Collaborative Research: AF: Medium: Foundations of Anonymous Communication in Large-Scale Networks

合作研究：AF：媒介：大规模网络中匿名通信的基础

• 批准号: 2312243
• 负责人: Megumi Ando
• 金额: $ 30万
• 依托单位: Tufts University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2023-09-15 至 2027-08-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2312243&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; AF; Medium; Foundations

A major challenge in network communication is providing anonymity and privacy without significant increase in latency and message complexity. While it is known how to secure the contents of messages via proper encryption techniques, it is less clear how to ensure that who is communicating with whom remains private, too. Currently used anonymity technologies such as the Tor network (used by millions daily) are practical but do not provide provable anonymity guarantees; in fact, security researchers have demonstrated that Tor is vulnerable to a type of Internet attack called traffic analysis. How to guarantee anonymity without rendering current systems too impractical remains an open question of high relevance to many widely used applications. This project create and disseminates algorithms that implement rigorous and efficient solutions to anonymous communication. The project also includes educational initiatives at the graduate and undergraduate levels to build a bigger workforce in the crucial area of privacy, security and computer science more generally.This project addresses the fundamental challenge of guaranteeing anonymity in network communications. Techniques for obscuring meta-information about who is communicating with whom, when, and for how long inevitably involve increased communication (e.g., by rerouting communication through intermediate nodes and/or adding decoy messages). This in turn may lead to network congestion and communication delays. Thus, a crucial question of both theoretical and practical importance is to understand the trade-offs between security and message complexity in network communications under various privacy measures and adversarial models. A second challenge is to design provably secure and efficient anonymous communication schemes in realistic communications scenarios, such as node churn and iterative two-way communications. The team of researchers will address these challenges along two facets: (1) Designing routing schemes so that traffic patterns, possibly altered by malicious nodes, do not reveal any metadata; and (2) Designing cryptographically secure tools (such as cryptographic onions) to secure data even when the network participants responsible for relaying it are potentially adversarial.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.

网络通信的一个主要挑战是在不显着增加延迟和消息复杂性的情况下提供匿名性和隐私性。虽然我们知道如何通过适当的加密技术来保护消息内容，但如何确保谁在与谁通信也是保密的还不太清楚。目前使用的匿名技术，例如 Tor 网络（每天有数百万人使用）是实用的，但不能提供可证明的匿名保证；事实上，安全研究人员已经证明 Tor 容易受到一种称为流量分析的互联网攻击。如何保证匿名而不使当前系统变得太不切实际仍然是与许多广泛使用的应用程序高度相关的悬而未决的问题。该项目创建并传播算法，为匿名通信实施严格且高效的解决方案。该项目还包括针对研究生和本科生的教育举措，以在隐私、安全和计算机科学等关键领域培养更多的劳动力。该项目解决了保证网络通信匿名性的根本挑战。用于模糊有关谁与谁通信、何时通信以及持续多长时间的元信息的技术不可避免地涉及增加的通信（例如，通过中间节点重新路由通信和/或添加诱饵消息）。这反过来可能会导致网络拥塞和通信延迟。因此，一个具有理论和实践意义的关键问题是理解在各种隐私措施和对抗模型下网络通信的安全性和消息复杂性之间的权衡。第二个挑战是在现实通信场景（例如节点流失和迭代双向通信）中设计可证明安全且高效的匿名通信方案。研究人员团队将从两个方面解决这些挑战：（1）设计路由方案，以便可能被恶意节点改变的流量模式不会泄露任何元数据； (2) 设计加密安全工具（例如加密洋葱）来保护数据，即使负责转发数据的网络参与者可能存在对抗性。该奖项反映了 NSF 的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势进行评估，被认为值得支持以及更广泛的影响审查标准。