Increasing Trust in Tor Node List Using Blockchain

HELLEBRANDT, Lukáš; Ivan HOMOLIAK; Kamil MALINKA and Petr HANÁČEK. Increasing Trust in Tor Node List Using Blockchain. In 2019 IEEE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON BLOCKCHAIN AND CRYPTOCURRENCY (ICBC). NEW YORK: IEEE, 2019, p. 29-32. Available from: https://dx.doi.org/10.1109/BLOC.2019.8751340.

Basic information

Original name

Increasing Trust in Tor Node List Using Blockchain

Authors

HELLEBRANDT, Lukáš; Ivan HOMOLIAK; Kamil MALINKA and Petr HANÁČEK

Edition

NEW YORK, 2019 IEEE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON BLOCKCHAIN AND CRYPTOCURRENCY (ICBC), p. 29-32, 4 pp. 2019

Publisher

IEEE

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Other information

Language

English

Type of outcome

Proceedings paper

Confidentiality degree

is not subject to a state or trade secret

DOI

http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/BLOC.2019.8751340

UT WoS

000491257000012

Tags

International impact, Reviewed

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Abstract

V originále

Tor is a low-latency free anonymization network based on onion routing. In Tor, directory servers maintain a list of all nodes. It is, however, possible for a powerful adversary (e.g., law enforcement agencies) to seize or compromise enough directory servers and thus forge that list. Therefore, clients that obtained such a forged list of nodes can be effectively deanonymized. As a countermeasure, we propose to utilize a permissioned blockchain with a single voting committee that is privately "elected" by a verifiable random function (VRF). Since the blockchain provides us with integrity guarantees by design, we increase trust in the directory servers by decentralizing management of Tor nodes present in the shared list. We apply skiplist as an optimization reducing a validation overhead of newly joined nodes and clients. The proposed approach has only a small performance impact on the existing Tor infrastructure.