Distributed performance measurement and usability assessment of the Tor anonymization network

Future Internet

Volumn 4, Issue 2, 2012, Pages 488-513

  Muller, Sebastian ^a   Brecht, Franziska ^b   Fabian, Benjamin ^b   Kunz, Steffen ^b   Kunze, Dominik ^b  

^a FREIE UNIVERSITÄT BERLIN   (Germany)

^b HUMBOLDT UNIVERSITY   (Germany)

Author keywords

Internet anonymity; Onion routing; Tor; Usability; Web latency

Indexed keywords

DATA PRIVACY;

COMPARATIVE EXPERIMENTS; DISTRIBUTED PERFORMANCE; INTERNET ANONYMITIES; ONION ROUTING; PERSONALIZED INFORMATION; PRIVACY ENHANCING TECHNOLOGIES; USABILITY; WEB LATENCY;

NETWORK SECURITY;

EID: 84906784735     PISSN: None     EISSN: 19995903     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.3390/fi4020488     Document Type: Article

References (53)

1. Amnesty International. Undermining Freedom of Expression in China. 2006. Available online: http://www.amnestyusa.org/business/Undermining Freedom of Expression in China.pdf (accessed on 8 May 2012).
2. Dingledine, R.; Mathewson, N.; Syverson, P. Tor: The Second-Generation Onion Router. In Proceedings of the 13th USENIX Security Symposium, San Diego, CA, USA, 9-13 August 2004.
3. Tor Project Web Site. 2010. Available online: https://www.torproject.org/ (accessed on 8 May 2012).
4. Dingledine, R.; Mathewson, N. Anonymity Loves Company: Usability and the Network Effect. In Proceedings of the 5th Workshop on the Economics of Information Security (WEIS 2006), Cambridge, UK, 26-28 June 2006.
5. Palme, J.; Berglund, M. Anonymity on the Internet. 2002. Available online: http://people.dsv.su. se/~jpalme/society/anonymity.html (accessed on 8 May 2012).
6. Vitone, D. Anonymous Networks. 2008. Available online: http://blag.cerebralmind.net/ wp-content/uploads/2008/05/tor.pdf (accessed on 8 May 2012).
7. Loesing, K.; Murdoch, S.J.; Dingledine, R. A Case Study on Measuring Statistical Data in the Tor Anonymity Network. In Proceedings of the Workshop on Ethics in Computer Security Research (WECSR 2010), Canary Islands, Spain, 28-29 January 2010.
8. Dingledine, R.; Murdoch, S.J. Performance Improvements on Tor. 2009. Available online: https: //www.torproject.org/press/presskit/2009-03-11-performance.pdf (accessed on 8 May 2012).
9. Loesing, K. Measuring the Tor Network from Public Directory Information. In Proceedings of the 2nd Hot Topics in Privacy Enhancing Technologies (HotPETs), Seattle, WA, USA, 5-7 August 2009.
10. PlanetLab User's Guide. 2011. Available online: http://www.planet-lab.org/doc/guides/user (accessed on 8 May 2012).
11. Wright, T. Security, privacy, and anonymity. ACM 2004, 11, doi:10.1145/1144403.1144408.
12. Mannan, M.; van Oorschot, P.C. Security and Usability: The Gap in Real-World Online Banking. In Proceedings of the 2007Workshop on New Security Paradigms, North Conway, NH, USA, 18-21 September 2007; pp. 1-14.
13. Acquisti, A.; Dingledine, R.; Syverson, P. On the Economics of Anonymity. In Proceedings of the Financial Cryptography (FC '03); Wright, R.N., Ed.; Springer: Berlin, Germany, 2003; pp. 84-102.
14. Bellovin, S.M.; Clark, D.D.; Perrig, A. A Clean-Slate Design for the Next-Generation Secure Internet. Available online: http://mars.cs.kent.edu/~peyravi/Net208S/Lec/NextGenInternet.pdf (accessed on 10 May 2012).
15. Chaum, D. Untraceable electronic mail, return addresses, and digital pseudonyms. Commun. ACM 1981, 24, 84-88.
16. Danezis, G. Mix-Networks with Restricted Routes. In Proceedings of the 3rd Privacy Enhancing Technologies Workshop (PET 2003); Dingledine, R., Ed.; Springer: Berlin, Germany, 2003; Volume 2760, pp. 1-17.
17. Diaz, C.; Murdoch, S.J.; Troncoso, C. Impact of Network Topology on Anonymity and Overhead in Low-Latency Anonymity Networks. In Proceedings of the 10th International Symposium on Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETS 2010), Berlin, Germany, 21-23 July 2010.
18. Murdoch, S.J.; Watson, R.N.M. Metrics for Security and Performance in Low-Latency Anonymity Networks. In Proceedings of the 8th International Symposium on Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETS 2008); Springer: Berlin, Germany, 2008; pp. 115-132.
19. Loesing, K.; Sandmann,W.; Wilms, C.; Wirtz, G. Performance Measurements and Statistics of Tor Hidden Services. In Proceedings of the 2008 International Symposium on Applications and the Internet (SAINT); IEEE CS Press: Turku, Finland, 2008.
20. Lenhard, J.; Loesing, K.; Wirtz, G. Performance Measurements of Tor Hidden Services in Low-Bandwidth Access Networks. In Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Applied Cryptography and Network Security (ACNS 09), Paris-Rocquencourt, France, 2-5 June 2009; Volume 5536.
21. Tor Metrics Portal. 2010. Available online: http://metrics.torproject.org/ (accessed on 8 May 2012).
22. Fabian, B.; Goertz, F.; Kunz, S.; Müller, S.; Nitzsche, M. Privately Waiting-A Usability Analysis of the Tor Anonymity Network. In Proceedings of the 16th Americas Conference on Information Systems (AMCIS 2010); Springer: Berlin, Germany, 2010; Volume 58.
23. McCoy, D.; Bauer, K.; Grunwald, D.; Kohno, T.; Sicker, D. Shining Light in Dark Places: Understanding the Tor Network. In Proceedings of the 8th International Symposium on Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETS 2008); Springer: Berlin, Germany, 2008; pp. 63-76.
24. Perry, M. TorFlow: Tor Network Analysis. Available online: http://fscked.org/talks/ TorFlow-HotPETS-final.pdf (accessed on 10 May 2012).
25. Dhungel, P.; Steiner, M.; Rimac, I.; Hilt, V.; Ross, K.W. Waiting for Anonymity: Understanding Delays in the Tor Overlay. In Proceedings of the IEEE 10th International Conference on Peer-to- Peer Computing (P2P 2010), Delft, The Netherlands, 25-27 August 2010.
26. Hopper, N.; Vasserman, E.Y.; Chan-Tin, E. How much anonymity does network latency leak ACM Trans. Inf. Syst. Secur. 2010, 13, doi:10.1145/1698750.1698753.
27. Brecht, F.; Fabian, B.; Kunz, S.; Müller, S. Are YouWilling toWait Longer for Internet Privacy? In Proceedings of the European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS 2011), Helsinki, Finland, 9-11 June 2011.
28. Nielson, J. "Top Ten Mistakes" in Web design-Revisited Three Years Later. Available online: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/990502.html (accessed on 8 May 2012).
29. Rose, G.; Khoo, H.; Straub, D.W. Current technological impediments to business-to-consumer electronic commerce. Commun. AIS 1999, 1, 1.
30. Ryan, G.; Valverde, M. Waiting online: A review and research agenda. Int. Res. Electron. Netw. Appl. Policy 2003, 13, 195-205.
31. Stockport, G.J.; Kunnath, G.; Sedick, R. Boo.com-The path to failure. J. Interact. Mark. 2001, 15, 56-70.
32. Tolia, N.; Andersen, D.; Satyanarayanan, M. Quantifying interactive user experience on thin clients. IEEE Comput. 2006, 39, 46-52.
33. Nah, F.F. A study on tolerable waiting time: How long are web users willing to wait Behav. Inf. Technol. 2004, 23, 153-163.
34. Accounting WEB. Is Your Web Site Too Big 2000. Available online: http://www.accountingweb. com/item/29331 (accessed on 8 May 2012).
35. Bhatti, N.; Bouch, A.; Kuchinsky, A. Integrating user-perceived quality into Web server design. Comput. Netw. (Amst. Neth. 1999) 2000, 33, 1-16.
36. Selvidge, P. How Long is Too Long to Wait for a Website to Load 1999. Available online: http://www.surl.org/usabilitynews/12/time delay.asp (accessed on 8 May 2012).
37. Galletta, D.F.; Henry, R.M.; McCoy, S.; Polak, P. Web site delays: How tolerant are users? J. AIS 2004, 5, 1-28.
38. Ramsay, J.; Barbesi, A.; Preece, J. A psychological investigation of long retrieval times on the World Wide Web. Interact. Comput. 1998, 10, 77-86.
39. Huber, M.; Mulazzani, M.; Weippl, E. Tor HTTP Usage and Information Leakage. In Proceedings of the Communications and Multimedia Security; Springer: Berlin, Germany, 2010; Volume 6109, pp. 245-255.
40. SEOmoz: The 500 Most Important Websites on the Internet. 2011. Available online: http://www. seomoz.org/top500 (accessed on 8 May 2012).
41. Wikipedia. Goodput. 2011. Available online: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/ Goodput (accessed on 8 May 2012).
42. Peterson, L.; Pai, V.S. Experience-driven experimental systems research. Commun. ACM 2007, 50, 38-44.
43. Tor partially blocked in China. 2009. Available online: https://blog.torproject.org/blog/ tor-partially-blocked-china/ (accessed on 8 May 2012).
44. Talbot, D. China Cracks Down on Tor Anonymity Network. Technology Review. 2009. Available online: http://www.technologyreview.com/web/23736/ (accessed on 8 May 2012).
45. Berger, M. Tor Nodes Statistics. 2011. Available online: http://www.dianacht.de/torstat/ (accessed on 8 May 2012).
46. Panchenko, A.; Renner, J. Path Selection Metrics for Performance-Improved Onion Routing. In Proceedings of the 2009 9th Annual International Symposium on Applications and the Internet; IEEE Computer Society: Washington, DC, USA, 2009; pp. 114-120.
47. Map of all Google data center locations. Pingdom Blog. 2008. Available online: http://royal. pingdom.com/2008/04/11/map-of-all-google-data-center-locations/ (accessed on 8 May 2012).
48. CDN performance. 2010. Available online: http://royal.pingdom.com/2010/05/11/ cdn-performance-downloading-jquery-from-google-microsoft-and-edgecast-cdns/ (accessed on 8 May 2012).
49. Utrace-Locate IP Addresses and Domain Names. 2011. Available online: http://www.utrace.de/ (accessed on 8 May 2012).
50. New Cisco Study Reveals Peak Internet Traffic Increases Due to Social Networking and Broadband Video Usage. 2009. Available online: http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/2009/prod 102109.html (accessed on 8 May 2012).
51. Cisco Visual Networking Index: Usage Study. 2010. Available online: http://www.cisco.com/ en/US/solutions/collateral/ns341/ns525/ns537/ns705/Cisco VNI Usage WP.html (accessed on 8 May 2012).
52. Roger Dingledine and Nick Mathewson. 2011. Available online: https://git.torproject.org/ checkout/tor/master/doc/spec/path-spec.txt (accessed on 8 May 2012).
53. Herrmann, M.; Grothoff, C. Privacy-Implications of Performance-Based Peer Selection by Onion- Routers: A Real-World Case Study Using I2P. In Proceedings of the 11th International Symposium on Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETS 2011); Springer: Berlin, Germany, 2011; pp. 155-174.