Collaborative Research: SaTC: CORE: Medium: Rethinking the Fundamentals of Tunneling Technologies for Security, Privacy, and Usability

协作研究：SaTC：核心：中：重新思考隧道技术的安全性、隐私性和可用性的基础知识

• 批准号: 2141512
• 负责人: Roya Ensafi
• 金额: $ 73.34万
• 依托单位: Regents of the University of Michigan - Ann Arbor
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2022-08-01 至 2025-07-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2141512&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; SaTC; CORE; Medium

Virtual Private Networks, or VPNs, are an important and integral part of the security and privacy practices of tens of millions of Americans, and of activists, journalists, and NGOs around the world that protect U.S. interests and help to carry out U.S. foreign policy. Despite the fact that the VPN ecosystem has expanded into a multi-billion dollar industry, there are many aspects of VPN security and privacy in practice that remain severely understudied and unvetted. How well does a VPN protect users against an attacker who can make educated guesses about what traffic is hidden behind the VPN? How feasible is it to hide VPN traffic so that it is not blocked? Do VPNs meet users' privacy and security expectations? How often do VPN providers follow security and privacy best practices? What are the other security and privacy best practices that should be put in place? This project is answering these questions through technical assessments, carefully designed measurements, and detailed quantitative and qualitative research.Virtual Private Networks, or VPNs, effectively form an encrypted tunnel to protect user traffic. This project aims to develop both intellectual understanding and technical and practical solutions for VPN security and privacy through four concurrent efforts: (1) building methods to ethically measure what is contained in users’ metadata and unencrypted data that needs protection; (2) analyzing how the layers of a tunnel technology interact in vulnerable ways, akin to the much better-studied theoretical limitations of network intrusion detection systems; (3) mapping out the evolving tunneling ecosystem by automating methodical exploration of different tunneling tools; (4) using quantitative and qualitative research to understand the stakeholders’ (users, providers, recommenders) needs to find the best ways to facilitate desired outcomes. These efforts combined will improve the security and privacy of tunnel technologies in all layers of the OSI network stack, from physical, link, and routing all the way through application into the human layer.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

虚拟专用网络（VPN）是数千万美国人以及世界各地保护美国利益并帮助执行美国外交政策的活动人士、记者和非政府组织安全和隐私实践的重要组成部分。尽管 VPN 生态系统已扩展到价值数十亿美元的行业，但实践中 VPN 安全和隐私的许多方面仍未得到充分研究和审查。可以对 VPN 背后隐藏的流量进行有根据的猜测吗？隐藏 VPN 流量以使其不被阻止的可能性有多大？VPN 提供商是否经常遵循安全和隐私最佳实践？应该采取哪些其他安全和隐私最佳实践？该项目正在通过技术评估、精心设计的测量以及定量详细和定性研究来回答这些问题。虚拟专用网络（或 VPN）有效地形成了一条加密隧道保护用户流量。该项目旨在通过四项并行努力，开发 VPN 安全和隐私的知识理解以及技术和实用解决方案：(1) 建立方法来道德地衡量用户元数据和需要保护的未加密数据中包含的内容；(2) 分析如何保护 VPN 安全和隐私。隧道技术的各层以脆弱的方式相互作用，类似于网络入侵检测系统的经过深入研究的理论局限性；（3）通过自动系统地探索不同的隧道工具来绘制不断发展的隧道生态系统；定性的研究了解利益相关者（用户、提供商、推荐者）的需求，找到实现预期结果的最佳方法。这些努力的结合将提高 OSI 网络堆栈所有层（从物理层、链路层、链路层）中隧道技术的安全性和隐私性。该奖项反映了 NSF 的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。