, including risks of deanonymization, often exploited with fingerprinting or correlation attacks launched by state-level adversaries or through the collaboration of multiple ones. In this dissertation, we examine the issues of anonymity and privacy breaches within anonymization networks. To address these concerns, we present MIRACE - a multipath integrated routing architecture for a communication system that enhances privacy through mixed circuits, making communications resilient to tracing, blocking, and thus censorship. MIRACE mixed circuits are established through covert channels layered upon TLS, QUIC tunnels and WebRTC media streams, with different segments of a single circuit potentially using distinct covert methods. Our architecture allows traffic to be split across N circuits composed of M nodes, and each node incorporates advanced techniques like traffic encapsulation, shaping, and induced jitter. To the extent of our knowledge, our solution emerges as a pioneering contribution by combining per-packet traffic splitting with multi- protocol encapsulation, and it aims at bolstering the defences against state-of-the-art Internet censorship mechanisms. Moreover, the techniques addressed in this proposal are also potential candidates for future enhancements of Tor. We have implemented a prototype and performed extensive validations to observe the correctness and experimental performance of MIRACE. The obtained results show that the proposed solution operates as expected with throughput on the order of Mbps and maintains latency conditions suitable for diverse application contexts and usage scenar- ios. Furthermore, the proposed system is also resistant to unobservability evaluations regarding website fingerprinting. |
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