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Low-latency Mix Using Split and Merge Operations

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Abstract

One of the methods to maintain the anonymity of communicating nodes in a network is the mix technique. Mix networks have been subject to various traffic analysis attacks that aim at compromising the identities of these communication nodes. Our focus in this paper is to propose mix network schemes that are more robust against these attacks. To this end, we propose using traffic re-distribution techniques. Traffic re-distribution involves changing the number and size of messages in the network by splitting and merging the messages at network nodes and using variable size messages to confuse the attacker. The security and anonymity of the proposed techniques are evaluated against traffic analysis attacks. Performance analysis is provided to determine the effectiveness of the proposed techniques.

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Notes

  1. Low-latency mix means that the intermediate nodes do not pool a large number of received messages to prevent timing correlations between senders and receivers, and then send to next hop.

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Correspondence to Dijiang Huang.

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Huang, D., Kandiah, V. Low-latency Mix Using Split and Merge Operations. J Netw Syst Manage 18, 244–264 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10922-010-9170-0

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